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In order to support these concepts, the groups have launched an awareness campaign that includes a public service announcement, which will be sent to the campaign headquarters of the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates, as well as questions for the candidates to help clarify their positions on "the future of American education and the modern classroom."

I’m not aware of any federal Internet safety commissions that met during the Bush administration. From what I can tell, that administration paid very little attention to Internet safety other than to add to the exaggerations and fear-mongering about so-called Internet predators. So is there any point in taking yet another look at Internet safety? Yes, if only because things have changed dramatically over the past few months. To begin with, we have a new administration led by a president who actually understands the Internet as well as the constitutional issues that arise whenever government tries to control online speech, access or even safety.

When the new working group convened Thursday, our first speaker was Susan Crawford, who works at the White House as special assistant to the president for science, technology and innovation policy. A law professor and founder of OneWebDay, Crawford brings a refreshing understanding of the government’s need to balance safety and security with civil liberties, privacy and even the First Amendment rights of minors. Her opening remarks helped set the tone for the group by admonishing us to “avoid overheated rhetoric about risks to kids online,” pointing out that “risks kids face online may not be significantly different than the risks they face offline.”

he group held a three-day workshop on climate change Aug. 15-17 at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. Eighty students from as far away as New York and Japan are learning how to educate others about global warming and what they can do to fight it.

Inconvenient Youth is a network founded and driven by a team of four teenagers based in Menlo Park, Calif. Their goal is to mobilize young people to educate their communities about environmental science and solutions using a youth-focused version of "An Inconvenient Truth."

Brown's class was discussing some of the whaling calculations in Moby Dick. When one student asked a question involving a complex computation, three students quickly pulled out their cell phones and did the math. Brown was surprised to learn that most cell phones have a built-in calculator. She was even more surprised at how literate her students were with the many functions included in their phones. She took a quick poll and found that all her students either had a cell phone or easy access to one. In fact, students became genuinely engaged in a class discussion about phone features. This got Brown thinking about how she might incorporate this technology into learning activities.

Brown noticed that many students used text messaging to communicate, and considered how she might use cell phones in summarizing and analyzing text to help her students better understand Richard III. Effective summarizing is one of the most powerful skills students can cultivate. It provides students with tools for identifying the most important aspects of what they are learning, especially when teachers use a frame of reference (Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001). Summarizing helps students identify critical information. Research shows gains in reading comprehension when students learn how to incorporate isummary framesi (series of questions designed to highlight critical passages) as a tool for summarizing (Meyer & Freedle, 1984). When students use this strategy, they are better able to understand what they are reading, identify key information, and provide a summary that helps them retain the information (Armbruster, Anderson, & Ostertag, 1987).

Text messaging is a real-world example of summarizing—to communicate information in a few words the user must identify key ideas. Brown saw that she could use a technique students had already mastered, within the context of literature study.

In a report to be released today, the Family Online Safety Institute, a Washington nonprofit organization, is urging the new administration to appoint a national safety officer to serve under the chief technology officer, a position Obama has promised to create. The group is also asking for $100 million a year to fund education and research, an annual White House summit on safety issues, as well as the creation of a national council to coordinate efforts among federal agencies and advocacy and industry groups.

But we adults are afraid. This is not the way we grew up. We had our group of friends, our own little group. Now, the groups to which today's young people belong are hundreds and even thousands strong. Their "friends" lists go on for pages, many of them hundreds or thousands of physical miles away. This is so far from the way we communicated and learned about each other, that we cannot understand it. So we do what most people do with things they do not understand. We ignore it. If it intrudes on the way we do things, we find ways to block it.

Eighty-one percent of kids have visited a social networking site such as MySpace or Facebook. Yet more than 50% of schools block social networking altogether and over 80% block instant messaging and chatting services. These statistics tell us that our students are accessing these types of services regardless of our efforts to block them.

ith over 80 million users on MySpace alone, social networking is not going away. And that National School Boards Association report said that 50% of students using these services are specifically talking about schoolwork using these social networking tools.What? Students are talking about schoolwork? Yes. Just as we used the phone (despite our parents demands to hang up!) students today are using social networks. They are asking each other questions and discussing homework besides planning to go out. This is their way to communicate and as much as we have difficulty understanding it, it is 24/7 and schools can take some advantage of that.

In a survey of 45,000 children in middle school, 85 percent said they have been cyberbullied at least once, said Parry Aftab, executive director of the Internet safety group WiredSafety.org, based in Irvington, N.Y., about 20 miles northeast of New York. Just 5 percent admitted it at the high school level, she said.