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The Canadian Teachers' Federation advises teachers to: Be Professional, Be Prudent, Be Prepared and Know Your Rights & Responsibilities. Get the details and precautions for your own online behavior here!

The Authority & Responsibility of School Officials in Responding to Cyberbullying Article by Nancy Willard, M.S. J.D. [Journal of Adolescent Health 41 (2007) S64-S65]

The use of web filters runs counter to 21st century learning. Great editorial from THE JOURNAL (Jun 08) on putting the filter in student heads by teaching them responsibility rather than locking them out of sites with filters.

This three-part article includes a discussion of classroom connections to social networking sites and the school's role in intervening when information that affects the classroom is publicly posted on MySpace or Facebook. The authors also provide five key social networking tips:
1. Establish a policy for dealing with incidents in which students break school rules and their inappropriate behavior is showcased publicly on social-networking sites.
2. Outline clear guidelines for administrators that spell out how schools should discipline students based on information garnered from social-networking sites, and let parents and students know about those rules.
3. Educate students about online-safety issues and how to use sites such as Facebook and MySpace responsibly.
4. Have a policy in place for dealing with cyber bullying.
5. If teachers are using social-networking sites for educational purposes, they should establish clear guidelines for how they intend to communicate with students via those sites.

links to books by Nancy Willard, excecutive director of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use

How can we maximize the learning power of participatory Web sites while ensuring students are protected and behave responsibly? Creating and administering a private social network is an excellent method for establishing a safe social learning experience.

Pupils given a greater degree of freedom to surf the internet at school are less vulnerable to online dangers in the long-term, inspectors say. "Managed" online systems were more successful than "locked" ones at safeguarding pupils' safety, they said. The inspectors' research was commissioned in response to a report by Dr Tanya Btron, which assessed the risks children faced when using the internet and video games.

Students reflect on the rewards of cyberspace and then consider bullying scenarios in which they examine their personal comfort levels. They learn to recognize such feelings and responsibly handle the unacceptable behavior of others.

Responding to the Challenge of Online Social Aggression, Threats, and Distress
This book belongs in every school district! Nancy Willard is Director of the Center for Safe & Responsible Internet Use and a noted expert and speaker on the challenges and legal issues related to technology use in the schools. Her book helps school administrators analyze and intervene in cases involving cyberbullying or cyberthreats. She includes illustrative examples, recommendations for practice, and many practical resources. Available through Amazon.com

Soaring numbers of teachers are calling helplines for advice on how to cope after being "cyberbullied" on the internet by their pupils. A survey by the Teacher Support Network found 17 per cent of teachers had suffered cyberbullying. Pupils were responsible in more than a third of cases.

In response to new federal rules mandating organizations retain their electronic documents, districts are using outside providers to archive their in-house e-mails.

They came from pretty much every sector-nonprofits, government, wireless executives, and think tanks-to a day-long conference in Washington D.C. on how to respond to the panic du jour over kids, mobile phones, and sex

Gives students the real facts about their digital rights and responsibilities to fight against the entertainment industry's intimidation curriculum that frightens students into believing that making copies is wrong.

According to the Bakersfield Californian, a Stockdale High School student, who was physically assaulted by five older students, has settled his suit against the Kern High School District, the students who committed the assault and two other students for $260,000. The case illustrates the degree to which students and their parents can be held financially accountable in bullying cases. It also shows that students can be held financially responsible even if they are witnesses or simply know about such incidents, but don't tell authorities.

Microsoft and ISTE have joined forces to put together a series of web literacy lessons, activities, and support resources to help students develop their critical thinking skills when searching the web. The new student-centered curriculum will provide guidance and activities for your students on how to search effectively, how to analyze "the anatomy of a search result," and moreover, understand how to judge the validity and source of the content they find on the web. This curriculum was developed collaboratively by ISTE and Microsoft and will be available soon free to educators.

From American University's School of Communication. When is it fair and legal to use other people's copyrighted work to make your own? What's the line between infringement and fair use? Take this tour of remix culture classics, and use the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video to make your own decisions. This video is also available as a quicktime download.

Second installment of a three-part video "The Ballad of Zack McCune" from Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
What do you do when you're sued by the recording industry? And how do kids and teens reconcile the law (and corporate interests) with a culture of illegal downloading? Last year, Brown University student Zack McCune was faced with both of these questions.

I am interested in this idea about students owning their name online... what do you think?

Live feeds from social networking sites make it easy to monitor the actions of friends. But how much information constitutes "too much information" is a conversation that needs to take place with teens. Not everything is as private as it may seem.

video for educators and students on the importance of online safety