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Campaigns to educate students about the pitfalls of Facebook — how professors, parents and prospective employers can use the social networking site to uncover information once considered private — have become a staple of freshman orientation sessions and career center clinics. Students are apparently listening.

If I’m holding something I shouldn’t be holding, I’ll untag,” says Robyn Backer, a junior at Virginia Wesleyan College. She recalls how her high school principal saw online photos of partying students and suspended the athletes who were holding beer bottles but not those with red plastic cups. “And if I’m making a particularly ugly face, I’ll untag myself. Anything really embarrassing, I’ll untag.”

About a quarter of the colleges and universities polled in a recent survey by the National Association for College Admissions Counseling (NACAC) said their admissions officers research prospective students' social-networking profiles before extending admission or scholarships. That means a Facebook picture from a weekend party might cost a student a spot on a premier campus.

Mobile GPS will open a Pandora’s box of possibilities, say others. “I’d be very concerned about pedophiles or identity thieves hacking into a system and locating me, my wife, or daughter,” says Henry Simpson, who coordinates new technology for the California State University at Monterey Bay (CSUMB). “It raises huge safety issues,” he adds.

But new technologies have always brought new risks – such as identity theft. Philosophically, every technology has both positive and negative values, says Andrew Anker, vice president of development at Six Apart, a Web consulting firm. “In fact,” he points out, “the most positive aspects are what also add the most negative.”

Companies looking to do business on college campuses have paid particular attention to security concerns. Rave Wireless introduced a GPS/MoSoSo enabled phone for students this past year, emphasizing the security value of the GPS feature over its potential to deliver underage victims to predators. While the Rave phones enable students to find like-minded buddies (Bored? Love Indian food? Meet me under the clock!), it also offers a cyberescort service linked to campus police. If the student doesn’t turn off a timer in the phone, indicating safe arrival at a destination, police are dispatched to a GPS location.

"What we found was that students using social networking sites are actually practicing the kinds of 21st century skills we want them to develop to be successful today," said Christine Greenhow, a learning technologies researcher in the university's College of Education and Human Development and principal investigator of the study.

"Students are developing a positive attitude towards using technology systems, editing and customizing content and thinking about online design and layout. They're also sharing creative original work like poetry and film and practicing safe and responsible use of information and technology. The

Web sites offer tremendous educational potential."

The worrying extent of the use of technology to bully school and college staff was revealed today with the release of survey results by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) and Teacher Support Network.One in seven respondents said they had experienced cyberbullying and almost one in five said they knew of colleagues who had become victims.

Most college-bound males, regardless of race/ethnicity, have a positive opinion of computing and computer science as a career or a possible major. College-bound females are significantly less interested than boys are in computing; girls associate computing with typing, math, and boredom. College-bound African American and Hispanic teens, regardless of gender, are more likely than their white peers to be interested in computing, although for girls the overall interest is extremely low. Teens interested in studying computer science associate computing with words like "video games," "design," "electronics," "solving problems," and "interesting." The strongest positive driver towards computer science or an openness to a career in computing is "having the power to create and discover new things.