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Hiring managers like Johnson say an increasing number of job hunters are just too casual when it comes to communicating about career opportunities in cyberspace and on mobile devices. Thank-yous on paper aren't necessary, but some applicants are writing e-mails that contain shorthand language and decorative symbols, while others are sending hasty and poorly thought-out messages to and from mobile devices. Job hunters are also using social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace to try to befriend less-than-willing interviewers.

he new law takes effect January 1st and provides that the Internet safety curriculums in schools will begin with the 2009-2010 school year. The bill allows the age-appropriate unit of instruction to be incorporated into the current courses of study regularly taught in the districts’ schools.

Illinois’ partnership with the Netsmartz national Internet safety program was a Governor’s initiative that was launched in 2006.

Earlier this week, Governor Blagojevich signed into law the state’s new Cyberbullying law. It clarifies the definition of harassing someone by using electronic communication such as the Internet and text messaging and enables the prosecution of someone who anonymously bullies in this capacity.

Cyber bullying conducted at school allows school authorities to more easily impose discipline. The use of school equipment to cyber bully also makes a stronger legal argument for action by the school. And if the student e-mails offensive speech to school or downloads it at school and then distributes it, the school is in an advantageous position regarding disciplining the student. However, speech created at home—such as the creation of a Web site—affords greater legal protection for cyber bullies.

“The problem with the approach that web speech created at home can—if accessed at school—become school speech that can be regulated is the very nature of the Internet. Once something is created and placed on the Internet, the author loses control over who can access the speech and where it can be accessed.”

A survey conducted by MSN United Kingdom found that 74% of teens as compared to 80% in this study did not go to anyone for advice when they were cyberbullied (www.msn.co.uk/cyberbullying, 2006). One reason some teenagers are reluctant to tell parents or adults is the fear of retaliation.

Many times parents don't get involved because they are afraid of invading their teen's privacy. Others may feel that as long as they have filtering software their teen is protected from negative material.

Parents need to be educated about cyberbullying- what it looks like, what the effects are and how to handle it. Rosalind Wiseman, educator and author of the best seller "Queen Bees & Wannabes", suggest parents consider the following: Use technology as an opportunity to reinforce your family values. Attach rules and consequences if inappropriate behavior occurs. Move the computer out of your child's bedroom and into the family room. Teach your child not to share passwords. Install monitoring and filtering software. Monitor your child's screen name(s) and Web sites for inappropriate content. If cyberbullying occurs, save and print out any evidence and decide whom you should contact for assistance.

Nancy Willard, author of "An Educators Guide to Cyberbullying and Cyberthreats" breaks down cyberbullying into the following categories: Flaming. Online fights using electronic messages with angry or vulgar language. Harassment. Repeatedly sending nasty, mean, an insulting messages. Denigration. "Dissing" someone online. Sending or posting gossip or rumors about a person to damage his or her reputation or friendships. Impersonation. Pretending to be someone else and sending or posting material to get that person in trouble or damage their reputation. Outing. Sharing someone's secrets or embarrassing information or images online. Trickery. Tricking someone into revealing secrets or embarrassing information and then sharing it online. Exclusion. Intentionally and cruelly excluding someone. Cyberstalking. Repeated, intense harassment and denigration that includes threats or creates significant fear (Willard, 2006).

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."

As soon as there's a new technology, it's used for sex," says Sarah Jacobs, curator of the Museum of Sex in Manhattan, which explains why people of all ages and persuasions send out naked pictures via cell phone, Craigslist and MySpace and post their sex videos on sites like YouPorn.

In the past six months alone, there's been a deluge of news stories about middle- and high-school students getting into trouble for sending around naked pictures and sex videos of themselves or classmates. The disposition of the cases has been wildly disparate: Some kids are arrested, some punished at school and others are lectured about online safety.

Of those that reported that they had been cyberbullied, over 50 percent reported the cyberbullying lasted on average 2-4 days, while approximately 30 percent lasted a week or longer. Over 41 percent of the time cyberbullying took place with instant messaging, chat rooms and blogs (MySpace, Xanga, Facebook, Bebo, etc). In addition, 35 percent reported that e-mail was used to cyberbullied them.

ngry, depressed and hurt were the top three emotions experienced

he most reported reasons those that admitted to cyberbullying (14/59) gave were out of revenge (57 percent) and anger (43 percent) while 21 percent admit to cyberbullying because they did not like the other person. When asked how the cyberbullying take place, the results are similar to the ones reported by victims of cyberbullying: 43 percent by instant messaging or chat rooms and 36 percent by e-mails or blogs

According to Virtual Worlds Management, more than 100 youth-oriented virtual worlds are either now live or in development, including offerings from MTV and Disney (DIS - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr). Research firm eMarketer estimates that 24% of the 34.3 million users ages three to 18 used virtual worlds at least monthly in 2007 -- and that will jump to 53% by 2011.

As a whole, the education industry is usually relatively slow to integrate technology into the classroom. In lots of schools nationwide, unbridled access to computers and the Internet is still the exception rather than the rule.

The moment students get outside of the classroom, on the other hand, social networking is almost a daily ritual.

Dedicated commercial Web 2.0 products and social networking applications are still too new and too rich for typical school leaders to afford. So third-party providers are more likely to offer technology services to students and their schools to expand their horizons in ways never before possible. For example, some school districts are going beyond e-mail technology and using collaboration software and online services to share information, host Web conferences and assign tasks and projects.

Studies show cyberbullying affects millions of adolescents and young adults. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year labeled "electronic aggression" -- its term for cyberbullying -- an emerging public-health problem.

"It's not really the schoolyard thug character" in some cases, said Nancy Willard, executive director of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use, a research and professional development organization in Eugene, Ore. "It's the in-crowd kids bullying those who don't rank high enough."What fuels cyberbullying is "status in schools -- popularity, hierarchies, who's cool, who's not," said Danah Boyd, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School who studies teens' behavior on MySpace, Facebook and other social-networking sites.

Cyberbullying has impelled lawmakers, especially at the state level, to either pass anti-bullying laws that encompass cyberbullying or add cyberbullying to existing statutes. Some laws are propelled by a mix of concern about electronic bullying and online sexual predators.

Even Google has failed to extend its golden touch to social-networking sites. In 2006 Google paid MySpace $900 million to place ads on its pages. The search giant also operates its own social network, Orkut, which has been growing, especially outside the US. But in a February call with financial analysts, Google cofounder Sergey Brin conceded that the investments “didn’t pan out as well as we had hoped…. I don’t think we have the killer best way to advertise and monetize the social networks yet.”

“People clearly, especially on the social networks, [are] not particularly interested in clicking on the ads,” says Mr. Brooks, who as editor of socialnetworkingwatch.com has followed the online industry for a decade. “Advertising needs to evolve, and social networks are forcing this change. People are really tired of being assaulted [by ads], but they still love to buy.”

As users share personal information within their networks, companies have an opportunity to capture and employ this data for targeted marketing. Social networks are building huge databases about where users go and the people they connect with, says Fred Stutzman, a doctoral candidate at the University of North Carolina who studies social networks.

Children and teens treating each other cruelly is nothing new, but what’s changed in recent years is educators’ sense of their own role in prevention, said Jon Hisgen, a health and physical education consultant at DPI. The idea that being bullied is an unavoidable part of growing up has faded as adults have realized how much bullying interferes with students’ learning.

“If there’s fear that they could be hurt or have things said about them, that preoccupies their thoughts all the time they’re in school,” Hisgen said. “The ability of the brain to take in and analyze information is shot because they’re thinking about what could happen when they leave that classroom.”

This past academic year, Bullyfree Basics was used in 34 districts statewide, including Greendale, Oak Creek and Kenosha Unified, Clementi said. Gaenslen Elementary, where Kasdorf teaches, was one of 13 Milwaukee public schools that took part.

Become powerful advocates for change. Regardless of who inhabits the White House next year, educational technology must play a more prominent role in our national education policy, Davis said--and educators should do everything they can to ensure that it does.

Share your knowledge and your passion. Help others take steps to ensure their growth as teachers, Davis said--so they can help students grow as learners. 3. Showcase your work, and students' work, in innovative ways. Invite parents and community leaders into your schools, Davis said--or take students' projects to them with the help of podcasts and other technologies.

Dream big. Have high expectations for your students, Davis said, because the possibilities that educational technology offers are "endless." 5. Use all of the resources available to you as you try to effect change. These include ISTE's many online resources, such as the group's National Educational Technology Standards and its research-based reports.