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A Platform for Good (PFG) is a project of the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) designed to help parents, teachers and teens to connect, share, and do good online! At FOSI we work with leaders in the field of online safety and, regularly, we hear about incredible stories and exciting opportunities in our digital world. We hear stories of parents, teens, and teachers using technology to raise social awareness, encourage activism, enhance our education system, and of course, have fun!

Global collaboration project headed by Vickie Davis and Julie Lindsay. Connect your classroom locally and globally to create meaningful and authentic learning communities using Web 2.0 tools and emerging technologies.

The person behind the inflammatory blog "Megan Had it Coming" is a 32-year-old information technology freelancer who lives near Seattle, according to a story about Internet trolls that ran Aug. 3 in The New York Times. Jason Fortuny had no connection with events in Missouri surrounding the 2006 death of Megan Meier. As some had suspected, he is an Internet troll.

Children as young as eight are being attracted to social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace and Bebo, with a new study revealing more than 750,000 between the ages of 8 and 12 use one, despite minimum age restrictions of 13 or 14. Parents have admitted to spying on their children online in an attempt to safeguard them from the dangers of social networking websites.

In this lesson, students draw conclusions from an analysis of propaganda techniques used in a piece of literature-such as the novel Brave New World, the play The Crucible, or the movie Dr. Strangelove-and political advertisements posted on the Internet. Students also make connections to their own world by looking for examples of propaganda in other media, such as print ads and commercials.

"In general, the networks connect novice teachers to others in their preparation classes, teachers who instruct in the same subject or grade level to one another, and teacher-mentors to colleagues-even when they are not located at the same schools. The sites facilitate online discussions, workshops, coaching, and collaborative study groups and work teams."

The Creative Rights Education initiativewas developed to create awareness of intellectual property rights, to foster a better understanding of the rights connected with creative content, and ultimately, to instill in students a personal respect for creative rights in a way that changes their behaviors and perceptions about digitally delivered content. This program, sponsored by Microsoft, offers a comprehensive set of cross-curricular classroom activities designed for grades 8-10 (but easily adaptable for use in grades 6-12) and organized into thematic units.

Taking risky opportunities in youthful content creation: teenagers' use of social networking sites for intimacy, privacy and self-expression.
The explosion in social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and Friendster is widely regarded as an exciting opportunity, especially for youth.Yet the public response tends to be one of puzzled dismay regarding a generation that, supposedly, has many friends but little sense of privacy and a narcissistic fascination with self-display. This article explores teenagers' practices of social networking in order to uncover the subtle connections between online opportunity and risk. Reprints of the complete article are available for a fee from Sage Publishing.

A Look At The Cyberbully. This study confirms other studies (Opinion Research, (2006) on the prevalence of cyberbullying in that about a third (29%) admitted to being bullied with half of them reporting that additional bullying accompanied the initial cyberbullying. Research finds a connection between bullies, cyberbullies and their victims. Bullies, compared to non-bullies, were more likely to be cyberbullies; while victims of physical bullying were more likely to be victims of cyberbullying

MySpace and Facebook Phenomena: How Youth Engage with Networked Publics
Anthropologist of the online community Danah Boyd discusses ways young people use social network sites to connect with their friends and present themselves online.

Child predators offering game points in exchange for nude images through Internet-connected video games have prompted a warning for parents. "Kids are playing games, and they are being asked to take photos of themselves naked in order to get game points," state attorney Cybercrime Detective Lt. David Maurer said. "There is not only the chatting version of the games but also a webcam involved."

Meet the new philanthropists - Silicon Valley teens with innate computer networking skills, affluent family connections and the one-click ability to bear witness to global poverty.

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.

NBC Learn, the education arm of NBC News, this week launched a new collaborative learning site that combines gaming and multimedia for students aged 13 and up. Called iCue ("Immerse, Connect, Understand, and Excel"), the service builds on research out of MIT's Education Arcade, housed at MIT's Comparative Media Studies, to integrate traditional learning activities with new technologies.

When Christopher Laub was in the third and fourth grades, chemotherapy treatments for his leukemia kept him out of school, feeling sick and weak. But through a close collaboration between Bel Aire Elementary School [Tiburon, CA] and Apple - as well as a creative use of iChat AV - Laub was able to continue with his classes. Thanks to the system that he dubbed "iCan," the young student remained connected to his classmates and his studies.

People used to say a child's suicide ripples through a community. These days, it rides an electronic wave. Teenagers relay the news with cell phone calls, text messaging and Internet social networks, complicating the efforts of teachers, counselors and parents trying to manage grief after a young person's death. To our readers This series stems from our continuing examination of what led 19-year-old Robert Hawkins to become a mass killer last December at Omaha's Von Maur store. Today's stories describe how Internet postings, cell phones and text messages allow teens to spread their angst rapidly under the radar of adult oversight. Three-part series The World-Herald investigation into Robert Hawkins' murder spree and suicide last December leads to the discovery of a teen suicide cluster in Sarpy County. Sunday: Connections between suicidal teens cross community and school district lines. Today: Technology spreads teenage grief and angst quickly, with no parental oversight. Tuesday: A widely used but controversial suicide screening program is urged for use in Nebraska schools. Cyberspace is fertile ground for suicide contagion. It provides a forum for prolonged and excessive grieving in a highly charged, emotional atmosphere - precisely the kind of atmosphere psychologists warn to avoid after a death. It is also unmonitored by all but the most vigilant parents.

What seems like an easy question - Will you be my friend? - is not necessarily so for teachers who have joined the Facebook phenomenon. The social-networking Web site, whose popularity has grown from the college crowd down to teens and up to boomers, poses a prickly question for teachers who want to connect with their tech-savvy students yet maintain professional boundaries.

There are hobbyists and there are fanatics. I cannot imagine the pricetag for the computer set up shown here and have to hope that these 11 computers used simultaneously to play world of warcraft are put to "good use" at other times during the day. I also see someone who is online but is not connected with others. To me, if I do things online - I like social spaces because of the "interaction" -- sort of like creating your own friend network of 36 different people and tweeting yourself all day -- sort of Sybil-ish, I think. Addictive behaviors is definitely part of digital health and wellness and helping people know when to draw the line.

If adults want to learn how to connect with kids and help them be safer online, we need to understand what really matters to them-and keep the lines of real-world communication open.