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9-minute video that would be good to show in a digital citizenship class. Identity theft is a serious crime. People whose identities have been stolen can spend months or years and thousands of dollars cleaning up the mess the thieves have made of a good name and credit record. In the meantime, victims of identity theft may lose job opportunities, be refused loans for education, housing, or cars, and even get arrested for crimes they didn't commit. Humiliation, anger, and frustration are among the feelings victims experience as they navigate the process of rescuing their identity.

Teens and tweens have been bullying each other for generations. The bullies of today, however, have the advantage of utilizing technology such as computers, cell phones and other electronic devices to inflict harm on others. "Bullying Beyond the Schoolyard: Preventing and Responding to Cyberbullying," due out this month, uncovers the types of youth most susceptible, how they felt, who they told, how they coped and how it affected their lives, and illustrates the gravity of cyberbullying and its real-world repercussions. The co-authors, [Justin Patchin, Ph.D. and Sameer Hinduja] both have backgrounds in Criminal Justice and are university-based. Their web site, Cyberbullying.Us is dedicated to identifying the causes and consequences of online harrassment.

Congress has authorized a new federal research center that will be charged with helping to develop innovative ways to use digital technology at schools and in universities. The National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies was included as part of the latest reauthorization Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader of the Higher Education Act, approved last month. President Bush signed the law on Aug. 14. The center will be charged with supporting research and development of new education technologies, including internet-based technologies. It will also help adapt techniques already widely used in other sectors, such as advertising and the military, to classroom instruction.

A recent survey by Consumer Policy Solutions has found that online safety and privacy rank highest among concerns of adults online. The consulting firm which focuses on consumer interests and the marketplace, earlier this month released results of a survey that showed 56% of respondents don't think they have enough, or any, privacy online.

Students may lose their beloved phone for the rest of the school day. But they don't expect to lose their privacy. In a small town east of Stockton, that is what happened to a senior named Justin Tomek at Linden High School last October. Several months later, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California weighed in.

Twice this month, students at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda have used their fists to settle disputes that arose on Facebook. It might be the first case in the Washington region of school officials publicly linking a fight to words exchanged on Facebook. Rival MySpace, which many students regard as more juvenile, has been linked by authorities to gang posturing and fights.

ThinkQuest Newswire Announcement: Students from 13 countries took top honors in this year's ThinkQuest International 2008 Competition. The competition is utilized by teachers to engage their students in developing critical skills for life and work in the 21st century.This year's winning teams collaborated in the research, writing and creation of websites on educational topics ranging from mathematics to promoting tolerance and preventing bullying.

ThinkQuest International 2008 included 972 teams from 60 countries and the winning entries included students from Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, Egypt, India, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Tunisia, United Kingdom, United States and Vietnam. Each team had approximately eight months to complete their final websites. The submissions were then reviewed by an international panel of volunteer judges who selected the winners in each of the three age divisions. The judges also awarded the "Global Perspectives" prize to the team best exemplifying respect for diversity and recognition of global interdependence.

Texting is a form of wireless communication where users send or receive short, digital messages electronically. Texting is also known as SMS (Short Message Service). Although the bulk of texting is done via mobile-to-mobile devices, websites and companies are also jumping on the bandwagon. Some companies allow users to "web text" by sending and receiving text messages to mobile devices from their computers. Many provide the service for free. Text messaging is an extremely popular method of communication. CTIA-The Wireless Association®, the international association for the wireless telecommunications industry, reported that over 48 billion text messages were sent in a one-month period in 2007, which averages 1.6 billion messages per day.

In recognition of National Cyber Security Awareness Month, LOOKBOTHWAYS and CyberPatrol have created four family-oriented Internet safety videos that give parents, educators and others, quick and accessible advice on how to protect children online.

This month, three teenage girls, students at Greensburg Salem High School in Greensburg, Pa., were charged with disseminating child pornography. They had sent nude pictures of themselves by cellphone to their teenage boyfriends, who were charged with possessing child pornography.\n\nThe legal consequences in this case may have been unique, but the behavior is not. About 20 percent of teenagers have posted or sent nude cellphone pictures of themselves, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, a nonprofit group.

Web-based Comics. BitStrips for Schools places it on a private virtual network where teachers can moderate content and review all characters and comics. Students can flag inappropriate comments or bullying, which is then instantly removed pending teacher review. There is a nominal fee of $9.95 per month for up to 40 students.

School activity: Scroll down to the bottom and you'll see the winning posters from three elementary students who participated in an online safety contest. A similar contest could be held at school, in a district or county as part of cybersafety or digital literacy curriculum. This particular contest was connected with Hispanic Heritage Month.

Katherine Evans wanted everyone to know: Ms. Phelps was the worst English teacher she'd ever had. So Evans, a Florida high school senior and honors student, posted a Facebook page to publicly criticize the teacher. Two months later, though, Evans was suspended for cyberbullying the teacher with her very precisely named group, "Ms. Sarah Phelps is the worst teacher I've ever had," on the social-networking site.

Salt Lake City's Granite School District is expected to approve a new policy this month barring students and teachers from connecting on sites such as Facebook and Twitter. The policy - the first of its kind in Utah - provides an exemption for teachers' sites that are educational, not personal. Officials said there was no specific incident that spurred the new guidelines. But with the popularity of social networking sites in schools, Granite wants to eliminate any gray areas when it comes to teacher-student interaction, district spokesman Ben Horsley said. "The reality is if someone is going to interact inappropriately with a student, there's certainly lots of technology out there that can help them get around those rules and guidelines in a very nonpublic way," Horsley said. "This gives us some tools to move forward on a disciplinary track."

U.S. moms and dads estimate that their children spend only two hours a month on the internet, but kids say they actually spend 10 times more time - or 20 hours - according to a recent study, the first Norton Online Living Report by Symantec (via Marketing Charts). 41% of respondents age 13-17 say their parents have no idea what they do online, and only 33% of parents worldwide say they set parental controls and monitor their children's online activities.

In a demonstration of the power of civics and social media, 18,000 students coordinated a classroom walkout demonstration that was orchestrated from recent high school grad Michelle Ryan Lauto, 18, posting a Facebook invitation last month to take a stand against state budget cuts in education.

An anonymous Facebook page filled with negative comments about Evanston (Ill.) Township High School students became part of a police investigation into cyberbulling earlier this month. But now students at the same school are drawing attention for posting and sharing the nicest comments imaginable about each other.

The worrying extent of the use of technology to bully school and college staff was revealed earlier this month 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.

Teens are texting on cell phones more than ever with an average of 1,700 texts a month. Maggie Rodriguez spoke with a parenting expert about texting guidelines.

Twitter, the microblogging service has been the tech darling of late - racking up new users at a dizzying pace. But there simply aren't enough new users to make up for defecting ones claims one blogger. FaceBook and MySpace, the two social networking giants had double the retention rates Twitter has now. And, as fans are quick to point out in fields of comments around the Web, Facebook offers so many more ways to interact than Twitter.