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As students across the country return to school, school districts face an often complicated and confusing legal landscape on how to deal with cyber bullies in their schools, according to Todd DeMitchell, EdD, a professor of education, who studies school liability, adequate supervision, and responses to preventing bullying and cyber bullying from school administrators and state legislatures.

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."

The Montana Attorney General's office follows the national lead with a web site of their own on cybersafety resources and information for parents, educators and teens.

Volunteer agency founded in 1997 to fight online harassment through education of the general public, education of law enforcement personnel, and empowerment of victims. The site lists cyberstalking-related laws for all 50 states. They also have a Kids/Teen division.

While reports and stories in the media focusing on Internet predators have become all too frequent, the closer-to-home threat to our children may really be cyberbullying, also known as electronic or online bullying. A recent survey of 395 students (11 to 19 years old) found that 28% of students have been cyberbullied, and more than 1 in 7 admitted to acting as the bully."Cyberbullying could be the biggest online threat facing teens today," says James Leasure, co-founder of Pandora Corp. "Of course Internet predators do still exist, but statistically, kids have a much greater chance of being involved in some way with electronic bullying." Most cases of cyberbullying go undocumented because, fortunately, many kids are able to shrug off the 'unkind words' and look the other way. But there are some cases that make national headlines when they turn into tragedies, such as the Megan Meier case in 2006. Larger cases like this have prompted several states to adopt legislation that makes online bullying illegal.

With Photoshop's ease in alteration of photos, students need to be taught to authenticate visual and textual information as part of any good digital literacy program. A recent photograph of Iranian missles was displayed by many prominent news organizations (including the BBC, the L.A. Times, and the New York Times) before it was noted that portions of the dust clouds beneath the missiles were identical. Online news sites have been abuzz all morning, engaged in a debate over what, exactly, this means. As the New York Times notes, this is not the first time Iran's state media has altered photographs for political ends.

Sexual predators are using gaming consoles such as the Wii, PlayStation and Xbox to meet children online. "Child predators are migrating from traditional methods to alternate media," says Detective Lt. Thomas Kish of the Michigan State Police. "They are going to places where children are." Predators view games that allow kids to access the Internet and text message other players as a "foot in the door," he says.

Pokemon Learning League partnered with the Virginia Department of Education to educate students with their episode entitled, Internet Safety and You. Content is open to everyone in all 50 states. Quizzes assess student knowledge and there is also an opportunity to apply principles and practices.

Well-integrated technology opens social networks for students and allows children to develop key social skills, according to two recent studies conducted by researchers at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

As tales of online cruelty mount, districts are trying a mix of prevention and punishment, incorporating internet safety into curriculum and tightening student conduct codes.Whether a pattern or merely an unfortunate streak, what's not disputed is the direction of the general drift in cyberbullying cases: upward. Once relegated to the playgrounds and back lots, the schoolyard bully now finds prey online. While the states are responding to cyberbullying by adopting legislation that mixes prevention with punishment, for school districts the issue quickly turns from educating the community about the threat of cyberbullying to crafting a response when an incident actually occurs. Districts are realizing that integrating internet safety education into curriculum isn't enough. They must also address cyberbullying in their conduct and discipline codes.

School districts are improving their physical security, but they might be neglecting the security of their computer infrastructure, if the results of an annual survey are any indication. The average physical safety rating of K-12 school districts improved by 39 percent over 2007, while the average cyber safety rating declined by 25 percent during the same time period, according to CDW-G's "2008 School Safety Index," which is designed to mark the current state of K-12 school safety.

Facebook, the world's second-largest social networking Web site, is adding more \nthan 40 new safeguards to protect young users from sexual predators and \ncyberbullies, attorneys general from several states said Thursday.

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.

The Stock Market Game™ program offers a vast library of learning materials correlated to national voluntary and state educational standards in Math, Business Education, Economics, English/Language Arts, Technology, Social Studies and Family and Consumer Sciences. Students invest a hypothetical $100,000 online and use real internet research and news updates to simulate the stock market experience.

From the Center for Intellectual Property, University of Maryland. The Center for Intellectual Property provides education, research, and resources for the higher education community on copyright, academic integrity, and the emerging digital environment. The Center accomplishes its mission through the delivery of workshops and conferences, online training, consultations on campus, and electronic and print publications, and it provides continuous updates on legislative developments at the local, state, national, and international level.

Safe Schools is a California state-wide agency that provides training for a wide range of school issues including environmental, transportation, health, behavioral [drugs, violence and victimization] and human resources.

A ban on cell phones in the nation's largest school system was upheld Tuesday by a state appeals court.

This site is intended to assist K-12 school districts and other K-12 entities in developing their own Acceptable Use Policy for use of the K-20 Network. Since "local control" is a major tenet of K-12 education in Washington state, it is up to each district to determine what elements they wish to include in their own policy, and if they wish to include other elements not contained in the template that has been provided. Includes sample parent letters and permission forms, guidelines for Internet Safety Policies and sample board policies on Network use.

[May 2008] AASA article gives examples of school organizations that are desperately and inappropriately blocking the future and Scott McLeod pleads, "Please don't block the future." Please don't relegate your students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, to second-class status in the new economy because you left it to them and their families to figure out on their own what it means to be digital, global citizens. Ask AASA and its state affiliates to provide more technology leadership-related professional development opportunities. And let us know how we can help.

Based on the integral role technology played in President-elect Barack Obama's campaign, as well as recent announcements that he will be creating a chief technology officer in the federal government for the first time, ed-tech experts suggest that the new administration could revolutionize the way technology is viewed in the United States, and, it is hoped, in education. President-elect Obama is doing for the Internet what John F. Kennedy did for television, says Hirsch, by making it a common and essential staple of American life.