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An attorney for a suspended Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools teacher said Thursday she never intended for the public to view negative comments she made about students on Facebook. But the case is now part of a national debate that pits teachers' right to free expression against how communities expect them to behave.

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.

The calls began coming in Monday. A horrified guidance counselor, a teacher, and then a student lit up Boston's new antibullying tip line, telling officials about multiple Facebook pages that featured pictures of female high school students with derogatory and sexually explicit captions beneath them. Students and city and school officials say they have found at least 15 Facebook pages over the last few days that use obscene or hateful language to target female students, as well as a handful of male students, school administrators, and teachers at schools in Boston and surrounding communities. Boston officials have been scrambling to have the pages removed and have been meeting to figure out how to address the apparent cyberbullying and find the culprits. But as the offending Facebook pages come down, new ones go up. School officials and police are struggling to identify the perpetrators, who have been using fake names when they register with Facebook to create the pages. Police say they could pursue criminal charges if they determine that perpetrators have violated victims' civil rights.

To today's students, online social networking is almost second nature outside of the classroom. What about inside the classroom? Educational software and services are taking a cue from Facebook and MySpace, adding a twist of online collaboration and interaction that brings students, teachers and parents together.

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.

Great advice for ALL teachers [Not just those starting out]. From the Teacher Support Network: Privacy pointers to help you keep your personal life from being searched by your students on Facebook.

A new reporting tool will let Facebook users, including teens and younger users, to privately report troubling content not just to the site itself but to parents, teachers and others in their support system. And an improved Safety Center, due out in the next few weeks, will provide educational videos, articles and other content created by bullying experts to help adults address the problem.

Soaring numbers of teachers are calling helplines for advice on how to cope after being "cyberbullied" on the internet by their pupils. A survey by the Teacher Support Network found 17 per cent of teachers had suffered cyberbullying. Pupils were responsible in more than a third of cases.

This teacher had his physics students describe Einstein by creating his Facebook profile. Since they couldn't access Facebook at school, he had his students create a mock-up of the profile using Microsoft Publisher. He provided the students with a Publisher template, some screenshots of actual Facebook profiles and links to Einstein information to get them started.

FACEBOOK, MySpace, YouTube and Wikipedia are considered valuable educational tools by some who embrace the learning potential of the internet; they are also seen as a massive distraction with no academic benefit by others. Research in Nottingham and Notts suggests split opinions over the internet in the classroom. Some 1,500 interviews with teachers, parents and students nationwide showed the 'net was an integral part of children's personal lives, with 57% of 13 to 18-year-olds in Notts using blogs in their spare time and 58% in Nottingham. More than 60% of Nottingham teens use social networking sites. They are a big feature of leisure time - but now the science version of You Tube, developed by academics at The University of Nottingham, has been honoured in the US this week. The showcase of science videos shares the work of engineers and students online. However just a quarter of teachers use social networking tools in the classroom and their teaching, preferring to leave children to investigate outside school.

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."

The digital world can be tricky for teachers.Those who grew up in the pre-Twitter era are often left casting about to learn how to use new technology and keep up with students. Others, comfortable with using text messages and Facebook to make connections, find themselves questioning, as they navigate the new frontier, just where students fit in.

Public Profiles Raise Questions of Propriety and Privacy. Article cites many of examples of inappropriate commentary from teachers on Facebook accounts that were not so private.

Katherine Evans said she was frustrated with her English teacher for ignoring her pleas for help with assignments and a brusque reproach when she missed class to attend a school blood drive. So Ms. Evans, who was then a high school senior and honor student, logged onto the networking site Facebook and wrote a rant against the teacher, Sarah Phelps.

FaceBook Safety Center - a revamped help portal featuring educational information for users, with sections dedicated to parents, teens, teachers and law enforcement professionals. The educator section contains quick and helpful advice for administrators, including advice for teachers with accounts and removing student profiles that are harmful in intent.

Good article from AMERICAN SCHOOL on the policies that schools need to have in place to protect both students and teachers from cyberbullies.

A guide for teachers who want to create a Facebook Account for their personal or professional lives.

Did you know that 42% of kids have been bullied while online? Did you know that 35% of kids have been threatened online? Did you know that Palo Alto is home to the most popular Social Networking site in the world, Facebook? Did you know that the Palo Alto School District DOES NOT have a cyber-bullying policy? Surprised? Me too.

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.

DOZENS of students as young as 11 have stumbled across steamy images of their male teacher during a web search.