Staff and students in Rainbow Schools will wear pink on Thursday, September 11th, 2008, as Rainbow District School Board marks its first ever "Stand Up Against Bullying Day."

Obama Works is an independent grassroots organization that helps Obama supporters in neighborhoods across the country to organize community service events. The group was founded in early 2008 by a group of Yale students who were inspired by Barack Obama and felt that the energy surrounding his campaign could be channeled to do more than generate votes.

As any parent knows, tweens are crazy about cellphones. Those hoping to delay such a purchase--despite cries of "But everyone else has one!"--take note: 46% of U.S. tweens (ages 8 to 12) use cellphones, but only 26% own them, according to data released Wednesday by Nielsen Mobile. These "mobile borrowers" use their parents' phones when they go out with friends or on short trips, says Sally DePiro, a Nielsen product manager who worked on the report. The borrowing is more than an occasional habit: About 50% take their parents' phones more than three times a week. The key age for these early adopters is 10. While kids start using borrowed cellphones, on average, at around age eight-and-a-half, American tweens generally acquire their own phones between the ages of 10 and 11, reports Nielsen.

Ask a teacher to name the most irritating invention of recent years and they will often nominate the mobile phone. Exasperated by the distractions and problems they create, many headteachers have ordered that pupils must keep their phones switched off at school. Others have told pupils to leave them at home. However, education researchers at The University of Nottingham believe it is time that phone bans were reassessed - because mobile phones can be a powerful learning aid, they say.

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.

Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project

Great slide show on Digital Reputation in Teen Networks.

Book limitations - through the eyes of digital youth. Posted by Chris Lehman and the Science Leadership Academy.

Google interview with Rachel Dretzin, co-producer of the PBS documentary, GROWING UP ONLINE.

The special cellphone, set on vibrate, begins to whir. Throughout North Carolina, anonymous teenagers are texting questions to it about sex.

Today's kids are born digital -- born into a media-rich, networked world of infinite possibilities. But their digital lifestyle is about more than just cool gadgets; it's about engagement, self-directed learning, creativity, and empowerment. The Digital Generation Project tells their stories so that educators and parents can understand how kids learn, communicate, and socialize in very different ways than any previous generation. This project was funded by a grant from the MacArthur Foundation.

Conference presentation on use of mobile phones in the classroom.

"New Image for Computing" recently released a report in their first wave to understand the image of computing among youth. Funded by WGBH and ACM, this report examines both race/ethnicity and sex-based differences in perceptions of computing. What they found was that there is little race/ethnicity-based differences in how youth perceive CS but there are HUGE gender based differences in perception.

Supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, New Image for Computing (NIC) is currently in the first stage of what is planned as a multi-phase project that aims to improve the image of computer science among high school students (with a special focus on gender and ethnic disparities) and encourage greater participation in computer science at the postsecondary level. Download the full report.

This blog collects material both about and from the Global Kids' Digital Media Initiative in a convenient RSS feed. This is an impressively ambitious program!

This highly respected newsletter by Anne Collier is pubished once a week and is must reading for parents trying to stay current with new about kids' use of the Internet.

Written by attorney/educator, Nancy Willard and tailored for parents.Cyber-Safe Kids, Cyber-Savvy Teens is primarily a parenting book - parenting for the Information Age. Generally, parents do a good job of raising their children to make safe and responsible choices in the Real World. But now, children and teens have the ability to interact with people from throughout the world and to access a wide range of material that may or may not be appropriate for them. So what is a caring parent to do?

Public schools have been equipped with video surveillance CCTV systems even before Columbine. The reasons include increased safety and security for students. Installing video surveillance cameras in schools is a costly project, and school districts must be sure that this is the right route to deter theft, property damage, and to prevent outsiders from entering the school's property. Even though most school districts that have implemented video surveillance systems have faced privacy concerns from parents, students and civil libertarian groups, school officials assert that cameras curb crime and are important sources of physical evidence when crimes do occur.

James Logan High School, located in the San Francisco Bay Area, spans a large city block and has about 4,000 students attending its classes. Earlier in the year, some of those students made news-two for organizing a fundraiser for disaster relief in China and one for being among the winners of a national scholarship award program. That's the way schools hope their students make headlines. Unfortunately, another Logan student, 14-year-old Vernon Eddins, also made the news late last year-in that case, it was because he had become the latest victim of gang violence, which has been growing in Union City, where Logan is located.

Citation Machine is an interactive web tool designed by David Warlick to assist high school, college, and university students, their teachers, and independent researchers in their effort to respect other people's intellectual properties. The updated version 3.0 [Dec 2007] allows for multiple authors and remembers your citations for later bibliographies.