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Electronic Media and Youth Violence: A CDC Issue Brief for Educators and Caregivers focuses on the phenomena of electronic aggression. This document was developed for educators and caregivers. It summarizes what is known about young people and electronic aggression and discusses the implications of these findings for school staff, educational policy makers, and caregivers. You can download the full report at this site.

A new state law in Kentucky now requires the state Board of Education to develop disciplinary guidelines for bullying. Under the bullying law, the legal definition of harassment would be changed to include student behavior that causes physical harm, intimidation or humiliation for fellow students. The AB 91 law also says bullying can be done and cause harm to a student through the Internet, phone or by mail. It also elevates bullying to a criminal offense - a class B misdemeanor.

What Can Parents Do? Schools should start addressing students, parents and staff about the issues of cyberbullying. Students need to be reminded that what they do in cyberspace is not really anonymous. They need to know their behaviors and words are downloadable, printable and sometimes punishable by law. The courts have given some direction for schools dealing with cyberbullying. "School districts are well within their legal rights to intervene in cyberbullying incidents - even if these incidents were initiated off-campus - if it can be demonstrated that the incident resulted in a substantial disruption of the educational environment"

Last year, the Court ducked an opportunity to determine in Morse v. Frederick whether public schools have authority to restrict student speech that occurs off of school grounds. The Court's refusal to address this issue was unfortunate. For several decades lower courts have struggled to determine when, if ever, public schools should have the power to restrict student expression that does not occur on school grounds during school hours. In the last several years, however, courts have struggled with this same question in a new context -- the digital media. Around the country, increasing numbers of courts have been forced to confront the authority of public schools to punish students for speech on the Internet. In most cases, students are challenging punishments they received for creating fake websites mocking their teachers or school administrators or for making offensive comments on websites or instant messages. More often than not, the lower courts are ruling in favor of the schools.

For Canadian students (from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada). Create your own public service announcement on the issue of privacy. You can record it, animate it - present it however you want. And as long as the focus is on some aspect of personal privacy you can make it about whatever you want.

Webcams, cell phone cameras being put to troubling use, experts say. People are taking pictures, lots of them, and then uploading them as permanent displays in the Internet collection.

NYU professor and social networking expert Clay Shirky talks about where to draw the line between personal and public life online.
You live your life online -- and anyone can read it. Should employers be able to troll your Facebook or MySpace page? Or should everything that you put online be accessible to anyone, anywhere? With increasingly popular social networking sites aggregating unprecedented volumes of personal data, the age-old issue of online privacy is once again rearing its ugly head.

The real issues of digital citizenship include understanding identity online and the opportunities afforded to students when teachers teach students to be global citizens. More at http://ideasandthoughts.org

Interactive exploration of piracy issues related to music from the ThinkFinity web site and Read/Write/Think.

Topping the list of tough issues children say they face are teasing and bullying, The Nickelodeon/Talking with Kids National Survey of Parents and Kids showed. To children ages 8-15, bullying ranks higher than violence, discrimination or pressure to have sex.

For the last 11 years Marje Monroe and Doug Fodeman have worked to educate schools, parents and students about the issues that affect children in an online world. Their Web site, ChildrenOnline.org, offers practical articles, resources, research, and a monthly newsletter on the topic. Recently, the team, which has a long background in education, self-published Safe Practices for Life Online, intended to show middle and high school students what scams target them and how to use the Internet more safely. A teacher's edition of the book will be available through the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) in November.

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.

Job characteristics and strengths at work at Google -
\n\n... analytical reasoning. Google is a data-driven, analytic company. When an issue arises or a decision needs to be made, we start with data. That means we can talk about what we know, instead of what we think we know.
\n\n... communication skills. Marshalling and understanding the available evidence isn't useful unless you can effectively communicate your conclusions.
\n\n... a willingness to experiment. Non-routine problems call for non-routine solutions and there is no formula for success. A well-designed experiment calls for a range of treatments, explicit control groups, and careful post-treatment analysis. Sometimes an experiment kills off a pet theory, so you need a willingness to accept the evidence even if you don't like it.
\n\n... team players. Virtually every project at Google is run by a small team. People need to work well together and perform up to the team's expectations.\n\n... passion and leadership. This could be professional or in other life experiences: learning languages or saving forests, for example. The main thing, to paraphrase Mr. Drucker, is to be motivated by a sense of importance about what you do.

These notes were taken on the Technology Policy workshop given by Dr. Larry Anderson at NECC and cite the top issues for which a policy must be developed. Other handouts are available at the NECC site , including a case study. [Scroll down to the bottom of the page].

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.

This book was written by three school psychologists, all certified in Olweus Bullying Prevention training. They have applied their knowledge in that area to "cyberbullying." If you are an educator or a parent of an adolescent, this book is a must read. As the authors have stated, the impact of students using computers, etc. has had not only a positive but also a negative impact on the learning environment and safety issues within our schools. Cyberbullying in its infancy is creating an epidemic of problems. Awareness of the problem, what schools and parents should do to address cyberbullying, how the different states and schools systems view cyberbullying, and current resources are discussed by the authors. It is a compilation of the most current research.

Except for the occasional plagiarized passage or unattributed reference in student research papers, most veteran K-12 educators have had little experience dealing with copyright issues in their classrooms. With the advent of the Internet, however, their need to know about copyright law and to understand its implications for such activities as Internet research, downloading programs and documents, creating class Web sites, and installing software on school networks has increased dramatically.

Copyright issues for educators

What kids don't realize is that trading nude photos by cell phone (another form of cyberbullying) comes under the laws of child pornography. If prosecuted to the full extent of the law, they could end up in juvenile hall and/or have to register as a sex offender for the rest of their lives! We cover this whole issue with cell phones (and other issues) on our web site at: http://www.ctap4.org/cybersafety/ArticlesCellPhonePolicies.htm