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Many of the most egregious acts of cyberbullying do not take place during school hours or on school networks, a situation that presents a dilemma for public school administrators: If they punish a student for off-campus behavior, they could get hit with a freedom of speech suit.  If they do nothing, students may continue to suffer and school officials theoretically could get hit with failure to act litigation. For school administrators, it appears to be an unfortunate “catch-22.” For lawyers, it’s a “perfect storm,” pitting freedom of speech advocates against the victims of cyberbullying and schools that try to intervene. There are no easy answers in this arena, few laws, and no well-established precedents that specifically deal with cyberbullying.

“School administrators can intervene in cyberbullying incidents, even if the incidents do not take place on school grounds, if they can demonstrate that the electronic speech resulted in a substantial disruption to the educational environment.”

These cases illustrate not only a lack of precedent on cyberbullying cases, but also a dilemma for school administrators on how to handle cyberbullying.  “There are few laws that address how to handle cyberbullying, and many schools don’t have an internal policy to deal with cyberbullying that takes place off-campus,” offers Deutchman.  “It may take an unfortunate and tragic event on school property to get more schools to consider tackling electronic behavior that originates off campus.  It’s only a matter of time before a cyberbully, or the victim of cyberbullying, uses deadly force during school hours.”

According to Doninger, the principal told her that Jamfest was cancelled because of the students’ action. The principal denied saying that. That evening, Doninger posted an entry on her personal blog in which she noted that Jamfest had been cancelled, referred to the district administrators as “douchebags,” and encouraged continued contact with the superintendent to “piss her off more.” The following day the event was rescheduled. Sometime later school officials

The appeals court found that it was reasonably foreseeable that Doninger’s posting would reach campus and that the posting created a foreseeable risk of substantial disruption within the school environment because the language used was offensive. It likely disrupted efforts to resolve the controversy, and the posting that Jamfest had been cancelled made it foreseeable that school operations might well be disrupted further.

There was no evidence of any disruption at school. The only disruption was to the principal and superintendent in responding to what was an impressive response to the student’s call for complaints. There was no indication in the record that the disruption interfered in any way with the delivery of instruction or in any way impacted student welfare. If administrators are not being appropriately sensitive to the interests of students or are engaging in other actions that cause concern, students clearly should have the free speech right to protest and to call for other students and community members to register their complaints. Inconveniencing school administrators under such circumstances should not be considered to constitute substantial disruption.

Director of Special Programs for Paducah City Schools, Tom Ballowe, says the new law impacts reporting requirements and gives new directives to principals and schools on the reporting of the information.  He says the law also requires the state to send out reports each year on each district and each school in that district, so it’s a reporting issue as well as a policy and procedures issue. Ballowe says people should not be afraid to report bullying to school officials because you should report it and you’ll be protected from retaliation. The school district will then report the incident if it’s serious enough to law enforcement. 

One in 10 of these preteenagers has responded to and chatted online with strangers, according to the Tween Internet Safety Survey, sponsored by Cox Communications and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

90 percent of American kids have used the Internet by age 9 and more than a third of 11- and 12-year-olds have a profile on social-network sites such as MySpace and Facebook.

Of the tweens with social-network profiles, 61 percent post personal photos online, 48 percent admit to posting a fake age online and 51 percent have received messages from people they didn't know.

Sometimes gritty and often silly, MyYearbook.com is a popular social networking forum for teens who want to flirt, post poetry and compete in photo and video "battles." They vie to be voted "best looking" and to display the "best tattoo or piercing." This uninhibited site--subjects cover everything from fashion to incest--attracts eyeballs.

MyYearbook had 4.5 million unique visitors in June, a 36% increase in a year, says ComScore (nasdaq: SCOR - news - people ). The number of MyYearbook pages viewed that month climbed fivefold from the year before, to 1.3 billion. Piczo, a similar teen site, had 1.4 million unique visitors and 81 million page views.

MyYearbook, created in 2005, had very little advertising until last year. Now, with marketers interested in tapping into the unguarded gabfest, MyYearbook's founders--siblings Geoffrey, David and Catherine Cook--want to exploit the conversations without turning users off.

Brown's class was discussing some of the whaling calculations in Moby Dick. When one student asked a question involving a complex computation, three students quickly pulled out their cell phones and did the math. Brown was surprised to learn that most cell phones have a built-in calculator. She was even more surprised at how literate her students were with the many functions included in their phones. She took a quick poll and found that all her students either had a cell phone or easy access to one. In fact, students became genuinely engaged in a class discussion about phone features. This got Brown thinking about how she might incorporate this technology into learning activities.

Brown noticed that many students used text messaging to communicate, and considered how she might use cell phones in summarizing and analyzing text to help her students better understand Richard III. Effective summarizing is one of the most powerful skills students can cultivate. It provides students with tools for identifying the most important aspects of what they are learning, especially when teachers use a frame of reference (Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001). Summarizing helps students identify critical information. Research shows gains in reading comprehension when students learn how to incorporate isummary framesi (series of questions designed to highlight critical passages) as a tool for summarizing (Meyer & Freedle, 1984). When students use this strategy, they are better able to understand what they are reading, identify key information, and provide a summary that helps them retain the information (Armbruster, Anderson, & Ostertag, 1987).

Text messaging is a real-world example of summarizing—to communicate information in a few words the user must identify key ideas. Brown saw that she could use a technique students had already mastered, within the context of literature study.