Ad4dcss/Digital Citizenship

In a recent incident in which local teens "cyberbullied" a fellow Palo Alto student, school district officials said they helped remove the offending website and notified the parents of "six or eight" perpetrators who are students at Gunn and Palo Alto high schools. The bullying occurred over the weekend of Feb. 28, when some students created a Facebook "I Hate..." group targeting another student. The Internet group quickly gained up to 100 members and included vicious comments against the student as well as some posts in the student's defense. School district officials, who learned of the activity over the weekend, helped remove the Facebook group early on Monday, March 2.

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 FBI-SOS Internet Challenge is an internet safety program designed to help students recognize potential dangers associated with the internet, email, chat rooms and social networking sites. The program addresses and defines topics serious in nature such as seduction, child pornography, solicitation, exploitation, obscenity and online predators. Students take web-based quizzes and review specific web sites aimed at promoting online safety.

The average teenager spends more than three hours a day watching TV, but only 43 minutes reading, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, data which suggests that as important as English literature and composition courses are to a proper high school education, something valuable is missing from the curriculum. A number of schools are already answering that need, offering media literacy programs that teach teens to recognize and deconstruct the ways messages are made in film, television and new media.

Researchers at IBM and MIT have found that certain e-mail connections and patterns at work correlate with higher revenue production

HE Journal recently spoke with Knezek about the myriad of opportunities schools and teachers have available to them, both for exploring new technological tools and solutions in education and for making optimal use of the resources already at their immediate disposal. "The real goal," Knezek explained, "lies in moving all the programs in a school forward toward 21st century learning, or digital age learning."

Cyberbullying, online predators, and other Internet-related dangers make headlines almost daily. Fear of what lies beyond that glowing screen at which our kids so love to stare dominates the current perception of what the Internet has become. In this climate of perceived threat, schools do what we all do with that of which we are afraid. We avoid the threat and try to forget it's out there.\n\n

On April 22, the Stop Bullying Now! Campaign will host a webcast on cyberbullying. The webcast will help participants learn about best practices in cyberbullying prevention and intervention and how to lend support when bullying occurs. The webcast, held from 3:00 to 4:30 pm EST, will feature experts such as Susan Limber, PhD, MLS, from Clemson University, who will provide current information on the use of cyber technologies and the emerging phenomenon of cyberbuylling among youth.

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

Advice and answers - what to know before they go.

In this article, Mike Ribble and George Bailey discuss nine areas of digital citizenship and provide strategies for teachers to employ and teach appropriate behavior.

If your kids go to Web sites like Club Penguin or Webkinz or play games like World of Warcraft, then they've created alter egos called avatars. This video tells parents what they need to know about Avatars.

Interview with Mark Zuckerberg, founder of the social networking Website, Facebook.

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen & Unplanned Pregnancy, a private nonprofit group whose mission is to protect children, and CosmoGirl.com, surveyed nearly 1,300 teens about sex and technology. The result: 1 in 5 teens say they've sexted even though the majority know it could be a crime.

In response to new federal rules mandating organizations retain their electronic documents, districts are using outside providers to archive their in-house e-mails.

It's no surprise that Elliot Soloway would be behind this idea, given his passionate interest in Palm handhelds as educational devices for the past decade.

To parents, it's even more frightening than the huge monthly bills teens run up on their cell phones. To prosecutors, it's yet another way that technology has complicated their jobs.

Wednesday "Good Morning America" and Internet safety expert Parry Aftab of WiredSafety.com brought parents and kids together to discuss a new, possibly dangerous phenomenon called "sexting" -- teens sharing with friends sexually explicit images or messages via cell phones.

The European Framework for Safer Mobile Use by Younger Teenagers and Children is a self-regulatory initiative of the mobile industry, which puts forward recommendations to ensure that younger teenagers and children can safely access content on their mobile phones. The recommendations are as follows: * Classification of commercial content - mobile operators' own and third-party commercial content should be classified in line with existing national standards of decency and appropriateness so as to identify content unsuitable for viewing by children and younger teenagers; * Access control mechanisms - appropriate means for parents for controlling children's access to this content should be provided; * Education and awareness-raising - mobile operators should work to raise awareness and provide advice to parents on safer use of mobile services, and ensure customers have ready access to mechanisms for reporting safety concerns; * Fighting illegal content on mobile community products and the Internet - mobile operators should work with law enforcement agencies, national authorities and INHOPE or equivalent bodies to combat illegal content on the Internet.

Yet another incident showing use and misuse of technology with no understanding of offline consequences for online behavior. This time, however, it occurs in the workplace and not at school.