Ad4dcss/Digital Citizenship

"In partnership with Topics Education, Microsoft is sponsoring an education initiative that supports teachers' needs for addressing digital citizenship and helping students understand how to handle and share digital content and respect for an authors/students intentions for sharing creative work. Topics Education developed a comprehensive turnkey, end-to-end curriculum that provides educators with teaching resources, an experiential student curriculum and tools to teach students about creative rights so that it is meaningful and relevant to their lives and achieving their potential."

If Phoebe was bullied to the grave, it didn't stop there. When some of her former classmates set up a memorial Internet site, it was defaced by insults and slurs. When a television crew came to the school to interview students about Phoebe, Rebecca Brouillard, a student who talked on camera about the bullying, was roughed up afterward by one of Phoebe's tormenters, her father says.

Click on the buttons in the Blue Menu for carefully selected and annotated resources in each of our six CyberSafety areas: identity safety, cyberbullying, cyber predators, piracy & plagiarism, inappropriate content, social networks.

How to talk to your kids about cyberbullying. Tips for parents with kids in elementary, middle and high school.

Conversation starters with students from the NYT. Participating in an online discussion on events and issues in the news not only gives students a forum, but it also helps them build critical thinking, writing and news literacy skills and provides an opportunity to write for an authentic audience.

Students, tell us what you think about the Phoebe Prince case and about your experiences with bullying. Why do you think students bully others? How can bullying be lessened or stopped? What, if anything, can teachers do? Have you ever been bullied? Have you ever bullied other kids? What is the climate like at your school - are students harassed and taunted? What can you do when you see another student being bullied?

Types of Identity Theft and tips to help protect against identity theft.

The Networked Student was inspired by CCK08, a Connectivism course offered by George Siemens and Stephen Downes during fall 2008. It depicts an actual project completed by Wendy Drexler's high school students. The Networked Student concept map was inspired by Alec Couros' Networked Teacher. I hope that teachers will use it to help their colleagues, parents, and students understand networked learning in the 21st century.

In this lesson, students reflect on the bullying in their community, hold an anonymous discussion about bullying and suggest solutions to the problem.

"In this lesson, students analyze the effects of devices and protocols used to communicate and create posters highlighting their findings. They then write response papers exploring the future of these social networking methods."

In this lesson, students share observations about the nuances of spoken and written language. They then create comic strips that comment on problems that arise in electronic-based communications, and prepare a bill of rights outlining the rights and responsibilities of the online community.

College students prepping for life after graduation may want to take a closer look at their social networking profiles before they lose out on potential jobs. A recent survey commissioned by Microsoft revealed that 70 percent of hiring managers around the world have admitted to rejecting applicants due to information uncovered through online investigation.

Larry Magid writes that we need to "remind ourselves and our children that this kind of behavior is not only wrong, but it's abnormal and weird. Plenty of research shows that people are influenced by "social norms," how they think others behave. If people know that their neighbors don't smoke, they're less likely to smoke. The same is true with bullying. In other words, most people are nice and they're the ones we need to emulate. It's time to tune out the loudmouth boors who demonstrate their own inadequacy by picking on others."

The ABC NightLine story of an 18 year old student branded as a sex offender over sexting, possession and distribution of photos of his former 16 year old girl friend.

Legal Debate Springs Up 18 year old is Put on Sex Offender List for Forwarding Risque Images

School bullying is nothing new. But since Prince's suicide, it has taken on a much darker significance, one that prosecutors are taking seriously. On Monday, criminal charges were brought against the nine students who allegedly led the harassment. And parents and school administrators in South Hadley are under intense scrutiny as well. They face tough questions about what happened to Prince and whether they could have done more to prevent her death.

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.

A spat on Facebook over a recent killing might have led to a fight at Knightdale High School last week. Dominique Royster's Facebook page erupted into expletives and insults after Royster called for the release of Mariah Wisdom from jail. After her Facebook posting and the angry response, Royster received death threats on her cell phone. She was kept out of school for several days until emotions cooled, and her parents had a chance to talk to school administrators about the situation. A member of the school staff who deals with disciplinary problems was assigned to shadow her as she went through the day March 26, her first day back at school after the killing. Four students were cited with misdemeanor assault and released to their parents in connection with the attack.

Site URL for Internet Safety with Professor Garfield: http://www.infinitelearninglab.org/

Protocol developed by Lawyer/Educator Nancy Willard for school or district involvement in investigating, documenting and disciplining sexting incidents.