More and more school districts are passing policies that forbid teachers from interacting with their students via social networking web sites.  We have written about this before, but the movement seems to be gaining traction.  This is a slippery slope and a challenging issue for all involved.

A policy recently adopted by the Elmbrook School District (Brookfield, WI) bans all communication between students and staff on social networking web sites and instant messaging applications.  What’s interesting about this district’s approach, is that according to reports, the original version of the proposed policy would have “banned district staff from using text messaging, instant messaging and social networking altogether, even personally while off the clock.”  Are you kidding me?  I suppose the next action the Board will take is to pass is a policy forbidding teachers to listen to that “rock and roll” music?!?

Personally I think this kind of a policy is ridiculous.  Adolescents hang out in these environments and increasingly so do many adults (especially younger adults).  This is akin to saying that teachers aren’t allowed to talk to students they see in the mall or elsewhere in the community.  Are they just supposed to ignore them?  Why stifle the development of a positive relationship between a teacher and a student?  I think this is particularly true among older students, as the teacher begins to transform into more of a mentor than a superior.  What happens when the students graduate? Can they communicate with alums?  What if their own children are in their school?

Adults need to recognize that this is the way youth communicate these days.  They don’t pick up the phone and call.  They don’t really even email that much anymore.  They text and they message using Facebook and MySpace.  They increasingly Twitter.  If adults want to talk to kids, this is how they are going to have to do it.  It can open up lines of communication previously not available.

I know of many teachers who utilize social networking sites in a positive way to interact with their students.  For example, they post student art and creative writing or interesting articles or books that relate to topics discussed in the classroom.  Why punish them for the inappropriate actions of a select few?   Instead of banning their use, why not focus on teaching both staff and students how to use them responsibly?  Both need to recognize the boundaries and keep the discussion/interaction professional.

I could be way off base on this, and am certainly open to your thoughts.  Is this another example of throwing the baby out with the bathwater or are there genuine concerns here that are impossible to deal with using other methods?

One of our good friends and fellow Internet Safety advocates Anne Collier (co-author of MySpace Unraveled) recently did a presentation on Second Life.  By that, I don’t mean the topic was Second Life (an online virtual reality world in which people interact with each other via avatars), but she, through her avatar, gave a presentation about “Internet Safety 2.0″ in that virtual world.  It is fascinating stuff and she did a really good job.  I encourage you to check it out if you want a no-nonsense primer on the real dangers that adolescents face while online.  You can check out more of Anne’s great work on her blog.

One of the questions we field sometimes involves how private schools differ from public schools in their response to instances of cyberbullying and student misuse of technology.  A case from a private Michigan college illustrates the general distinction that we’ve seen.  In this situation, a 19-year-old male was placed on six-month probation after being accused of posting a crude sexual message on Facebook about his ex-girlfriend.  This punishment will force him to wait a year to continue his education at the same institution.  Largely speaking, private schools can exercise much discretion in these cases, allowing them to enact a penalty that may seem unreasonable and without complete merit (in this situation, the school authorities do not have incontrovertible evidence that the accused actually committed the act - he claims that his Facebook account password was stolen and exploited towards this end).   It is interesting that college administrators referenced integrity and values when providing some reasoning behind the sanction.  When we have worked with private schools (and colleges), reference is often made to a general honor code to which students informally or formally agree - and offline or online peer harassment is clearly a violation to this honor code and therefore warrants some measure of discipline.  I believe this is the best way to go.  I’m going to generalize a bit here, but we’ve found that sometimes in public schools students thumb their noses at the rules and it is often perceived as “cool” to break them.  In private schools, however, there tends to be a larger shared perception among the student body that the honor code is something to be respected, and it is definitely “not cool” to transgress it.  Not cool at all.   I like that.  I wish we had better success promoting such a worldview in the public school system.

One of my colleagues, Forrest Collier, over at InternetSafety.com, has just released a sweet new app for the iPhone and iPod Touch that helps parents protect their children from objectionable and problematic content on their mobile device.  The program is called “Safe Eyes Mobile” and works just like the built-in iPhone browser with pinch and tap zoom, bookmarks, built-in Google search and multiple pages, and has no noticeable effect on iPhone performance.  It is the first browser application to control iPhone content, and checks requested web sites against a massive blacklist of potentially objectionable web addresses that is updated on a daily basis.  As you might imagine, it prevents iPhone and iPod Touch access to pages in the pornography, nudity, sex and tasteless/gross categories by default…and parents can configure the software to filter sites in 31 other categories.  What is also cool is that parents can force the Safe Eyes browser to be the only one usable for surfing the Web by disabling the Apple Safari browser and the installation of any others.  My concern was that the proprietary browser would, for lack of a better word, suck.  But it doesn’t - it has bookmarking capabilities, tabbed browsing, and pan and zoom features - much like Safari.  It is also pretty neat that Safe Eyes Mobile filtering works on both the AT&T cellular network and individual Wi-Fi networks to which the iPhone automatically connects when in range.  You can see a demo here and determine if it’s worth the purchase.  I personally like what it does, and think it is very useful for parents to install on the iPhones of their younger kids.

As you may know, Facebook recently altered its Terms of Service, essentially stating that they own all of the content that you (the user) upload to their site.  This includes content that you’ve uploaded but then later removed, and your content after you have chosen to delete your account.  The Terms of Service in other popular social networking and interactive Web 2.0 sites tend to indicate that you still own your content when you upload/post/share in their environment.  Today, Facebook has decided to go back to its original Terms of Service while they wrestle with some of the issues and outcry that have resulted from their intended change.  This reversal is a good thing.  I think we have to remember that Facebook is a private entity intent on making a profit (somehow!) in the months and years to come.  While we all use the site and benefit from the ability to have a virtual representation of ourselves online to connect with others, there may come a time when we must pay a cost for that benefit.  This cost may leave us without full charge of the information we have chosen to share (or have shared) with others - and this might come around to keep us from an opportunity, get us in trouble, or otherwise bring us embarrassment or harm.  Sometimes I think that with all of the privacy settings we modify and adjust for our text content, pictures, and videos (and Facebook has so many settings!), we are lured into a false sense of security related to what we truly control. I would love to hear your thoughts on this, especially if you use Facebook frequently….

Our colleague Mike Donlin, over at the Seattle Public Schools District, recently headed up a comprehensive project to create an initial set of Internet safety curriculum materials focusing specifically on cyberbullying.  His state of Washington has been very progressive in creating and promoting anti-cyberbullying legislation (see RCW 28A.300.285 for more information), and has realized that while issues of online predators, identity theft, and intellectual property rights often make headlines, surveys and studies tell us that cyberbullying is more pervasive and seriously impacts more young people than other better known cyber-safety issues.  The recent report from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard to which Justin and I contributed underscores that fact.

We strongly encourage you to check out the curriculum here.  Some of the features which make it both timely and user-friendly include:

1. There is a full Teacher’s Manual so that educators who are not completely comfortable with new communications technologies can successfully implement the materials.

2. The materials are built with WA State Essential Academic Learning Requirements (EALRs) and ISTE NETS standards in mind.

3. It includes a growing list of online and print resource materials.

4. The lessons are designed to be incorporated into ongoing bullying prevention program classroom meetings.  However, they are flexible enough to fit nicely into existing Technology, Health and  Language Arts units.  They can also be used as stand-alones within an Exploratory-type setting.

5. The writing team is composed of people well-versed in bullying prevention, curriculum development, Internet safety, educational technology, the writing process, counseling, and years of classroom teaching.

6. The development of the curriculum was a joint industry-education collaboration, made possible thanks to a generous grant from Qwest Communications/Qwest Foundation and the Seattle Public Schools Prevention-Intervention programs.

7.  The curriculum is free and available to anyone who wants to use it.

If you’d like to provide input or have any questions, please contact Mike as he would love to chat with you.  Also let us know your thoughts on the curriculum as you implement it on your side.

There was an article published in the New York Times last week which discussed the case of Katherine Evans.  Katherine was displeased with her high school English teacher and posted about this displeasure on Facebook: “To those select students who have had the displeasure of having Ms. Sarah Phelps, or simply knowing her and her insane antics: Here is the place to express your feelings of hatred.”

Katherine apparently removed the post only after a few days, but a couple of months later was suspended by her school for “cyberbullying.”  [point of order: we typically do not refer to online harassment involving an adult as cyberbullying]  From the media reports, Katherine’s actions neither constituted a threat nor resulted in a disruption at school—the two common features of cyberbullying incidents that would warrant a significant formal response from the school.   Did Katherine cross the line?   Without question her actions were inappropriate.  Were they subject to discipline at school?  Maybe—but probably not suspension.  Students are allowed to criticize teachers and other school officials, again, as long as it is not threatening or disruptive to the school.  This can be a fine line indeed.  It will be interesting to see how the courts rule in this case.  My gut is telling me that the school could have handled this case differently, but I’m sure we do not have all of the details yet.  Stay tuned.

After a year and a half operating as an unregulated college gossip site, juicycampus is calling it quits.  This is a victory for cyberbullying advocates because we received a number of complaints about this site from those who had been victimized through it.  You can find a press release here, posted by juicycampus discussing the reasons for terminating the site (hint: it’s not because they felt guilty or because they had some kind of moral change of heart about their operation).  Anyway, it should come as no surprise that other sites are quickly jumping in the fray ostensibly filling the void vacated by juicycampus.  Let’s hope they share a similar fate.

This story out of New Berlin, WI, reports about very extreme case of cyberbullying.  It is reported that an 18-year-old male student posed as a female student on Facebook and tricked other male students into sending him nude pictures or videos of themselves.  There were at least 31 male students who apparently did so, and the offender in this case also reportedly coerced several of them to engage in sexual acts with him by threatening that he would post the pictures online and/or send them to others in the school.

We have certainly heard more and more stories lately of teens taking naked pictures of themselves or others and distributing them electronically.  Like anything, it is important to educate students about the risks inherent in engaging in these kinds of activities.  For example, teens all around the country are being charged with possession or distribution of child pornography for these behaviors–not to mention the social implications associated with this.  By the way, here is a short, but humorous video that can be used to educate youth about this phenomenon.

According to this article, one Texas school district is now allowing for the confiscation of cell phones from students who display or use them at school, and is considering levying a retrieval fee.  I had mentioned in a comment to a previous post by Justin that other districts are definitely requiring a fee of either $15 or $25 for a confiscated cell phone to be returned to a parent of the offending student.  I personally am in support of such a policy, as it affects one’s pocketbook and inconveniences the parent who has to come to school to deal with the matter.  Another article from Wyoming details a new policy (which still requires final approval but is on its way) allowing a student’s cell phone to be searched.  The search can occur if the phone is “suspected to have materials that pose a threat to the welfare of the school population.”  Maybe this language is intentionally broad.  Or, maybe the language is sufficiently narrow because such a “threat” might conjure up similar conceptions in the minds of reasonable persons.  What do you think?  Who will be able to articulate such a suspicion?  Teachers?  Administrators?  Student peers?  Bus drivers? Cafeteria workers?  Will this lead to 4th Amendment violations of students, or is this definitely the way to go nowadays in order to prevent harm, victimization, and criminal activity among youth?  Seemingly, materials on a cell phone that might pose a threat to the welfare of the school population could include evidence of textual harassment of a teacher or another student; inappropriate pictures or videos involving nudity, drugs, weapons, or other contraband; or even web history files that indicate the student was visiting a bomb-making or anti-establishment web site.  Can you think of any other possibilities? Could this policy be abused and lead to more headaches for the district?