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My presentation entitled “Cyberbullying: What We Know, What We Can Do” at the US Department of Education Bullying Summit on August 11, 2010 was broadcast on CSPAN.  You can view the event in its entirety here or fast-forward to 14:28 to watch my segment.  Do let me know if you have any questions!

I will be in DC this week at the US Department of Education’s “Federal Partners in Bullying Prevention Summit.” You can check out an agenda here, a participants list here, and additional reading materials here. My slides are included in the latter PDF as well.

I have been asked to speak on the “Current State of Cyberbullying Research,” and really look forward to interfacing with other public and private sector organizations to figure out an informed plan of prevention and response during the next few days. If you will be there, and our work intersects, please come up and say hello – I would love to hear about what you and your organization are doing!

I hardly ever blog about my upcoming presentations, but I am particularly excited about my next one and so I thought I would let you know about it.  I am giving a keynote at the annual Stop Girl Bullying Conference this Sunday in San Antonio, Texas, and hope that you can come if you are in the area.  The online victimization of adolescent girls is a phenomenon that Justin and I have studied for years, and working to prevent it is one of my strongest passions.

My talk will focus exclusively on the latest cyberbullying research related to teenage girl targets and aggressors, and will share strategies of how to work with these populations to reduce the problem.  I am also giving a breakout session after my keynote where I will focus in on the unique experience of girls on social networking sites, along with a discussion of how sexting affects them.

Increasingly, we find ourselves partnering with organizations that do gender-specific work.  It is very refreshing to hear their perspective and the stories that drive them to concentrate on helping girls navigate the difficult waters of adolescence in the midst of some very dysfunctional messages from American and popular culture.

We are also formally researching more specific issues related to technology misuse that affect teenage girls – such as dating violence and stalking experienced through social networking sites and via cell phones.  We will keep you updated on our findings.

I was in Naperville, Illinois about two weeks ago for a cyberbullying summit sponsored by the Illinois Attorney General’s Office.  The audience was comprised of select stakeholders in education, law enforcement, and technology industry.  The most relevant companies and constituencies were there.  Attorney General Lisa Madigan was on hand to kick the event off with some opening remarks.  Michelle Collins from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) followed with some general comments about cyberbullying and sexting and highlighted some of the efforts of the NCMEC in online safety education and prevention.  Next, I participated in a panel of experts along with Hemanshu Nigam from MySpace, Andrew Chaulk from the Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force, and Nancy Willard from the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use.  We each provided a short introduction to our background and initiatives, then opened it up to the audience for questions and discussion.  As expected, it was a great discussion.

During lunch, Sarah Migas from the Illinois AG’s office described their efforts to educate youth, parents, educators and others about online safety issues.  In the afternoon we all were broken up into smaller groups to discuss in depth a particular scenario.  My group (Go Red Team!) discussed a sexting case from a few months ago.  We brainstormed possible prevention and response solutions and then presented our analysis to the larger group as a whole.  All in all it was a great event.

It is essential to bring all of these players together on a regular basis to develop a coordinated community response to cyberbullying.  Having pretty much everyone at the table really made for some interesting discussions.  The Illinois AG’s office is very much ahead of the curve with respect to these issues.  Stay tuned for more great resources from this group in the future.

I just got back from presenting at the Jostens Renaissance National Conference in Orlando.  As I wrote about after attending this conference last year, these folks really know how to have a good time!  The energy was just amazing.  There were once again over 1100 educators and high achieving students from around North America in attendance which created an electric atmosphere.  (The fact that it filled up in this economy tells you how great it is!)  Not only that, but everyone who attended one of my presentations seemed genuinely interested in learning about preventing and responding to cyberbullying.  I look forward to continuing to work with many of these folks in the future.