NetFamilyNews

What 21st-century learning does/doesn't look like

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:28:00 +0000

This post points to how technology in the classroom is and isn't done properly in the classroom, thanks to teacher Vicki Davis writing in Edutopia and university student Hillary Reinsberg writing in the Huffington Post. Davis talks about helping students (in the first 5 min. of the first day) turn personal Web portals like My Yahoo or iGoogle into their own "personal learning networks" (PLNs) – the new school locker. Her 9th-grade student says the approach "helps me keep things organized. It lets me know when my agenda changes," and Davis adds: "The fact that a ninth grader would talk about her own research agenda gives a glimpse into the power of the PLN; she is using a term here that is often reserved for grad students." How not to do this?: Reinsberg describes in a way that puts me to sleep just reading it: "The lights go dim, eyes begin to shut and the room gets quiet.... Welcome to a college lecture hall in 2010. Too many classes begin the same way: with an often cheesy PowerPoint presentation. The professor hooks up a projector to a computer and spends ninety minutes clicking through a series of slides." Hopefully, that isn't happening in too many middle and high schools! Because integrating 21st-century learning tools doesn't work with the sage-on-the-stage approach, which makes not allowance for the self-directed learning required for a user-driven media environment and participatory culture.

Potential iPad glitch for families

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:58:00 +0000

Blogger Anton Wahlman at TheStreet.com thinks Apple's going to hurt the iPad's family market by not building in multiple user accounts with passwords for each family member (it's not out yet, so we're not completely sure this is the case). He feels the iPad's a lot more like a laptop than a phone, and "you wouldn't let your kids use your laptop under your personal login, with access to your emails, address book, documents, and instant messages," he writes. At CNET, my ConnectSafely co-director writes, "because of its size, price and versatility, the iPad is really a tablet computer and if is going to be used like a computer, it needs to have the same level of security and account control." But I'm not so sure Apple isn't just making it so that parents will want to have their own iPads and buy a family all-purpose one for the coffee table and road trips – IF they can afford them! [Here's my last blog post about the iPad and kids.]

Key US court decision on bullying & school

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 18:54:00 +0000

This may be a big step forward in US anti-bullying efforts: A recent federal court decision in Michigan sent "a clear message to schools that inaction, or even a simple unwise reaction, is not enough when it comes to dealing with bullies," author and cyberbullying researcher Justin Patchin blogs. The court ordered a Michigan school district to pay $800,000 "to a student who claimed the school did not do enough to protect him from years of bullying," according to the Detroit Free Press. The verdict "puts districts on notice that it's not enough to stop a student from bullying another." Dane Patterson, the victim in the Michigan case, "was in middle school when the bullying began as simple name calling and verbal harassment. It escalated in high school and included being pushed into lockers and at least one incident in 10th grade where he was sexually harassed," Patchin relates. It's not that his school didn't do anything at all about this, it just didn't change a thing. The occasional disciplinary action accomplished nothing, apparently. Patchin cites court records saying that, at one point, a teacher even joined the bullying by asking Dane in front of an entire class how it felt to be hit by a girl. "This is almost unbelievable," Patchin writes. I agree. He goes on to write about what does help, and I've written about it too (see this, but I have to be repetitive because this is so relevant, here: "Because a bully's success depends heavily on context, attempts to prevent bullying should concentrate primarily on changing the context rather than directly addressing the victim's or the bully's behavior," wrote Yale University psychologist Alan Yazdin in Slate.

Fun video contest for Net users (& producers) 13+

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:09:00 +0000

Hey, aspiring filmmakers and video producers (in Canada and the US), here's a project for you: Produce a two-minute video about Internet safety with your videocam, cellphone, or Webcam, and enter it in TrendMicro's "What's Your Story?" contest (you have to be 13 or older). Choose from one of four topics: "Keeping a good rep online" (and avoiding TMI), "Staying clear of unwanted contact" (e.g., dealing with bullies), "Accessing (legal) content that's age-appropriate," and "Keeping the cybercriminals out" (ID theft, scams, phishers, etc.), my ConnectSafely co-director Larry Magid reports at CNET. The grand prize is $10,000 and the deadline is April 30. Humor's just fine. Here's the official site where you can upload your video. Because TrendMicro is one of our supporters, I get to be one of the judges, so have fun!

Major obstacle to universal broadband & what can help

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:26:00 +0000

Last week Chairman Julius Genachowski unveiled the children-and-family part of the FCC's universal broadband plan, designed to enable, among other things, 21st-century education. There's just one problem: Schools have long turned to law enforcement for guidance in informing their communities about youth safety on the Net, broadband or otherwise, and the guidance they're getting scares parents, school officials, and children about using the Internet.

Fear tactics don't work

"Over the last decade, much of the Internet safety material – information still present on many state attorneys general web sites and in instruction material they provide – contains disinformation that creates the fear that young people are at high risk of online sexual predation," writes author Nancy Willard of the Center for Safe & Responsible Internet Use (see the paper for examples), "when the actual research and arrest data indicates the opposite. There is a tendency among law enforcement officials to think that scare tactics are effective in reducing risk behavior. Research has never found this to be so."

That last sentence is important, because Willard footnotes it and links to what the research is showing us about the fear-based approach, as well as how we can get it right and optimize kids' broadband use going forward. The University of Virginia's Social Norms Institute says, "Until recently, the predominant approach in the field of health promotion sought to motivate behavior change by highlighting risk. Sometimes called 'the scare tactic approach' or 'health terrorism,' this method essentially hopes to frighten individuals into positive change by insisting on the negative consequences of certain behaviors. As sociologist H. Wesley Perkins has pointed out, however, this kind of traditional strategy 'has not changed behavior one percent'."

In fact, the scare-tactic approach is doubly problematic: Besides the fact that it fails to change behavior, it also hinders the efforts of visionary educators (who I've talked with, met at conferences, and followed on Twitter) to capitalize on and guide students' use of new media by integrating them into all appropriate subjects, pre-K-12 (for example, a middle school teacher in New Jersey told me, "My students are as afraid of the Internet as their parents are now," and another in New York that a parent of one of her students told members of the school board that she didn't want her child using the Internet with her peers because their parents could get hold of her email address, and "one of those parents could be a predator"). [Willard points to a report released by the FCC in February, "Broadband Adoption and Use in America," showing that 24% of US broadband users and nearly half (46%) of non-broadband users "strongly agree that the Internet is too dangerous for children."]

What does work

What will help youth, 21st-century education, and universal broadband move forward? What has "revolutionized the field of health promotion," according to the UVA Institute: the social-norms approach. "Essentially, the social-norms approach uses a variety of methods to correct negative misperceptions (usually overestimations of use [of alcohol or drugs, it says, so think: overestimations of risky or cruel online behavior like "everybody hates her," "bullying is normal," "everyone shares passwords with friends," etc.]), and to identify, model, and promote the healthy, protective behaviors that are the actual norm in a given population. When properly conducted, it is an evidence-based, data-driven process, and a very cost-effective method of achieving large-scale positive results" (see this on social-norming and Net safety and this on the whole-school approach to bullying). The Institute adds that the social-norms approach has had proven results in "tobacco prevention, seat-belt use, sexual assault prevention, and academic performance."

With the help of the FCC, the FTC, the DOE, and other government departments leading this positive, research-based approach to youth online safety (Chairman Genochowski said last week this will be an interagency effort), as a society, we can lower public resistance to broadband adoption and begin to free up American education to do for children's use of new media what it has long done for their use of books: guide and enrich them (examples here and here). But not only that: School will become more relevant to our highly new-media-engaged kids, and students will become more engaged.

Related links

Willard's books include Cyber-safe Kids, Cyber-savvy Teens: Helping Young People Learn to Use the Internet Safely and Responsibly and Cyberbullying and Cyberthreats: Responding to the Challenge of Online Social Aggression, Threats, and Distress

Here's why a positive approach to youth online safety is the way to go ("Online Safety 3.0: Empowering & Protecting Youth" at ConnectSafely.org).

A mother lode of research findings on how youth use new media can be found in Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media (MIT Press, 2009). See also "Major study on youth & media: Let's take a closer look" in NFN, 1/21/10.

More on the over-used fear-based approach of the past decade here in NetFamilyNews: "Key crossroads for Net safety: ISTTF report released", "Why technopanics are bad", "'Predator panic'" in May 2006, when I first saw the phrase used, and a collection of my posts about research and news reports on predators

"School filtering & students' workarounds" in NFN

FCC's positive new plan for digital literacy & Net safety

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:20:00 +0000

This morning Elmo of Sesame Street helped Julius Genachowski of the FCC launch the child- and family-empowerment part of the FCC's universal broadband plan (trying to understand Mr. Genachowski's job, Elmo asked, "So you're the chairman of the Funky Chicken Club?"). But before Elmo joined him, the Federal Communications Commission's chairman spoke of the "four pillars" of broadband Internet for US families:

Digital access – "every child should have broadband access," Genachowski said, and one of every 4 kids is missing out. "Anything less than 100% access is not good enough," because "every child must benefit from digital opportunities and do so safely."

Digital literacy "doesn't just mean teaching children basic digital skills" (though that's important, too, he said), "but also teaching children how to think analytically, critically, creatively" and to "teach media literacy." He said that both digital and media literacy skills are particularly critical, given how much time the average child spends a day in and with digital media. "This is not just a good idea," he said, "it's increasingly a job and citizenship requirement"....

Digital citizenship – Genachowski said the FCC plan is not just about giving children access and teaching them how to use the tools, but also teaching them how to be responsible community members, which gives them "the ability to participate in a vibrant digital democracy" (I'd argue in democracy, not just the digital kind; we adults keep thinking in this binary, delineating virtual/real, online/offline, digital/non- way). He also acknowledged the challenges to this effort, including online "anonymity," which masks the impacts of their online behaviors on others.

Safety – The FCC chair mentioned first the risk of online harassment, saying "43% have been cyberbullied, and only 10% have told someone." He also referred to distracted driving and inappropriate advertising. My connection to the event's live video streaming was a little sketchy, so the fact that I didn't hear a reference to "predators" in the mix could've been due to my connection; but his starting with cyberbullying was an important high-level acknowledgement of the findings of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, which some attorneys general have sought to discredit (see this for examples and a link to the ISTTF report). Schools often turn to law enforcement as their authority on Internet safety, so fears not grounded in research which are generated by senior law enforcement officials and published in their Web sites could be an obstacle to 21st-century learning and universal broadband adoption.

Though the plan is positive, Genachowski acknowledged children's experiences with media certainly aren't always: "Parents are asking themselves whether they should be embracing new technologies or worrying about them. The answer is, we have to do both," he said, as EnterpriseNetworkingPlanet reports.

To help parents and schools, he announced a "digital literacy corps to mobilize thousands of technically-trained youths and adults to train non-adopters," my ConnectSafely co-director Larry Magid reported in CNET; a plan to get public libraries "more broadband capacity"; "a national dialog" in the form of FCC-hosted town meetings around the country; a new section of FCC.gov for kids and parents; and an interagency working group on online safety (something I've been hoping would happen for a while), which certainly includes the Federal Trade Commission and its pioneering work on virtual worlds and free, well-written Netcetera booklet.

"Let's focus on what parents can do" in helping their kids have positive experiences with digital media, "not on what they can't," Genachowski concluded. Exactly, Mr. Chairman. Last July ConnectSafely made exactly that point in "Online Safety 3.0: Empower and Protecting Youth": "To be relevant to young people, its intended beneficiaries, Net safety needs to respect youth agency, embrace the technologies they love, use social media in the instruction process, and address the positive reasons for safe use of social technology. It’s not safety from bad outcomes but safety for positive ones."

Related links

"Multimedia in the Classroom - The Future Is Here" a video in which New Jersey middle school teacher Marianne Malmstrom (as avatar Knowclue Kidd) describes and illustrates what a powerful teaching tool machinima (like animated video, cinema+machine, or moving screen capture) is for young new-media producers and sharers (Generation Video?)

"I Need My Teachers to Learn," a musical plea for 21st-century learning from students' perspective, written, performed, and produced by educator and tech integration specialist Kevin Honeycutt in Hutchinson, Ks. (thanks to California educator Anne Bubnic for pointing it out)

"'21st-century statecraft' at home and school"," which I blogged because inspired by Secretary of State Clinton's vision for Internet freedom and call for creating "norms of behavior among states." She got me thinking about how we need to start here at home, in homes and classrooms, promoting and modeling norms of good behavior online as well as offline, something that the FCC, FTC, and Department of Education are now addressing!

"How to teach Net safety, ethics, security? Blend them in!"

The Web page where you'll find the video of Chairman Genachowski's speech today.

More evidence student anti-gay bullying is rampant

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:29:00 +0000

More than half of self-identified gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) 11-to-22-year-olds surveyed said they'd been cyberbullied in the past 30 days, Futurity.org reports. The study, by Iowa State University researchers Warren Blumenfeld and Robyn Cooper, "appears in the LGBT-themed issue of the International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, being released March 15," Futurity adds. It was an online survey of "444 junior high, high school, and college students between the ages of 11 and 22–including 350 self-identified non-heterosexual subjects" (here's an audio interview at CNET by ConnectSafely co-director Larry Magid with Dr. Blumenfield). An earlier study by the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network and Harris Interactive I blogged about found that LGBT youth are "up to four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers." I have to repeat the profound words of New York Times columnist Charles Blow after two children's suicides last year which reportedly involved anti-gay bullying: "Children can’t see their budding lives through the long lens of wisdom - the wisdom that benefits from years passed, hurdles overcome, strength summoned, resilience realized, selves discovered and accepted, hearts broken but mended and love experienced in the fullest, truest majesty that the word deserves. For them, the weight of ridicule and ostracism can feel crushing and without the possibility of reprieve." [See also my blog post "Cyberbullying better defined."]

Meanwhile, preliminary results of another bullying project of researchers at the University of Ottawa and McMaster University show "that bullying can produce signs of stress, cognitive deficits and mental-health problems," the Toronto Globe & Mail reports. Lead researcher Tracy Vaillancourt said her team knows brains under bullying conditions are functionally different (act differently) but doesn't yet know if there's a structural difference, and to find out they'll do brain scanning of 70 victims they've been following for five years. Vaillancourt "says she hopes her work will legitimize the plight of children who are bullied, and encourage parents, teachers and school boards to take the problem more seriously."

Net access a basic human right: Study

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:00:00 +0000

The US's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is not alone in saying everybody should have broadband Internet access. The UK government has promised to deliver universal broadband by 2012, and the EU is also committed to providing universal access via broadband. In fact, basic Net access is coming to be seen as a fundamental human right. "Almost four in five people around the world believe that access to the Internet is a fundamental right," the BBC reports, citing a survey of more than 27,000 people in 26 countries. The BBC said its survey found that 87% of internet users view Net access this way, and 70% of non-users do. "International bodies such as the UN are also pushing for universal net access," the BBC adds, pointing also to Dr. Hamadoun Toure, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union, as saying the Net is now basic infrastructure, such as "roads, waste [removal] and water" because the ability to participate is essential in a "knowledge society." How about you – do you see Net access (among many other things, of course) as a basic right for everybody? Pls comment here or in the ConnectSafely forum. Meanwhile, "the internet is among a record 237 individuals and organisations nominated for this year's Nobel Peace Prize," the BBC reports in a separate article, beating last year's record of 205 nominations. [See also "UN Child Rights Convention: How about online rights?"]

How Americans 13+ use their cellphones

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:22:00 +0000

Text messaging is by far the No. 1 activity of US mobile phone users aged 13 and up, according to the latest figures from comScore. Though talking on the phone isn't even on the list (presumably all cellphone users do that), comScore's January figures show that 63.5% of mobile subscribers send text messages. The other mobile activities on the list are "Used browser" (28.6%), "Played games" (21.7%), "Used downloaded apps" (19.8%), "Access social network site or blog" (17.1%), and "Listened to music" (12.8%). Social networking by phone was the biggest growth area between last October and January, at 3.3% growth over the three months.

Can the social Web be policed?

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:55:00 +0000

In "Cyber-bullying cases put heat on Google, Facebook," Reuters points to increasing signs around the world that people want to hold social-media companies responsible for their users' behavior. "The Internet was built on freedom of expression. Society wants someone held accountable when that freedom is abused. And major Internet companies like Google and Facebook are finding themselves caught between those ideals," it reports. Back before social networking, when people harassed or fought merely over the phone, people didn't hold phone companies accountable for settling the disputes. In the US, the Communications Decency Act extended that "safe haven" to Internet service providers, and courts have included social-media companies in that category ever since.

Here's the view from Australia, where the Sydney Morning Herald reports some cruel defacement of tribute pages in Facebook have gotten Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to consider "appointing an online ombudsman to deal with social networking issues." [Maybe that's where we're headed: countries having ombudsmen able to decide if complaints in their countries should be "escalated" to their specially appointed contacts at social sites at home and abroad? But what about sleazy social-media operations that fly under the radar or refuse to deal?]

Certainly it's understandable that people expect more from social network sites than they do from phone companies because bullying is more public and harder to take back, but is the expectation logical? That's an honest question, not a rhetorical one (please comment here or in the ConnectSafely forum), because what does not seem to be different in this new media environment is how arguments and bad behavior get resolved: by the people involved. It may take time with complaints sent from among tens and in some cases hundreds of millions of users, but fake defaming profiles and hate groups do get deleted by reputable social network sites like MySpace and Facebook. Deleting the visible representation of bullying behavior, however, doesn't change much. Bullies can put up new fake profiles as quickly as – often more quickly than – the original ones can be taken down.

Of course we should expect companies to be responsible and take such action, but can we reasonably blame them if doing so has no effect on the underlying behavior? What court cases like the one in Italy against Google executives for an awful bullying video on YouTube that the court felt wasn't taken down fast enough (see the article in the Washington Post above) illustrate are: humanity's struggle to wrap its collective brain around a new, truly global, user-driven medium where the "content" is not just social but behavioral – and the full spectrum of human behavior at that.

If you do, please comment, but I know of no real solution to social cruelty on the social Web as yet except a concerted effort on the part of the portion of humanity that cares to adjust to this strange, sometimes scary new media environment by adjusting our thinking and behavior. That includes teaching children from the earliest age, at home and school, social literacy as well as tech and media literacy (social literacy involves citizenship, civility, ethics, and critical thinking about what they upload as much as download) – as well as modeling them for our children. Can it be that universal, multi-generational behavior modification is not just an ideal, but the only logical goal? What am I missing, here?

Cellphones & school: A great mix

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:35:00 +0000

Today, two views on mobile learning: that of an 18-year-old social entrepreneur and school-reform activist in Georgia and that of a research guest-blogging at O'Reilly's Radar....

If you have any doubts about mobile learning at school, I have two suggestions: 1) Take about 5 minutes to watch college freshman Travis Allen of Fayetteville, Ga., demonstrate how iPhones can be used in school, from classroom applications to keeping track of homework to student-teacher-parent communications in a video on YouTube, and 2) check out the iSchool Initiative, a nonprofit organization Allen founded as a "partnership of students, teachers, school administrators, and software application developers" designed to help all parties "comprehend each others' needs" and help students themselves advocate for the intelligent use of technology at school.

It all started, Allen says in his blog, when his parents got him an iPod Touch for Christmas of 2008. Now at Kennesaw State University, he says the Initiative has "three primary objectives: raising awareness for the technological needs of the classroom, providing collaborative research on the use of technology in the classroom, and guiding schools in the implementation of this technology." He's not alone. See, for example, this tutorial on YouTube from Radford University in Virginia showing teachers step-by-step how to create a quiz on the iPod Touch so the class can take the quiz and together go over the results in the same class.

Why cellphones, not textbooks?

Qualcomm has been looking into just that question, funding field research such as Project K-Nect in rural North Carolina, where remedial math on iPod Touches has helped students increase proficient by 30%. Writing in Radar, Marie Bjerede, Qualcomm's vice president of wireless education technology, says the project has turned up four reasons why it helps to teach with cellphones:

1. Multimedia in their hands. Each set of math problems starts with a little animated video showing how to work the problem. "You could theorize that this context prepares the student to understand the subsequent text-based problem better. You could also theorize that watching a Flash animation is more engaging (or just plain fun)," Bjerede writes.
2. Instruction is personalized. So "students need to compare solutions" not answers. "How did you get that" replaces "what did you get?"
3. Collaborative math. "Students are asked to record their solutions on a shared blog and are encouraged to both post and comment. Over time, a learning community has emerged that crosses classrooms and schools and adds the kind of human interaction that an isolated, individual drill (be it textbook or digital) lacks and that a single teacher is unlikely to have the bandwidth to provide to each student."
4. Unanticipated participation: "Students who don't like to raise their hands use the devices to ask questions or participate in collaborative problem solving [with blogging and instant messaging]. There appears to be something democratizing about having a 'back channel' as part of the learning environment."

Related links

A teacher's iPod Touch proposal (to her school tech director) is linked to in this blog post about her – Sonya Woloshen, a new teacher who uses mobile and other technologies in the classroom but whose focus is on "the meaningful engagement of students ... learning transferable skills and teaching each other as they learned," writes blogger and Vancouver, B.C. vice-principal David Truss. Here's another educator's blog post about Sonya, including a video interview with her about teaching with students' "Personally Owned Devices" (PODs) – Hey, it's 2010. They're in their pockets! Sonya says. And stop with the excuses, like, "They don't all have one." They don't all have to; they can share in class; they have splitters that allow five to listen at the same time!

Touchscreen phone data: Gartner says the market for touchscreen phones like the iPhone, Droid, and Nexus One will nearly double this year. It says the worldwide market "will surpass 362.7 million units in 2010, a 96.8 percent increase from 2009 sales of 184.3 million units," and they'll account for 58% of mobile device sales worldwide "and more than 80% in developed markets such as North America and Western Europe."

"The three important lessons banning cellphones teaches kids" in The Innovative Educator blog

Two important studies on this from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center in New York: "Pockets of Potential: Using Mobile Technologies to Promote Children's Learning" and "The Digital Promise: Transforming Learning with Innovative Uses of Technology."

My last feature on this at the beginning of this school year: "From digital disconnect to mobile learning," linking to some important data and mobile-learning projects and drawing from compelling research by Project Tomorrow

Drivers, don't text!: New campaign

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:00:00 +0000

With its "Txtng & Drivng ... It Can Wait" project, AT&T just joined Verizon Wireless in campaigning to stop the practice of texting while driving. AT&T's campaign, aimed at teens, is using "television, radio, print, the Internet, shopping malls, even the protective 'clings' over the front of new cellphones, to target young drivers," USATODAY reports. Verizon Wireless launched its "Don't Text and Drive" campaign last year. Persuading drivers not to text may take time. USATODAY cites the view of Peter Kissinger of the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, saying that the national Click It or Ticket seat belt campaign worked "because it has a law generally accepted by the public, a visible enforcement component and a big public awareness effort." USATODAY adds that, in 2008, the latest figures available from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, "5,870 people died and more than a half-million were hurt in crashes involving a distracted or inattentive driver," and "young, inexperienced drivers are disproportionately represented among these drivers." US 13-to-17-year-olds send or receive an average of 3,146 texts a month, or 10 an hour, on average, for every hour they're not either sleeping or in school, according to Nielsen numbers I recently blogged about. Let's hope that includes every hour that 16- and 17-year-olds aren't driving.

Fresh debate on effects of violence in videogames

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 23:45:00 +0000

The long debate over whether violent videogames increase violent thinking and behavior in players has heated up as the result of a study published in this month's issue of Psychological Bulletin. A Washington Post blog does a great job of presenting both sides of this latest iteration, represented by the study's authors, led by psychologist Craig Anderson at Iowa State University, and the researchers who are the main objects of the study's criticism: Christopher Ferguson and John Kilburn of the department of behavioral applied science and criminal justice at Texas A&M International University. Anderson's study analyzed previous studies of 130,000 male and female players of various ages in the US, Europe, and Japan. In an accompanying commentary in Psychological Bulletin, Ferguson and Kilburn write that the study shows a bias in the studies it selected for review and "found only a weak connection between violent video gaming and violent thoughts and deeds." Check out the article for some other important views on the subject, including that of Cheryl K. Olson and Lawrence Kutner, co-founders and directors of the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media, who "studied real children and families in real situations" and published their results in the 2008 study "Grand Theft Childhood," which I blogged about here. [See also "Play, Part 2: Violence in videogames" last July and "Videogames & aggression: New study" about an early stage of Anderson's research.]

Kids experiencing less bullying, sexual assault: Study

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 23:16:00 +0000

Schools, keep up the good work! A new national study by the Crimes Against Children Research Center found that bullying, sexual assault, and other violence against US children ages 2-17 "declined substantially" between 2003 and 2008, the University of New Hampshire's CACRC reports. The study's lead author, David Finkelhor, credits schools' and other prevention efforts to reduce bullying and sexual assault as part of the explanation for the declines, though adding that "children's victimization is still shockingly high." In the past year, physical bullying decreased from 22% of youth to 15%, and sexual assault from 3.3% to 2%, the CACRC study found. Certainly we all have more work to do – and not just schools: The authors "did not find declines in physical abuse and neglect by caregivers, but [they] did find a decline in psychological abuse. Thefts of children’s property also declined, but robbery was one of the few offenses to show an increase." This page at the UNH site has a link to the full study, "Trends in Childhood Violence and Abuse Exposure," in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. Here's coverage today in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution; thanks to Cobb County School District risk-prevention specialist Patti Agatston in the Atlanta area for pointing the Journal-Constitution article out. Later added: the Wall Street Journal's coverage.

Students on bullying: Important study

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 00:22:00 +0000

Having someone, especially a peer, really listen and be there for them seems to help bullying victims more than anything, according to students themselves. A new study of nearly 12,000 US students in grades 5-12 offers important insights into bullying victims' own views on what causes bullying, how it affects them, and what does and doesn't work in dealing with it. The students, surveyed by the Youth Voice Project, represent 25 schools in 12 states across the US.

The Project's authors, Stan Davis and Charisse Nixon, PhD, write that about a fifth of respondents (22%) reported regular victimization (two or more times a month), and that victimization was broken down this way: Of those 22%, 46% characterized the harassment as mild ("bothered me only a little"); 36% moderate ("bothered me quite a bit"); 11% severe ("I had or have trouble eating, sleeping, or enjoying myself because of what happened to me"); and 7% very severe ("I felt or feel unsafe and threatened because of what happened to me"). So the study extrapolated that 13% of the US's student population, or about 7 million students, are experiencing moderate-to-very-severe mistreatment by peers.

Who's being victimized: Middle school needs particular attention, since "the majority of traumatized students are in grades 6-8." Other characteristics: 54% are female, 42% male; about 6% of "traumatized students" (being moderately-to-very-severely mistreated) reported receiving special education assistance, and 10% "reported having some form of a physical disability." Ethnicity: The majority of "traumatized students" (moderate-to-very severe) described themselves as White, followed by Hispanic American and then Multi-Racial; 32% reported eligibility for free or reduced lunch; 9% of them had immigrated to the US within the past two years.

What bullies focus on: Look at what the results say about the importance of teaching tolerance, empathy, perspective-taking: "Looks" was the focus of 55% of moderate-to-very-severe mistreatment and "Body Shape" of 37%. The next highest focus was "Race," at 16%; "Sexual Orientation" and "Family Income" came next at 14% and 13%, respectively.

Make it safe to report: A higher percentage than I usually see (42%) say they report their moderate-to-very-severe mistreatment to an adult at school, but that's still less than half. So the authors write that it's "important to identify safe ways for students to communicate with adults at school about their negative peer interactions."

What helps most: Being heard and acknowledged seems to help victims more than most responses by both adults and peers. Adults first: The top three responses (to victims) "likely to lead to things getting better for the student than to things getting worse" were "listened to me," "gave me advice," and "checked in with me afterwards to see if the behavior stopped." Coming in at a noticeably distant 4th, interestingly, was "kept up increased adult supervision for some time." As for responses from peers (including friends), the top three were "Spent time with me," "Talked to me," and "Helped me get away." The authors add that "positive peer actions were strikingly more likely to be rated more helpful than were positive self actions or positive adult actions."

There are so many more really substantive insights in this report (and future ones Davis and Nixon are planning) that I truly recommend that you read it. But here are three key takeaways:

1. What victims are often advised - e.g., "tell the person how you feel," "walk away," "tell the person to stop," "pretend it doesn't bother you" – "made things worse much more often than they made things better."
2. The effectiveness of adult interventions depends a lot "on context, school culture, climate, as well as the way in which each intervention is carried out."
3. "Our students report that asking for and getting emotional support and a sense of connection has helped them the most among all the strategies we compared."

Related links

"Clicks & cliques: Really meaty advice for parents on cyberbullying"

"Clicks, cliques & cyberbullying, Part 2: Whole-school response is key"

"Cyberbullying & bullying-related suicides: 1 way to help our digital-age kids": What many bullying and cyberbullying cases seem to have in common is "the 24/7, non-stop nature of the harassment the teens faced – the tech-enabled constant drama of school life turning into 24/7 cruelty.... [They] indicate an urgent need for all of us to help our children come up for air, to maintain some perspective about the 'alternate reality' of school life, especially in the middle-school years."

"Social norming: So key to online safety"

"Bystanders can help when bullying happens"

How to teach Net safety, ethics, security? Blend them in!

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:26:00 +0000

US K-12 students aren't getting adequate instruction in "cyberethics, cybersafety, and cybersecurity," according to a just-released study sponsored by the National Cybersecurity Alliance and Microsoft released today. The survey, of more than 1,000 teachers, 400 administrators, and 200 tech coordinators, found that – although over 90% of administrators, teachers, and tech coordinators support teaching these topics in school – only 35% of teachers and just over half of school administrators say the topics are required in their curriculum. A bit of pass-the-buck thinking turned up in the results too – 72% of teachers said parents bear most of the responsibility for teaching these topics (51% of administrators say teachers do). They're both partly right; it's everybody's responsibility, the experts say (see this). But the thing is, most teachers are already teaching online safety (which includes ethics) and may not even know it. More on that in a moment....

The filtering hurdle

The biggest hurdle to Net-safety instruction may actually be school filters! Note this statement in the study's press release: "The survey also found a high reliance on shielding students instead of teaching behaviors for safe and secure Internet use. More than 90% of schools have built up digital defenses, such as filtering and blocking social network sites...." Then note UK education watchdog Ofsted's finding just last month – that schools using extensive or "locked down" filtering "were less effective in helping [students] to learn how to use new technologies safely." If schools could just teach a lot of what they've always taught, folding digital media in with traditional media (aka books, pencils, etc.), the academic ethics and citizenship they've always "taught" (hopefully modeled and encouraged) will naturally include "cyberethics," for example.

Citizenship is a verb!

A classroom is a community, as is a blog, a team, or the group of people working together on a Google Doc. How do participants/"citizens" treat one another in those various communities as well as in the classroom one? You can't *be* a citizen without a chance to practice citizenship in the community where you're supposed to be a citizen. The same goes for the digital sort; today's social media give us a whole array of opportunities to practice citizenship in online communities.

"Student leadership becomes an engine of citizenship," Sylvia Martinez of GenYes told me in a phone interview recently. I asked her what she meant by student leadership: "It's putting students in charge of something that matters [such as enlisting students to help integrate technology and digital media into the classroom, as GenYes programs do for schools] – giving them responsibility, then watching them, expecting them to do things that show they've accepted the responsibility, and then challenging them to do more," Martinez adds. "It's a cycle. Students are engaged [citizenship as civic engagement – or, in this case, classroom, task, or project engagement] because they're doing something important." So let students help with or run the incorporating of blogs, wikis, Google docs, and nings into class work!

Citizenship is protective

As for "cybersafety," that too is practiced naturally when people are thinking about citizenship (and ethics!) online and offline. How can I say that? Because the research shows that peer harassment and cyberbullying represent the most common risk to students, and aggressive behavior more than doubles the aggressor's risk of being victimized; so civility, respect for others, and citizenship represent the lion's share of safety online for students. [As for the predation risk, which is extremely low for students who are not already deemed "at risk youth," the research shows (see this), the don't-talk-to-strangers-online message and associated fears have gotten through to kids during several years of technopanic; a teacher in New Jersey recently told me that her middle school students are just as afraid of predators as their parents are.]

Media literacy – critical thinking about behavior as well as information in a blog, wiki, Ning, or virtual world – supports citizenship and safety, as students learn to think critically about the motives behind and accuracy of info, comments, photos, text messages, etc. they download and upload, whether the source is a friend, advertiser, or stranger. This is not rocket science!

Students involved in tech integration can also model and help teach good computer and network security practices – that third C in the study mentioned above, Cybersecurity. This, too, is an aspect of good citizenship: protecting our passwords, not being tricked by phishers and other manipulators, and knowing what's needed to protect our computers and networks. Critical thinking is key here, too, because social engineering, or manipulation, is a basic component of phishing and malicious hacking.

Basic ingredients, with or without a recipe

This kind of "online safety" education – learning to behave civilly and ethically online and offline and to respect one's own and others' passwords, identities, and intellectual and physical property at home and school – is not only protective, it's *relevant* to students because they enable all of us to function effectively in a 21st-century media environment.

Martinez told me that half the schools GenYes works with say they don't want a cybercurriculum, and about half very definitely do. So, hey, if any schools do want formal curricula or lesson plans for "cybersafety, cybersecurity, and cybercitizenship," there is no better material than Cybersmart's. Just don't let those big words make you think that this is all about new technology, some sort of add-on to students' life or education, or anything that we haven't all been thinking about and working on together for a very long time!

Related link

You only need one: educator Anne Bubnic's 2.5 pages of "digital citizenship" links, starting here.

Helping kids gain from adversity: Inspiration for parents, teachers

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:13:00 +0000

I just listened to Aimee Mullins's just-posted TED Talk of last October and thought to myself anyone who loves teaching, young people, and the power of the human spirit would resonate with this. Aimee is an actor, athlete, and model (full bio here) who has not merely overcome and pushed through the adversity of being born without fibula, or shin bones, but used that adversity to find and bring out her in-born potential. She talks about not long ago bumping into the OB-GYN who delivered her in her home town in Pennsylvania and hearing about how, because of her career, he tells his medical students, "In my experience, unless repeatedly told otherwise and if given just a modicum of support, if left to their own devices, a child will achieve." She adds, "If we can change the current paradigm from one of achieving normalcy to achieving ability or potency, we can release the power of so many more children and invite them to engage their rare and valuable abilities with the community" – the abilities each child has. She later adds something I think my friend Lenore Skenazy over at FreeRangeKids.com, kindred spirit Tanya Byron in the UK, and a whole lot of other parents would appreciate: "Our responsibility is not simply shielding those we care for from adversity but preparing them to meet it well."

Mullins says something important about technology and social networking too (which I feel would resonate with the authors of Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out). After reading the dictionary definition of "disability" to the audience, she said: "Our language hasn't allowed us to get caught up with the changes in our society, many of which have been brought about by technology." She lists some examples, among them "social-networking platforms [which] allow people to self-identify, to claim their own description of themselves so they can go align with global groups of their own choosing." Think about this in light of bullying and cyberbullying, where kids identified by others as "handicapped" in any way are often the targets. Social media can help remove or at least delay the labels bullies exploit, giving children some much-needed space and peace for identity exploration. Mullins puts it so eloquently: "Maybe technology is revealing more clearly to us now what has always been a truth: that everyone has something rare and powerful to offer our society and that the human ability to adapt is our greatest asset." Don't miss the talk, including the lines Mullins quotes from a 14th Persian poet at the end.

Unruly schoolbus gets Wi-Fi, calms down

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:21:00 +0000

Clearly, what goes around comes around. I used to do homework on the schoolbus (we won't go into how long ago), and now – since so much homework involves the Internet, apparently – students can now do homework on schoolbuses. IF they're Wi-Fi-enabled, of course. And the Internet's presence, interestingly, on the bus seems to be having a calming effect – see "Wi-Fi Turns Rowdy Bus Into Rolling Study Hall" in the New York Times. "Behavioral problems [offline ones, anyway] have virtually disappeared," it adds, since a school in Vail, Ariz., "mounted a mobile Internet router to bus No. 92's sheet-metal frame." Now they're going to have to train bus drivers in digital citizenship instruction too!

Foursquare & other geolocation apps: For young adults, not kids

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:42:00 +0000

More and more, I'm seeing tweets about people becoming mayors of coffee shops in my Twitter stream. They're playing Foursquare on their phones, which pushes their "checkins" or location disclosures out to their Twitter followers. Foursquare is part cellphone social-mapping game, part Yelp (another way to find food, drink, or friends using your phone's geolocation technology). "A large number of foursquare users send their checkins to Twitter and/or Facebook, and therefore make their location available to an audience much larger than just their foursquare friends," says Foursquare. It's not for everybody. Someone over at eModeration in the UK (a company that helps keep kids safe in virtual worlds) thinks it's kind of dumb. It's really not for children. But there's a safer way to play it, if they insist. If yours do, ask them not to use their real photo; you don't want them identified by their photo in shops or restaurants where they "check in." They can just post a face shot of their avatar or dog or favorite cartoon character in their profile. One of the appeals for kids (young and old) is that, like kids' virtual worlds that sell real-world plush toys, Foursquare has real-world objects that serve as awards or "nerd merit badges" representing "the virtual achievements you get for checking in to places using Foursquare," Mashable reports. In other words, you get points for showing up at your favorite Starbucks, points which can add up to becoming its "mayor."

This morning I testified at a US House of Representatives joint-subcommittee hearing on "The Collection and Use of Location Information for Commercial Purposes" – the privacy and safety implications of just this sort of technology. There definitely seemed to be a consensus in the hearing room that consumer privacy law needs to be updated and that, to be effective over the long term, the updating shouldn't focus on any single technology. I completely agree with that because the people who used to have control over how cellphone users' location information is used – the mobile carriers – no longer always do. More and more, control is spread out across the spectrum: carrier, operating system provider (e.g., Apple, Google, Microsoft), app developer, and consumer (because, with apps like Foursquare, we're disclosing our own location). It's all becoming a mashup - which is why parents need to know that all these apps on iPhones and iPod Touches allow kids to share their location.

So – if your child's phone is on a family plan behind your password with, say, AT&T or Verizon Wireless, and if you don't use the parental control that blocks app downloads (something to consider if they're not telling you what they download) – it's a good idea periodically to check what apps your kids have on their phones and ask them what these apps do. If they share your child's location with anyone besides you, you'll want to have a conversation about who's on their contact list. Make sure it's only friends they know in "real life." Certainly all this goes, too, for iPod Touches, which are not on family cellphone plans. As for Google Buzz, which is both phone- and computer-based, see my post on that; parents will want to help their kids see the value of making their conversations "private," or just among friends, which points to a negotiation: All participants in the conversation need to agree that it's just for them and adjust privacy features accordingly.

[BTW, Foursquare isn't the only location-based cellphone app. Others are Brightkite and Whrrl (see this blog post); Gowalla, which isn't a social game (see this blog post); and the cellphone service loopt, which is becoming more app-like (see Mashable.com).]

Did school spy on student? FBI investigating

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:29:00 +0000

A Philadelphia-area family has filed a lawsuit against their child's school district for spying on students using Webcams on a school-supplied laptops inside students' homes, and the FBI is investigating, the Washington Post reports. "The FBI will explore whether Lower Merion School District officials broke any federal wiretap or computer-intrusion laws." The district supplies laptops to all 2,300 students at its two high schools, the Post added. At CNET, ConnectSafely's Larry Magid blogged that the remote Webcam monitoring (which the district said is now disabled) was a security measure activated only by the district's security and technology department when a laptop had been reported missing or stolen. "The tracking-security feature was limited to taking a still image of the operator and the operator's screen," Magid reported. The Post article says the district has acknowledged that Webcams had been activated "42 times in the past 14 months," and the activations had helped the school find 18 of the 42 missing computers. But the issue that led to the lawsuit so far doesn't seem to be theft-related. "According to the suit, Harriton vice principal Lindy Matsko told Blake on Nov. 11 that the school [one of the district's two high schools] thought he was 'engaged in improper behavior in his home.' She allegedly cited as evidence a photograph 'embedded' in his school-issued laptop," according to the Post. This is pretty chilling behavior on the part of school officials. "The case shows how even well-intentioned plans can go awry if officials fail to understand the technology and its potential consequences," the Post cites privacy experts as saying. Compromising images from inside a student's bedroom could fall into the hands of rogue school staff or otherwise be spread across the Internet, they said." For anyone worried about being watched remotely through their Webcam, here's some clarity in another piece by Larry Magid at CNET.

Google Buzz & kids' privacy

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:43:00 +0000

Because Buzz is brand-new and a hybrid of Gmail, micro-blogging, cellphone social mapping, and social networking, we're all at the early stages of figuring out its implications for kids – a lot of whom use Gmail. Yesterday Charlene Li, a mom and well-known social-media-industry analyst, blogged that she had discovered her 9-year-old daughter was using and really enjoying Buzz. Using it from her computer (people can also use Buzz on Apple iPhones and Google Android phones), the child had had one conversation on it with her friends. The problem was that the kids didn't know their conversation was public. Li wrote that "the easiest thing to do as a parent is to simply disable Buzz, meaning that the Google profile and all followers are deleted – permanently" (go to the bottom of your child's Gmail page and click "turn off Buzz," which will take you to where you can disable it). But because Li's daughter enjoyed Buzz so much, she seems open to "managing groups, privacy settings, etc." so her child can continue using the service. "We’ll give it a try," she writes, "but unless her friends also keep the conversation private, it will all be for naught." Ensuring that with all the other kids and their parents could be quite a project. Privacy is now a collective effort – by users too, not just providers (see "Collaborative reputation protection").

Last summer Google agreed, in response to a complaint by one of the FTC's "safe harbors" (organizations that help it enforce the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA), to require a birth date at registration to Gmail and, if a user indicates he or she is under 13, a session cookie to block the user from re-registering with an earlier birthdate. That's a start, but what this issue points to is the impact on children's privacy of combining social-media products within companies and connecting them across networks such as Facebook Connect. Perhaps the FTC's forthcoming review of COPPA rules and enforcement will address this emerging issue. But we feel the brilliant software engineers and project managers who develop these products need to wear their parent hats more, companies need to be thinking through children's privacy from the earliest developmental stages, and industry best practices need special sections or clauses addressing child privacy and safety. [See also "Google Buzz isn't exactly humming along" in the Wall Street Journal; "Does Google Buzz violate COPPA?" by Marquette University law Prof. Bruce Boyden (the jury's still out, he indicates); and my post at Buzz's launch, "Major buzz about Buzz, but not about its safety."]

Haiti: Texting, social Web connecting survivors with help

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:40:00 +0000

Struggling earthquake survivors in Haiti can now text for help. "Countless volunteers" receiving the messages, the US State Department, the Pentagon, aid organizations, and Haiti's leading cellphone carrier make up an emergency contact network for Haitians seeking aid, the New York Times reports. The story leads with the experience of Coast Guard volunteer and Chicago tech firm owner Ryan Bank, who told the Times he's received more than 18,000 messages. Some volunteers monitor Facebook and Twitter postings for information indicating where supplies are needed. Messages through the network have "helped identify a tent city that the American military and relief workers were previously unaware of." To get the word out, the mobile carrier in Haiti sent "the distress code number – 4636 – to every cellphone on the Haitian network. Word of the program also went out on local Haitian radio stations." Text messaging was still possible even with damage done from fallen cell towers.

How much teens text: Latest data

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:23:00 +0000

US 13-to-17-year-olds send or receive "an average of 3,146 texts a month each" – an average of 10 text messages an hour for every hour they're not either sleeping or in school, MarketingVox.com reports, citing the latest Nielsen figures. For 9-to-12-year-olds, the average is 1,146 texts a month or four an hour. The teen figure was for third quarter 2009, the tween one for the fourth quarter. Compare those youth numbers to the average number of monthly texts for all mobile users: 500. As for methodology, in its blog post about these findings, Nielsen reports that it "analyzes more than 40,000 mobile bills every month to determine what consumers actually are spending their money on."

Clicks, cliques & cyberbullying, Part 2: Whole-school response is key

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:49:00 +0000

Cyberbullying is a serious problem that, according to research, is the most common online risk for young people, affecting about a third of US 13-to-17-year-olds, and has led to some tragic student suicides. Schools and courts are struggling to figure out how to deal with student behavior that occurs off school grounds but can have such a disruptive, sometimes destructive, effect on school.

All the discussion about the legal and First Amendment issues seems to be missing a key factor that points to how to handle cyberbullying: the media environment with which all these incidents are directly associated. The Internet, especially to youth, is now a) collegial or social/behavioral in nature and b) mirrors "real world" life and conditions – it's not something in addition to student or school life. Bullying online is not a whole new problem for schools and courts to deal with. It's a reflection of student relationships, and the bullying's context is largely the life of the school community, not the Internet (or cellphones or any other devices).

Cyberbullying prevention/intervention take a village too

"Because a bully's success depends heavily on context" – write Yale psychology professor Alan Yazdin and his co-author Carlo Rotella at Boston College in "Bullies: They can be stopped, but it takes a village" at Slate.com – "attempts to prevent bullying should concentrate primarily on changing the context rather than directly addressing the victim's or the bully's behavior." That, they add, involves "the entire school, including administration, teachers, and peers."

Author and educator Rosalind Wiseman agrees. In a 55-min. podcast interview she gave fellow educator and author Annie Fox, Wiseman recently said that dealing with cyberbullying "really speaks to a school's culture of dignity....

"Don't do a 45-minute assembly on cyberbullying," Wiseman said. "It's a waste of time. Have a faculty meeting, and then have a parent meeting, and tell the students this is what you're doing – not just a bullying assembly. Tell them 'we understand that this is about the whole culture of the school, and as part of that culture, you have to participate in this as well.'" Slightly tongue in cheek, Wiseman adds that this will increase "the chance of students believing you're not completely full of it."

Quick fixes don't exist

Schools will probably get plenty of eye-rolling and "whatever's" from the more socially aggressive students, but gradually things can turn around – particularly if there's disciplinary backup. [Note the word "backup": discipline is not the goal, but rather restoration of order – more on this below.] For example, when talking with a student suspected of having been the bully in an incident, the end of the conversation could go something like:

"I know we're on the same page, here: You're a person of honor, so I'm taking you on your word that this won't happen again. But you need to be clear that, if you walk out of here and, as a result of this meeting, the life of the target in any way becomes more difficult, then we are in a whole different situation – a whole different level of the problem. You need to be clear that, if that happens, you're taking a very big chance."

That conversation could also include the following. "I hope and expect that you'll be talking with your parents about this, because I'm going to be calling them within 24 hours." Wiseman tells teachers and administrators that of course the kids will talk to their parents, offering their own spin on the situation. "So it's very important to say to the parent, 'I wanted to include you from the beginning, that is why I talked with your child. I fully expected [him or her] to speak to you immediately and now I'm following up so we can work together and have this be a learning opportunity – a teachable moment – for your child."

Turning incidents into 'teachable moments'

Those words are crucial: "learning opportunity," "teachable moment." They are stepping stones on the way to building the school's "culture of dignity," as Wiseman put. Because it's merely logical that a one-time, sage-on-the-stage assembly will accomplish very little. It's also logical that involving all players and skill sets – students, parents, teachers, administrators, and counselors – creates the conditions for changing the school's culture (see this). The school is, in fact, creating a new social norm – as Elizabeth Englander, director of the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center and an adviser to state legislators working on bullying-education legislation, told Emily Bazelon at Slate.com – where the whole school community looks down on dissing, flaming, mean gossiping, and other social cruelty, hopefully including students' parents. The Slate piece links to some great resources for school strategizing. For example, here's a sexting investigation protocol from the Center for Safe & Responsible Internet Use offering the spectrum of sexting causes and intentions enabling school staff to ask students intelligent questions.

When an interdisciplinary group of us were working on that protocol, authored by Nancy Willard, it occurred to me that, because it lays out the spectrum of sexting's causes, it'll help school officials see why it's essential that schools not just reflexively hand off investigations to law enforcement (whose involvement some state laws require).

The goal of any incident investigation

"The immediate goal of the investigation is not discipline [and certainly not expediency] but rather support for the targeted student(s) [who may be experiencing psychological harm], and restoration of order. The ultimate goal is to create a learning opportunity for all involved. The learning opportunity should be on-the-spot, as well as school and community-wide, and focus on the areas of critical thinking, mindful decision-making, perspective-taking, and citizenship." That's a statement a couple of us worked up because we feel it's so important for everybody to understand that, in the social-media age, we can only change behavior – in schools and online communities – together, as "a village."

Here's Part 1 of this 2-part series: "Clicks & cliques: Really meaty advice for parents on cyberbullying".

Related links

In another Massachusetts incident, last week Boston-area police charged three students with identity theft reportedly for creating a fake Facebook profile and posting mean comments about a peer. In an editorial last Saturday (2/13), the Boston Globe applauded the police "for taking aggressive action against cyberbullying when so many others have failed to do so." There's the sad reality: that too often the "authority figure" taking over is the police. Law enforcement is only one piece of the multidisciplinary team that should be in place in schools and ready to step in when something comes up. The other essential roles are principal and counselor/psychologist.

"Cyberbullying better defined" – with links to two national studies showing that about one-third of teens

Finding of the Harvard Berkman Center's 2008 Internet Safety & Technical Task Force: "Bullying and harassment, most often by peers, are the most frequent threats that minors face, both online and offline" (p. 4 of Executive Summary)

The Fox-Wiseman podcast

ConnectSafely.org's Tips to Help Stop Cyberbullying

One family's tech policy

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:33:00 +0000

One last gem from the Fox-Wiseman podcast that I blogged about last week in "Clicks & cliques" and that, if it isn't already, should be searchable on the Web as text. Toward the end of the interview, Fox asks Wiseman to share her own family technology policy (Wiseman's kids are 6 and 8). Here it is:

"Technology can be really fun to use, and it gives us incredible access to the world, but it is a privilege not a right, and because it is a privilege, you have the responsibility to use it ethically. What using technology ethically looks like to me is that you never use it to humiliate, embarrass ... or misrepresent yourself or someone else, never use a password without the person's permission, never share embarrassing information or photos of others, put someone down, or compromise yourself by sending pictures of yourself naked, half-naked or in your underwear. Remember that it is so easy for things to get out of control. You know it, I know it. So I reserve the right to check your online life, from texting to your Facebook page, and if I see that you're violating the terms of our agreement, I'll take your technology away until you can earn my trust back. This is my unbreakable, unshakeable law."

See also: "'Soft power' works better: Parenting social Web users."