Today (Feb. 23) is Pink Shirt Day in Canada, marking a national movement and international model for defeating bullying – all started by two good guys in Nova Scotia, Travis Price and David Shepherd. You've probably heard the story by now, but – when, back in 2007, the then high school seniors noticed a freshman boy was being picked on for wearing a pink shirt – they figured "that's enough ... … [Read more...] about Pink shirts in Canada: Ultimate social norms model
social norms
Cyberbullying: What I’ve learned so far
A sequel to "Notes from a conference on bullying," posted last week.... Cyberbullying incidents don't happen in a vacuum. I'm saying this because I keep running into signs that adults do think they are events that somehow happen in a vacuum or come in out of the blue. However, since Facebook activity is a reflection of users and their lives – and much of the focus of most teens' lives is … [Read more...] about Cyberbullying: What I’ve learned so far
Talking privacy at household & international levels
We – all of us (well, maybe all of us above the age of around 28) – are in a very uncomfortable place where personal privacy's concerned. It seems all of our children are social Web users and we all have growing digital footprints ourselves, whether we're on Facebook or not, and we're pretty uneasy about the implications of all this intentional and inadvertent sharing for us as well as our kids. … [Read more...] about Talking privacy at household & international levels
The goal for digital citizenship: Turn it into a verb!
Readers, this is turning out to be a series on digital citizenship, because the "Jessi Slaughter" story powerfully illustrated why and how much this baseline online-safety education is needed. Yesterday in Part 1, I looked at the kind of online behavior that citizenship lessons need to address and how we can help our children avoid it. Today: the goal of citizenship instruction, which hopefully … [Read more...] about The goal for digital citizenship: Turn it into a verb!
Principal’s anti-Facebook plan: Is banning Web sites the fix?
It was an interesting pair of education news stories to break in a single week: a principal urging his students' parents to ban their kids' use of Facebook and the Teacher of the Year being honored for teaching with, among other things, Facebook (see this). In an email to parents, Anthony Orsini, principal of Benjamin Franklin Middle School in Ridgeway, NJ, said that "the main problem is that … [Read more...] about Principal’s anti-Facebook plan: Is banning Web sites the fix?