Students and teachers becoming a little too “friendly” in cyberspace

As we have previously discussed, a recent article published in Education Week entitled Policies Target Teacher-Student Cyber Talk suggests that some educators and pupils are informally connecting and chatting online with increasing frequency, where relatively innocent interactions may have the potential to escalate into inappropriate relationships. While such cases seem to occur rarely, a few […]

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Schools Have a Responsibility to Proactively Stop Bullying

A federal jury recently ordered the Hudson Area School District (Michigan) to pay $800,000 in damages to a student who endured years of emotional, physical, and sexual bullying.  Dane Patterson 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 […]

Can Schools Discipline Students for Creating a Mean Facebook Page About a Teacher? post thumbnail

Can Schools Discipline Students for Creating a Mean Facebook Page About a Teacher?

There have been a few high profile cases recently reviewed by the courts, and summarized in the media, where students have sued their schools arguing that discipline they received as a result of improper online speech was a violation of their First Amendment right.  The most recent case involved a former Florida high school student, […]

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Cyberbullicide – What We Can Do

We’ve been discussing cyberbullying and suicide recently, and even though cases are isolated and rare, the link is worth our attention.  First, it reiterates the fact that all forms of adolescent peer aggression must be taken seriously both at school and at home, and that online harassment can have grave real-world implications.  It also follows […]

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Cyberbullying and the Right to Feel Safe at School

Evidently, the waters of cyberbullying case law are still murky.  Due to variability in opinions and perspectives across jurisdictions and adjudicators, clear precedent is still sometimes elusive.  Consider the following case from late 2009 from a California District Court (08-cv-03824, J.C. v. Beverly Hills Unified School District), in which an eighth-grader was cyberbullied through the […]

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Lori Drew Officially Acquitted

Well, it’s official.  On Sunday, U.S. District Judge George Wu acquitted Lori Drew of all federal criminal charges for her involvement in the suicide of 13-year-old Megan Meier.  As you may recall, back in November a jury initially found Drew guilty of three misdemeanor charges of illegally accessing a protected computer (in essence, she was […]

FERPA and the identity of students who cyberbully others… post thumbnail

FERPA and the identity of students who cyberbully others…

I was talking to a school administrator yesterday…and she posed a question that I couldn’t clearly answer because it doesn’t seem there is a clear answer.  So I wanted to see if any of our readers had some thoughts about it. If a parent comes to you (you as an educator in the school system) […]

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Cell Phones at School and Student Expectation of Privacy

We’ve covered this issue a couple of times before on this blog, but given the interest I thought I would respond to some of the comments that have been posted and provide some insight gained from discussions I have had with folks over the past few months.  Some people have suggested that students have effectively […]

School-sponsored PDAs in the classroom? post thumbnail

School-sponsored PDAs in the classroom?

A colleague sent along this article detailing how some public schools are issuing PDAs to third, fourth, and fifth graders in an effort to render them comfortable with the technology, and as another medium through which they can learn.  For example, they can use it to draw pictures, write essays, study flash cards, and take […]