School Administrators Charged with Child Exploitation After Investigating Sexting

Last spring, Brush High School (Brush, Colorado) assistant principal Bradley Bass was alerted to a student sexting issue at his school. He and secondary schools director Scott Hodgson looked into it. They talked to some students who were reportedly involved, and determined that intimate images had been shared consensually. At least one student voluntarily showed…

Media Literacy Activities

Promoting Media Literacy: Ten Activities to Help Students Create, Evaluate, and Analyze Content

(For a formatted .pdf version of this article for distribution, click on the image above [or click here]). Media literacy is best defined as the ability to access, create, analyze, and evaluate messages in a variety of forms. Anyone can post nearly anything at any time, from pretty much anywhere, and there are very few…

Model Sexting Law

In my last post, I discussed what I learned in reviewing all of the state sexting laws across the U.S. Some states have comprehensive sexting laws while many others—23 to be exact—have no sexting specific law whatsoever. As noted in my post, this is problematic for a number of reasons, including the risk that minors…

Vicarious Supervision: Preventing Problematic Behaviors Online through Positive Parent-Child Relationships

Lately we’ve been more directly exploring the role of parenting in preventing cyberbullying and other online problem behaviors. To be sure, parents* have a responsibility to be directly involved in monitoring and influencing the early online activities of their children. This could mean occasionally reviewing messages and regularly checking security settings, but should also include…

Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L: When Can a School Discipline a Student for Online Speech?

Yesterday I had the opportunity to participate in a panel to discuss the pending Supreme Court case Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L. Other panelists were Dr. Eric Kasper, a Professor of Political Science who teaches constitutional law at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and who directs the Menard Center for Constitutional Studies, and Darpana…