Blue Mountain School District v. J.S. and Layshock v. Hermitage School District. These are two cases that we have discussed quite frequently on this blog. We have been waiting a long time to receive clarification from a high court regarding the circumstances under which schools can discipline students for their off-campus online speech and we…
Several high profile incidents have put cyberbullying at the top of the headlines in recent months. When Sameer and I first started studying this problem over eight years ago, it was rare to see a cyberbullying story in the media, now they are everywhere. Larry Magid, a technology journalist who contributes to a number of…
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…
An interesting controversy has emerged in the last couple of weeks over the word “meep.” What does meep even mean? Frankly, it doesn’t really matter. In fact there are numerous and varied definitions of, and uses for, the word meep. The most frequent use among adolescents, it seems, is to replace an inappropriate word with…
I’ve noticed a lot of schools now have their own Facebook pages. Here are some examples: Ramblewood Middle School; Da Vinci Arts Middle School; Lincoln High School. These pages are generally created by teachers, school administrators, or school counselors as a virtual gathering place to students and staff. Does your school have one? I can…
My colleagues and I have been discussing the phenomenon of sexting in great detail recently, in light of the actions of two Texas school districts. Before the beginning of this new school year, the Houston Independent school district (one of the largest in the nation) and the Dallas-Fort Worth school district banned sending sexually-explicit photos…
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)…
In this recent story from the West Coast, a 15-year-old high-schooler named Arielle was suspended for two days after surreptitiously capturing video on her cell phone of her chaotic algebra class. Apparently, the situation was horrible with the teacher unable to control the students, who were participating in paper-ball fights, smoking cigarettes and marijuana, and…