What is your Online Reputation? post thumbnail

What is your Online Reputation?

I have been talking a lot lately about online reputation with teens.  I think it is important for youth to recognize that anything they put online and anything they do offline that gets posted online, could end up being immortalized on the World Wide Web.  I advise students to start thinking about their online reputation […]

What Teachers and Administrators Can Do About Cyberbullying – Podcast post thumbnail

What Teachers and Administrators Can Do About Cyberbullying – Podcast

I was featured on *Audio Ed* to discuss in detail how administrators, teachers, and staff can prevent and respond to cyberbullying among school students.  Please click here to download and listen (8 minutes, MP3 file).  Justin and I are passionate about training and working with public districts as well as private schools to meaningfully inform […]

Cyberbullying Panic? post thumbnail

Cyberbullying Panic?

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 […]

Schools Have a Responsibility to Proactively Stop Bullying post thumbnail

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 […]

Cyberbullying and the Right to Feel Safe at School post thumbnail

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 […]

Sexting – education, research, and multidisciplinary prevention and response post thumbnail

Sexting – education, research, and multidisciplinary prevention and response

Earlier this week, I participated in a Summit organized by the National District Attorneys Association and the National Center for the Prevention of Child Abuse with a variety of professionals in the child protection arena. While other attendees focused in on the problem of child sex trafficking, my small group concentrated on the phenomenon of […]

Cyber Safety Summit: A Model for Successful Collaboration and Coordination post thumbnail

Cyber Safety Summit: A Model for Successful Collaboration and Coordination

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 […]

Faces Behind the Statistics post thumbnail

Faces Behind the Statistics

I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to present alongside Tina Meier last week at a cyberbullying event in Detroit sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League.  I have spoken to Tina on the phone several times in the past, but this was the first time that I was able to meet her in person.  By […]

Cyber-Mentors – an online anti-bullying support system of youth for youth post thumbnail

Cyber-Mentors – an online anti-bullying support system of youth for youth

I really liked this article on “Cyber-Mentors”, a relatively new program from BeatBullying (based in the UK) that is gaining traction. Justin and I believe strongly in the power of older students and youth to provide guidance and advice to younger students as it relates to peer conflict (especially the online variant). Many of the […]

Cyber-Mentors – an online anti-bullying support system of youth for youth post thumbnail

Cyber-Mentors – an online anti-bullying support system of youth for youth

I really liked this article on “Cyber-Mentors”, a relatively new program from BeatBullying (based in the UK) that is gaining traction. Justin and I believe strongly in the power of older students and youth to provide guidance and advice to younger students as it relates to peer conflict (especially the online variant). Many of the […]