Why anti-bullying laws aren't working

Forty-four states have laws against bullying, but they're largely ineffective, according to an article in Education Week. The tragic suicide of 11-year-old Jaheem Herrera in the Atlanta area last spring (see this) was a prime illustration, since "Georgia's law has one of the largest gaps between what it requires of [school] districts and the tools it gives them for meeting those requirements," the article reports. "The state doesn't collect data specifically on bullying occurrences, despite legislation that promises to strip state funding from schools failing to take action after three instances involving a bully." One of the key problems, says Tucson, Ariz., attorney Michael Tully in his blog, is that the laws "have no teeth." They require schools " to adopt bullying prevention policies, but do not include any remedy for students and parents should the school not comply," Tully later wrote in an email to me. And in his blog, he wrote, "Until these statutes include a private cause of action — something schools will fight against vigorously [lobbying to keep it out of laws] — bullying prevention efforts will continue to be a 'paper tiger'." As for state laws concerning cyberbullying, here's the picture from the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Web community moderator to the rescue

There's help on the social Web. Lloyd Mann, a volunteer moderator for DiabetesDaily.com, a support community on the Web, appears to have saved the life of one of the site's users, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports. Another user noticed some disturbing posts and contacted the moderator. "Mann communicated with the troubled poster and said the messages were enough to convince him that [the poster] was serious." He and the man who got him involved worked together to figure out the poster's location and contacted the police. For privacy reasons, the police told Mann they couldn't confirm attempted suicide but said the person was ok and Mann had had reason to be worried. See also "Facebook friend saves suicidal teen," "The social Web's 'Lifeline'" about MySpace's role, and last spring's "Summit for saving lives."

Great Net-safety guide for girls

The attractively packaged, straightforward advice in "A Smart Girl's Guide to the Internet" is just fine for boys, too, but ... oh well, at least girls will benefit from it. (Is there a boys' version of American Girl's "smart girl's guides"?) The guide has lots of what the publishing biz calls "entry points" – quizzes, bullet points, subheads, short sentences and chapters, and bright, colorful graphics. But the best part for a parent is that it's written by mom, syndicated columnist, online-safety advocate, and PluggedInParent.com blogger Sharon Cindrich. Sharon delivers in the tech-parenting area. She knows the research (both the risk-prevention and social-media kinds), sticks to the facts, and provides a calm, rational voice in a subject area fraught with hype and misinformation. The book (96 pp., $9.95) is aimed at girls 9-12. Here's its page at AmericanGirl.com.

*Good* news involving swine flu

There just may be an upside to the swine flu: It may be the cause of more educators becoming comfortable with using interactive technology (aka social media) in the classroom. With the message that its wiki-like online collaboration tool, Office Live Workspace, can help keep classes on track if schools close for flu outbreaks, Microsoft "has launched a how-to Web site that walks teachers through the steps of setting up accounts for their classes on ... the free Web service," the Associated Press reports. Pretty much like Wikispaces.com, Google Sites, and Wetpaint's Wikis in Education, the service can be used by teachers to post assignments and handouts so that students can work on the assignments individually or collaboratively from home. According to eSchoolNews, Microsoft and other companies, such as Pearson Education, are responding to a call by Education Secretary Arne Duncan "to help keep home-bound students sick with the H1N1 flu virus connected to school."

Voice chat for Facebook users

The social utility's some 300 million users will soon be able to download a plug-in and talk to each other out loud. This news is not just about Facebook; it reflects a trend. Online chat may never move away from text entirely, but voice chat's footprint is definitely growing. "The new technology is not being offered by Facebook itself," CNET reports. "Instead, it's from Vivox, a Boston-based company that provides the integrated voice service for virtual worlds like Second Life and EVE Online, and which already has more than 15 million users worldwide. For Facebook users, it means being able to talk one-on-one with people on their friends lists as well as to participate in large group discussions. It also might add an audio component to some of their Facebook apps, including games: Vivox "is making its technology available to any third-party Facebook application developer," CNET adds. I use this technology on Monday nights to hear (and discuss) presentations by educators ¬– fellow members of the International Society of Technology in Education – as (my avatar) Anny Khandr in Second Life. [See also "Facebook makes money, tops $300 million users" in the Washington Post.]

*Updated* dig-lit definition (already!)

Connecticut-based youth officer Det. Frank Dannahey, valuable member of ConnectSafely.org's advisory board, sent me some excellent feedback on that last post, along the lines of: what about some reference to "digital"?! Minor oversight ;-) . So added two more lines to the definition:

Critical thinking and ethical choices
about
the content and impact
on
oneself, others, and one's community
of
what one sees, says, and produces
with
digital media, devices, and technologies.

You could also end with "in online environments," as Detective Dannahey suggested. The only reason why I changed that is because I hesitate to draw a solid line between online and offline, perpetuating that simplistic binary way we adults think. Young people make little distinction between online and offline – they just socialize, produce, participate, etc. – and citizenship and media literacy are protective and empowering in any environment. Anyway, thank you, Frank! So let's go with this one (or send more edits!). Collaboration is good.

A definition of digital literacy & citizenship

I pulled this out of my last post to see what you think about this as a working definition for a digital literacy that includes citizenship – the behavioral element that's part of using social media. Tell me what you think:

Critical thinking and ethical choices
about
the content and impact
on
oneself, others, and one's community
of
what one sees, says, and produces
with
media, devices, and technologies.

[If you're reading this separately, out of the context of my blog-stream, I later added the last two lines, thanks to feedback from a colleague.]

I've been thinking about this all year, seeing 1) a big overlap between new media literacy and digital citizenship (because media has a behavioral component now, and digital citizenship by definition includes media) and 2) a blend of the two as the lion's share of online safety for young people who are not so-called "at risk youth" – since the research shows that aggressive behavior online more than doubles a child's risk of being victimized. So mindful use of digital media and devices and good citizenship online are protective as well as empowering. [For background, mile markers in the thinking process were "Social media literacy" last February, "A new online safety" and "Why technopanics are bad" last April, and our ConnectSafely call to action, "Online Safety 3.0," this month.] Your feedback here, in the ConnectSafely forum, or in email (anne[at]netfamilynews.org) would be appreciated.

Students' own guidelines for blogging

The tips in this Tech & Learning blog are "only" meant to be guidelines for student blogging, but clearly they also teach digital citizenship and new media literacy – critical thinking about the content and impact of what one sees, says, and does on self, others, and community. For example, here are three of them: 1) "Only post things that you would want everyone (in school, at home, in other countries) to know. Ask yourself: Is this something I want everyone to see?" 7) "Treat other people the way you want to be treated. Ask yourself: Would I want someone to say this to me?" and 9) "Only post information that you can verify is true (no gossiping). Ask yourself: Is this inappropriate, immature or bullying?" The questions at the end of each are designed to help students personalize the guidelines. What's even more impressive about these pointers is that they were developed by 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders, and Kim Cofino – the writer of this blog post and a tech educator at the International School in Bangkok – and her fellow teachers found that they worked just as well at the middle and high school levels. Kim writes: "Being able to start this conversation with our middle school teachers using resources developed by 3rd, 4th and 5th grade students, clearly demonstrates that even our younger students really do understand both the power and the responsibilities of communicating to a global audience." [See this for more on new-media literacy).

Social sites, videogames can up IQs: UK researchers

Well, it depends on the social-networking service, actually. Psychologist Tracy Alloway at the University of Stirling in Scotland "told the British Research Association that Facebook brings about educational benefits because it requires users to exercise their working memory – their ability, in other words, to store and manipulate information," the Education Week blog reports and, according to The Telegraph, "playing video war games [strategy games, in other words] and solving Sudoku may have the same effect as keeping up to date with Facebook." Dr. Alloway's research team developed a "working memory training program" called "JungleMemory." After two months in the program, a group of "slow-learning" students aged 11-14 in the Durham area "saw 10 point improvements in IQ, literacy, and numeracy tests," and some who were at the bottom of their class at the beginning finished the program near the top, according to The Telegraph. Twitter, text messaging, YouTube, and TV don't produce the same results because they're mostly about short bursts of info that recipients don't have to store, process, and repackage, apparently. It isn't black and white, though, I think it's important to point out. It's not about specific sites or technologies so much as the brain activity involved in using them. Collaboratively producing and sharing a video on YouTube or writing a cellphone novel with text messages as writers do in Japan, would have entirely different effects from passively watching a video or quickly exchanging burst of info on a mobile phone. Here's coverage in the UK's IBTimes, and here's the last story on Facebook & grades that got a lot of coverage.