Cyber Bullying and Public Schools

This week a prominent blogger described the recent death threats she has received through comments on her blog and in other places on the Internet. Bloggers rallied to her defense, including many prominent edu-bloggers. Andy Carvin, PBS Teachers blogger, proposed a day dedicated to stopping cyber-bullying. Stop Cyber-Bullying Day is tomorrow March 30, 2007. What this means for educators and non-educators is open to interpretation, but Carvin lists the primary goal is "to talk about it." There is no curriculum or set of activities, but a couple of activities are suggested: (1) create a anti-cyber-bullying podcast or PSA and upload it to the Internet (iTunes or youtube) and tag with stopcyberbullying or (2) ensure that the topic is covered in class Friday using materials from http://www.cyberbullying.us/ or http://www.cyberbully.org/ or http://www.csriu.org/

I also recommend that those of us working in public schools take it a step further. Evaluate your school board policies to determine whether the policy covers "cyber-bullying". If the policy does not cover this topic encourage your board to take on this issue. There are several recent articles on this issue, including a discussion by the National School Board Association. This is an emerging issue for school boards, but is pertinent and timely and cannot be ignored.

Scott McLeod of Dangerously Irrelevant and Schoolhouse Gate has informed me that he plans to blog tomorrow on the legal aspects of addressing cyber-bullying and has a podcast covering some of the issues. Watch for this blog. Check youtube.com for the tag: stopcyberbullying. Spread the word.

Thanks to Scott McLeod for the picture.