Cyberbullying Research Center Blog

Guidelines for updating your school’s social networking policy

Sameer — Wed, 09 May 2012 12:27:31 +0000

As a followup to our last blog post, we’d like to share some more guidance to keep in mind as you are updating and refining your school’s policy related to Facebook (and other social networking sites). We hope this is helpful for you. Please remember, though, that you must do a lot more than policy [...]

Public schools, Facebook, and the FCC

Sameer — Mon, 07 May 2012 14:12:23 +0000

Our colleague Mike Donlin and I have been talking out some issues related to public education and teen technology use. He has recently pointed out that there are certain points that the FCC would like schools to know as it relates to their intersection with and use of social networking sites. Specifically, schools need to [...]

Cyberbullying Your Own Kids to Punish Them

Sameer — Tue, 01 May 2012 14:44:46 +0000

Canadian Cyberbullying Educator and Speaker Lissa Albert and I have been chatting about some parents engaging in controversial and arguably questionable behavior to “send a message” to their teenagers about appropriate and inappropriate behavior. These instances have gone viral, and Lissa has done a great job of providing a backdrop of this practice as well [...]

School Climate 2.0: Preventing Cyberbullying and Sexting One Classroom at a Time

Justin — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 19:34:03 +0000

We’ve been discussing the importance of school climate as it relates to bullying and cyberbullying quite a bit on this blog (see here and here for examples). Well, we just published a whole book on the topic! School Climate 2.0: Preventing Cyberbullying and Sexting is now in print and available from the publisher, on Amazon, [...]

How Many Teens are Actually Involved in Cyberbullying?

Justin — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 14:59:27 +0000

Estimates of the number of teens who have experienced cyberbullying are all over the map. I can point you to a paper published in a peer-reviewed academic journal that says that 72% of students have been cyberbullied while another published study puts the number at 5.5%. The numbers are similarly varied when it comes to [...]

Can a School Respond to Off-Campus Cyberbullying?

Justin — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 17:30:24 +0000

We discuss the legal issues associated with schools responding to cyberbullying incidents quite often in this space. You can find many blog posts which attempt to clarify the variety of issues raised (see here and here) and we have a summary fact sheet that is available here. Of course the law, and our understanding of [...]

Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation Launch, and School Climate!

Sameer — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 14:44:44 +0000

Justin and I had a great time at Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation launch at Harvard University last week. It was amazing to be surrounded by such brilliant scholars, researchers, and practitioners from across the United States, and even a few from England and Australia. The professional event we were a part of was [...]

Wisconsin’s Bullying Law

Justin — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:16:12 +0000

As a resident of the state of Wisconsin and someone who follows bullying legislation from around the United States pretty closely (see our summary here), I was particularly interested to learn that a proposal was being put forward to update Wisconsin’s bullying law. Wisconsin’s law took effect in 2010 and requires schools to have a [...]

Facebook for Educators, and the issues we need to consider

Sameer — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:39:40 +0000

I have been chatting with my colleague Nancy Willard of the Center for Responsible Internet Use about Facebook in schools, and how they should and should not be used by educators. These are her recent thoughts with some of my input added…just to get some more discussion going on this issue. We both think that [...]

Facebook Timeline and Your Privacy

Sameer — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 12:47:31 +0000

By now, you have probably seen Facebook’s newest controversial overhaul to profile pages. Dubbed “Facebook Timeline,” the latest out of Palo Alto is being described by the social networking behemoth as a new way to “Tell your life story.” With these changes, it is clear that Facebook intends to allow its users to do just [...]