Beyond the Wall

"The Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) is a federal law enacted by Congress to address concerns about access to offensive content over the Internet on school and library computers." -FCC CIPA Consumer Factsheet


Parents, educators, the government: all wish to ensure that the world is made as safe as possible for our children.

Computers with internet access have become commonplace in schools and homes. With this increase in opportunity for connectivity has come a parallel increase in concern about the perceived dangers of cyberspace for minors. Legislation requiring the blocking of sites deemed inappropriate through the filtering of school district networks was intended to provide protection for students and peace of mind for their parents.

Unfortunately, this approach hasn't worked well for a number of reasons:

• no filter can catch every objectionable site, therefore relying on filters generates a false sense of security
• filters block many valuable resources. For example, a science class researching viruses would find any sites mentioning "sexually transmitted diseases" inaccessible, including sites maintained by the Federal government
• it is possible to get around filters by using proxy sites. Many students have become adept at circumventing the safeguards put in place to protect them
• while teachers may request that certain sites be unblocked for classroom use, the process can be frustrating and discourage technology use

But the biggest argument against depending on filters as the primary means of protection is that many students spend time outside of school on computers, unsupervised or inadequately supervised. Without instruction in safe use and good digital citizenship, children and teens leave themselves open to danger, though perhaps not the dangers that many adults fear.

According to the Crimes Against Children Research Center Fact Sheet

A growing number of people are promoting Internet safety education in an effort to help keep youngsters safe from Internet sex offenders. But some of the information in their lectures, pamphlets, videos, and web sites does not reflect what researchers have learned about the important features of these crimes.

There is a widely quoted statistic (from the 2005 University of New Hampshire Youth Internet Safety study) that 1 in 7 youth are threatened by "online predators." In fact,

• These solicitations did not necessarily come from "online predators". They were all unwanted online requests to youth to talk about sex, answer personal questions about sex or do something sexual. But many could have been from other youth. In most cases, youth did not actually know the ages of solicitors. When they believed they knew, they said about half were other youth.
• These solicitations were not necessarily devious or intended to lure. Most were limited to brief online comments or questions in chatrooms or instant messages. Many were simply rude, vulgar comments...
• Most recipients did not view the solicitations as serious or threatening. Two-thirds were not frightened or upset by what happened.
• Almost all youth handled unwanted solicitations easily and effectively. Most reacted by blocking or ignoring solicitors, leaving sites, or telling solicitors to stop.

A more immediate danger, one which is estimated to affect as many as 43% of our students, is cyber bullying. Unlike face-to-face bullying, the online version can take place 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Harassers, emboldened by electronic anonymity, can choose to prolong and extend their activities, drawing in others and leaving the chosen target with no safe haven.

The United States Congress has recently acted to bring CIPA into line with current research regarding student online safety:

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) are extremely pleased that on September 30 [2008] Congress passed, as part of S. 1492, an update to the Children's Internet Protection Act which requires schools participating in the E-Rate program to educate students regarding appropriate behavior on social networking and chat room sites and about cyberbullying. ISTE and CoSN have advocated for this approach for many years and we are pleased that Congress has now ratified our position. Education, not mandatory blocking and filtering, is the best way to protect and prepare America's students.

"Education, not mandatory blocking and filtering, is the best way to protect and prepare America's students."

We need to teach our children how to recognize danger, make good choices, and behave responsibly online. Beyond the wall lies the future.







"Beyond the wall" by Guiseppe Bognanni

A Meaningful Meme: Bullying

"st stanislaus is beaten by his brother" by antmoose

Clay Burell has once again challenged bloggers to think, respond, and make a difference.

In "A Meaningful Meme: Your 'Bullied Then, Successful Now' Stories" he re-links us to a podcast posting about his personal experiences with bullies and asks readers to share their own stories.

To be honest, my childhood was undramatic and largely uneventful. I was subject to some teasing about being chubby, which caused a lot of pre-teen angst, but my strong sense of self was able to bring me through this period relatively unscathed. I'm still conscious of my weight, but my eating habits are moderate and I don't have unreasonable expectations about my appearance. One positive result of my less-than-lean years is that I'm sensitive to the weight anxiety of others, particularly young females, and take care never to make any remarks that might be interpreted as critical of their body type.

With motherhood came an unexpected surge of rage and aggression when dealing with bullies: anyone who taunted or tormented my children had to deal with my militant protective instincts. My son and daughter have each fought their own battles with bullies, but the story is theirs to tell, if they so choose.

Now, as a teacher, I have come up against the latest, most vicious, form of bullying, cyber bullying. A school social worker told me that this is a very real danger, more traumatic than face to face bullying for a number of reasons:

• it occurs 24/7 so the victim can not escape even if physically removed from the bullies
• the (perceived) anonymity of the Internet encourages people who would not normally engage in bullying behavior to become cruel and verbally abusive
• others join in and goad the "combatants," frequently expanding the number of people involved, sometimes even drawing parents into the fracas
• online confrontations can spill over into real life, resulting in fights at school
• for those who are unable to cope with cyber bullying, there can be tragic results

There are a number of excellent online resources that deal with cyber bullying, cyber safety, and good digital citizenship. NetSmartz, WiredSafety, and the National Crime Prevention Council provide information on these issues.

The company for which I am a consultant, CyberSmart!, offers a free K-8 online curriculum with standards-based lesson plans and activity sheets that cover all aspects of responsible Internet use. There will be additions made to existing CyberSmart! lessons on bullying to create a complete bullying package of lessons for grades 2-12 available by beginning of the 2008-09 school year.

If you haven't done so yet, be sure to watch Growing Up Online, the PBS documentary about how the Internet impacts the lives of our children.

Even those of us who weren't personally victimized by bullies recognize their power for evil. Whether face to face or online, bullying is unacceptable at any age. We all need to be aware, alert, and ready to intervene wherever, whenever, however bullying appears.

Spindles

"If something bad can happen to even one child it shouldn’t be done" – paraphrased comment from meeting of a variety of DECS and AEU (Australian Education Union) representatives, Al Upton, and his Principal


In order to protect their beloved daughter, the King and Queen in "Sleeping Beauty" took the extraordinary step of banning spindles from their kingdom. Never having seen or handled such a tool, the young woman had no idea of either its utility or danger.

"The years went by, the little Princess grew and became the most beautiful girl in the whole kingdom. Her mother was always very careful to keep her away from spindles, but the Princess, on her sixteenth birthday, as she wandered through the castle, came into a room where an old servant was spinning.

"What are you doing?" she asked the servant.

"I'm spinning. Haven't you seen a spindle before?"

"No. Let me see it!" The servant handed the girl the spindle ... and she pricked herself with it and. with a sigh, dropped to the floor." - Charles Perault, La Belle au Bois dormant (The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood)

Sleep, ignorance, inexperience are no substitute for vigilance, knowledge, guided practice. Graham Wegner wonders about the nature of risks:

If one child could slip and possibly fall with injurious consequences, then there is risk. But the benefits of the playground far outweigh the negatives - the learning, the gaining of skills, the creation of games and the friendship of playing with your mates. And we are careful with the playground environment - no sharp edges, designs that cater for a variety of skill levels, soft fall on the ground, rules for safe play, teacher supervision - so that the risks are managed and lead to beneficial learning of physical skills.

Why would we treat the risks regarding, say, the use of blogs in the classroom any differently? Why do risks associated with technology seem to be so threatening that shutting down and banning is seen as the appropriate way to deal with it? And are those responsible for recommending or enforcing these methods really in touch with real or perceived risks?

Although both Al Upton and his Australian colleague, Sue Waters, stress that "They [Upton and his principal] are after constructive helpful comments and thoughts; and a balanced discussion of the issues," comments from the meeting seem to indicate that the miniLegends blog would have to be stripped of all interactive components to pass muster.

"Their key concerns are to make sure everyone is protected against all risks." Is such a thing possible?

The hedge of thorns that protected the sleeping princess will not spring up to shelter our students. The spindles in their world may not be as dangerous as the measures taken to ban them.

If schools are not allowed to teach children Internet safety and digital citizenship, how and when will they learn?

"Sharp Thorns" by katmere
"Familie mit Frau am Spinnrad" by Hermann Sondermann
"The Sleeping Beauty" by Sir Edward Burne-Jones

The World's Great Anguish

"Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie, but rather mourn the apathetic throng, the coward and the meek who see the world's great anguish and its wrong, and dare not speak." -Ralph Chaplin


The Megan Meier tragedy has been on my mind a lot lately. Yesterday I took an informal poll of some upper elementary and high school students, hoping to get a sense of their technology use and their awareness of how to be safe online.

Approximately five of forty 5th and 6th graders said they had their own Myspace or Facebook accounts. A few boys said they occasionally posted messages using another person's log-in. When I reminded them that the legal age for signing up for these services is 14 (the oldest of them were 12 years old), they laughed and said that they just clicked on whatever birth year would allow them to join. Many more of them had webkinz virtual pets. The webkinz owners enjoyed the online interaction and didn't seem bothered by the limited messaging that the official site allows.

It was quite a different story with my high school Current Events students. The boys (our sole female class member was absent) estimated that 2/3 of the middle school and high school population belongs to Myspace or Facebook. They seemed to feel reasonably safe online and accept the fact that our school blocks all social networking and most interactive sites.

Since the Meier case is very much in the news lately, I had my class watch an interview with Megan's parents and read some tips from the Department of Homeland Security on Dealing with Cyberbullies. The students' most interesting reactions were in response to some short YouTube clips, prepared by the non-profit Ad Council.

The first video, Cyberbullying Talent Show featured a fresh-faced little girl standing in front of a school assembly, sweetly listing the things wrong with a classmate ("Her dad doesn't work, they have no money, that's why she wears that nasty pink sweater"). In Cyberbullying Kitchen a similar scenario unfolds as one teenager calmly tells her "friend" (ironically named Megan) that "you are a tramp" and the "most desperate girl [he] knows - besides your Mom". The idea being presented in both vignettes was "If you wouldn't say it in person, why say it online?"

My students seemed shocked by the comments, even though their own language occasionally strays from the "school appropriate". Perhaps they hold girls to a different code of behavior, or perhaps hearing such insults being used in front of a teacher made them uncomfortable. The point that words written online can be just as hurtful as words spoken aloud was well made and well taken.

Although I had heard of a girl being harassed online by her classmates last year, none of the boys said they had ever felt uncomfortable or threatened online. I asked them to write their reaction to the Megan Meier case, and these are some of their responses:

"I think that it's very sad. If people weren't such bullies, she'd probably still be alive, to live her life."

"Cyberbullying is a problem. I think it needs to be dealt with. I am not scared by cyberbullying because I think cyberbullies are little woosies trying to act tough on the internet."

"I think that the whole Megan Meier case is just sad. I think that she should have alerted somebody about it. She shouldn't have done what she did. [committed suicide] They should definitely start making laws concerning Myspace, chat rooms, and other stuff like that."

"I have never been bullied or bullied anyone. It is wrong and should be stopped...There should be certain rules and if they're broken, certain punishments should be set up. It is wrong..."

"I think it should be monitored on Myspace and others [sites]. I think the people [who set up the fake "Josh" account] should be prosecuted."

"I think that this case is very sad. I wish that someone could have helped this girl or that she could have figured out what was really going on."

"Cyberbullying is a problem. Megan Meier should not have died."

"Any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." -John Donne



"Saddness" by RadoB

Timor mortis

Timor mortis conturbat me is a Latin phrase commonly found in late medieval English poetry. It can be translated into a number of different ways, most literally as "fear of death confounds me". However, a better translation in the context of the poetic usage of the phrase is "fear of death upsets me". Another looser translation is "I am scared to death of dying". The phrase comes from a responsory of the medieval Office of the Dead, the third nocturn of Matins...Wikipedia

It was from a Twitter friend that I first learned about the Megan Meier tragedy. This young teenager took her own life after being the victim of cyber bullying on a MySpace account. The disparaging messages that led to Megan's suicide were actually written by adult neighbors monitoring their own daughter's online activities.

Megan Meier's parents thought they were adequately supervising her computer use. They knew about her social networking and had been told of the fictitious "Josh" who was messaging their daughter. When Megan began responding to unexpectedly cruel posts with vulgar language, her mother told insisted that she stop such "upsetting" behavior. Twenty minutes later, Megan Meier was dead by hanging.

Wesley Fryer recommends stronger anti-bullying instruction in schools, more parental involvement in prevention programs, and increased emphasis on positive online experiences like digital storytelling to showcase information literacy skills. He also urges parents and school districts to "encourage students to socially network online in age-appropriate, moderated and non-commercial environments like Imbee.com and/or Think.com."

Tomorrow in class I'll be sharing the story with my high school Current Events students and tackling the issue of cyber bullying. Perhaps I can get them to realize the seriousness of bullying, whether in person or online.

On a dark and cold November evening, my surroundings are as somber as my thoughts. Megan, requiescat in pace.


"The most painful death in all the world is the death of a child. When a child dies, when one child dies—not the 11 per 1,000 we talk about statistically, but the one that a mother held briefly in her arms—he leaves an empty place in a parent’s heart that will never heal." -Thomas H Kean, Governor of New Jersey

"A child miseducated is a child lost." -John F. Kennedy



"Writer's Close 04" by cx1uk

A Horse of a Different Color

"What kind of a horse is that? I've never seen a horse like that before!" she exclaims. To which the cabbie replies, "No, and never will again, I fancy. There's only one of him, and he's it. He's the Horse of a Different Color you've heard tell about."
-Dorothy, while touring Oz
A week ago, Andy Carvin commented on the U.S. Senate committee hearing regarding children’s online safety. Rather than just proposing stricter filtering regulations, chairperson Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI) spoke in favor of "a broad-based strategy that doesn’t rely solely on technology to protect kids".

Dr. David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, presented research findings that suggest teenagers in particular put themselves at risk, not by sharing personal information online, blogging or joining a social network, but by engaging in explicit conversations and frequenting sex chat rooms.

Here we have "a horse of a different color", something significantly different from what is expected. The government required that filters be put in place to block access to certain types of internet sites, like Facebook and myspace, thought to present a clear danger to young users. But it appears that what is necessary is intensive education in the nature and tactics of sexual predators.

Technology provides the tools. Like any tools, they can be used for good or ill. It's education that will make the difference, present students with guidelines and caveats for online interaction.

We didn't anticipate this research finding; but now that we know what type of instruction our children and young adults need to protect themselves in a digital world, it's our job to see that they get it.

"Because we cannot control all that our children see, hear, and play, it is tempting to throw up our hands and do nothing. Although we cannot do everything, we can do something, and this is to talk with our children and teenagers about unexpected encounters with inappropriate violence, sexuality, and profanity."
-David Elkind (20th century), U.S. child psychologist and author. Ties That Stress