Pandora’s Blog

Two good stories I thought I’d share on this nice early autumn Friday…

The Rondout District 72 in Florida has started a Digital Citizenship Project, which just sounds awesome!

In Colquitt County Georgia, the school system has boosted its emphasis on bullying, along with a revamping of its Internet use policy to include a new section on cyber-bullying. Excellent!!

Remember, bullying won’t stop until the parents of the bullies care to step in… but before they can do that – they need to be aware!

Do you have a bully in your house? PC Pandora will let you know for sure if your child is a bully or a victim…

As a post-script, there is another article that I think is worth checking out: Social Networking in Schools: Incentives for Participation. Though it turns into a bit of a pitch for companies that fit the story’s bill, the idea behind everything is very spot on – social networking can be used to help foster education. It’s just a matter of finding a way to make sure no bad air gets in the windows. Check that story out too if you have time…

September 15, 2009
Rondout Dist. 72 to study digital learning
By Mick Zawislak, Daily Herald Staff

While the Internet can be a boundless resource for students, Rondout District 72 plans to expand instruction beyond where to find information.

The tiny district near Lake Forest will be hosting forums this year to include residents and parents as part of its Digital Citizenship Project.

“It goes above and beyond the whole idea of Internet safety,” said Supt. Jenny Wojcik. “It’s not only how to stay safe but the responsibility you have when you’re a member of the e-community.”

Rondout already had been providing safety instruction for kindergarten through eighth-grade students in weekly technology classes, but plans to expand its reach through a series of community forums beginning this fall.

Those likely will include: social networking, texting and “sexting;” protection from predators; parents’ legal responsibilities; and raising children in a digital world, according to Wojcik. The forums have not yet been scheduled.

“It takes it a couple of steps beyond, ‘How do you use the Internet to find information?’” she said. “While it’s important to provide students with content instruction, we’re thinking about life skills and really being transformative.”

A small but well-funded district, Rondout for the last four years has been operating a one-to-one initiative, in which each student in sixth through eighth grades has access to a laptop. The ratio is two students per laptop in lower grades.

The district also will be stepping up basic instruction, Wojcik said.

“We really need to help individuals and our students (with) what are accurate sources of information,” she said. As part of the instruction, older students will become leaders working with those in lower grades.

“This is going to be part of children’s lives,” Wojcik said. “They really need to think about the responsibility they have as citizens of a digital world.”

Beginning this school year, public school districts must incorporate a component of Internet safety to be taught at lease once a year to students in third grade and above. Individual school boards determine the scope and duration of the instruction.

Components of the state mandate include the responsible use of social networking Web sites, chat rooms, e-mail and bulletin boards, for example. Students also are supposed to be instructed on how to recognize, avoid and report online solicitations by sexual predators among other features.

It also is standard practice for districts to require parents to approve of Internet use in the schools.

In Diamond Lake District 76, for example, parents have to sign an agreement for Internet access, which includes a list of non-permitted uses, including accessing or sending offensive materials. Improper use can result in expulsion.

September 16, 2009
School system on lookout for bullies
Alan Mauldin

— MOULTRIE — With the realignment of Colquitt County Schools this year the system has boosted its emphasis on bullying, along with a revamping of its Internet use policy to include a new section on cyber-bullying.

In 2008, 31.9 percent of students surveyed reported being bullied or bullying others, according to information the school system released to the state. The responses were from 1,589 students in grades six, eight, 10 and 12 who responded in the 2008 Georgia Student Health Survey.

For the previous school year 636 incidents of bullying, threatening or aggressive behavior were recorded in student discipline records, accounting for about 13 percent of total student discipline incidents, the system said.

Most of those disciplinary cases occurred in grades six through nine, which are “transition years” when students are moving to new schools, said Fritzie Sheumaker, the school system’s director of human resources with oversight of student services.

The system has specifically targeted those transition years but the anti-bullying effort is system-wide, she said. This year all school personnel received training in prevention of bullying.

“We’ve really been trying to put additional emphasis on bullying prevention,” Sheumaker said. “Every employee from bus drivers, cafeteria workers, teachers, everybody had to have an orientation for recognizing bullying and what to do when they see it. It’s not just a matter of teachers and administrators. Anybody can say ‘stop, don’t do that, it’s bullying.’”

Some school counselors also are getting additional bullying-prevention training this week from a nationally recognized group, the Owlets Bullying Prevention Program, Sheumaker said.

While the typical conception of bullying is physical violence or intimidation, it also can include such behavior as excluding someone from an activity, she said.

Among the other tactics the system has employed is having bus drivers talk with students who ride their buses. Administrators also have been on buses to stress the need for good behavior.

“I think part of it is just that, relationships that staff members form with the students, to know as many names as they can, building the social norm that’s against bullying,” Sheumaker said.

Anti-bullying posters are up in all schools, and school officials are telling students that reporting bullying is not “tattling.”

“We emphasize that part of our job is to keep you safe,” Sheumaker said. “We can’t know everything that goes on, so you need to report things when we need to get help for a student. The idea is to report things to keep someone from getting hurt.”

Sheumaker said that forms were sent home to all parents of elementary school students to educate the parents on the signs of bullying and encourage them to report those behaviors.

Depending on the circumstances of a case of bullying or other aggressive behavior, students can face disciplinary action ranging from a conference with parents to suspension or alternative school placement. In extreme cases it can lead to expulsion.

The Internet use policy presented this week to Colquitt County School Board includes a new section that requires providing instruction to students on the dangers of social networking sites and the characteristics of cyber-bullying and how to “appropriately respond” to that activity.

Social networking sites are blocked by filtering software in the schools, but Sheumaker said that many students have access to those sites, some of which have been used in bullying incidents, at home. Students also should not be able to access most private e-mail accounts from school but are allowed to have cell phones on campus.

“We really have to encourage parents to know what their children are doing on the Internet (at home) and check text messages,” Sheumaker said.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 18th, 2009 at 2:17 PM and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.