As far as high-tech misunderstandings go, this was a big one. An East Stroudsburg University sociology professor made two provocative posts on her Facebook page, according to the Web site Inside Higher Ed: "Does anyone know where to find a very discreet hitman? Yes, it's been that kind of day" and, "had a good day today, DIDN'T want to kill even one student :-) Now Friday was a different story."
Teachable moment/Good lesson for kids: online actions have offline consequences, even in the adult world.
Teachable moment: In addition to the three important lessons, the teacher guided students through a process of creating and posting their own version of appropriate rules for cell phones in school. Over five dozen student comments are posted. Interesting stuff.
Original coverage of the Olivia Gardner story in the San Francisco Chronicle. See: <b>Bullied girl finds comfort in letters from hundreds of strangers</b>, a campaign begun by two Mill Valley sisters in 2007.
Made a mistake? Own it, Fix it, Learn from it." Learn how this teacher handled the consequences of computer hacking attempts by her students.
People around the world are pouring their hearts out and offering words of encouragement and sympathy to a Northern California teenager who was taunted and teased so mercilessly that she stayed up nights thinking of ways she could kill herself.\n\n
Teachable Moment involving identity theft of a student account at school.
Why waste valuable social networking hours getting yourself "Facebook fired," when Twitter allows you to humiliate yourself quickly, and in 140 characters or less?
Here is another link where a teacher explains her experience teaching cybersafety - and the kids reactions and asks for input from others on better ideas. There were some good ideas here! I liked the one where the teacher brought up actual kids' My Space pages and had them critique them!
When middle schoolers put up an "I Hate Olivia" site, this student changed schools three times. Eventually, she ended up home-schooled. But learn how other students from Mill Valley School District ( in the same county) worked with their school counselor and started a national campaign to boost her spirits.
A Lehigh Acres teen is accused of hacking into a Lee County school’s computer system and sending threatening messages to parents. The student is facing charges of two counts of an offense against intellectual property/modify without authority computer support document, each a third degree felony, and three counts of an offense against computer users/computer crime/interrupt or impair a governmental operation or public communication, each a second degree felony.
In November 2001 the National Capital Commission, the Crown corporation responsible for planning and developing Canada's National Capital Region, caused some controversy when they published a promotional brochure for the city of Ottawa that featured a digitally enhanced photo on its cover.
The author illustrates how he went about authenticating whether a Twitter plea for help (buried under rubble in Chile) was for real or a hoax. Great teachable moment for showing kids not to believe everything they read. This story could be used to launch a classroom discussion.
A blogger recounts the story of a woman's search for a housekeeper. After checking the work resumes of the most promising candidates, she googled each person's name. The results illustrate the need to manage your personal identity online and could be used as a good teaching example for kids.
Although written to a corporate audience, there's much to be learned here on what information is/is not private on the internet. It would be a good class exercise for students to sleuth what information is known about their classmates and themselves.
An inappropriate comment has arrived on a student site. What do you do? How do you turn this into a teachable moment?
GINA'S STORY - first-person account of a high school student whose photos were high-jacked from her private page on a social networking site. They were altered with PhotoShop and covered with nasty comments, then posted on another site for everyone to see.
Higher ed requires incoming freshmen to take Composition and some form of math, and so, too, should universities require students to take a course that helps them identify reputable information in the vast expanse of the web.
A 6th grade teacher outlines an exercise he did with students to get them to understand the significance of privacy and protecting their identities online.