Legal Issues Associated with the Use of Technology
Technology has certainly enhanced the delivery of content and student learning over the years, but the misuse of technology is a growing problem. Educators, parents, students, administrators, and community members need to take steps to prevent and address misuse issues.
View this podcast, Technology in the Schools: Policy, Privacy and Practical Issues for Teachers, IT and Others by Celynda Brasher, an attorney. The presentation addresses policy and legal issues associated with the use of technology in schools. She provides suggestions on how school districts and their employees can protect themselves against lawsuits. She emphasized the importance of Acceptable Use Policies and that any person who uses a school district computer should sign the policy yearly.
The October 2006 suicide of Megan Meier has brought about cyber bulling information and discussion through the media. Megan committed suicide after being bullied through myspace. Click here for more information about this tragedy:
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=3882520&page=1
http://stcharlesjournal.stltoday.com/articles/2007/11/10/news/sj2tn20071110-1111stc_pokin_1.ii1.txt
The end result of the harassment was heartbreaking. There are individuals that would like to see the parents responsible for the bullying charged with a crime. This blog http://daveandthomas.blogspot.com/2007/11/technology-outpaces-law-megan-meier.html explains that technology is outpacing the law which makes it difficult sometimes to make an arrest. At the rate of the technology advancements, it seems impossible to have laws in place for protection.
On Andy Calvin’s blog at http://www.pbs.org/teachers/learning.now/2007/03/march_30_participate_in_stop_c_1.html , he explains about Kathy Sierra who is a well-respected programmer, blogger and educator who’s been involved in computer education for over a decade was attacked on her blog. Someone adulterated a photo of Kathy, digitally adding a piece of red lingerie that’s being used to gag her. That is just one example of the vicious attacks that have been made against her.
If myspace or facebook is used for classroom purposes and then a student uses one of those tools to harrass or bully another student, is the teacher or school somewhat responsible?
Should the adults responsible for the bullying of Megan Meier be convicted of a crime?
How prevalent is cyber bullying?
How can we protect ourselves from being attacked in cyber space?
11 comments:
I don't know how prevalent cyberspace bullying is because I'm not on that space. Should educators monitor what is said? I don't know enough to make an informed judgment, which is too bad. When I read about the young woman who committed suicide, I felt bad for her and the family. I don't believe suicide is linear-one comment, kill oneself. The young woman seemed troubled and the email was the tipping point. But suicide is another issue and the point of this blog posting is monitoring.
I'm trying to put myself in the place of a mother with a teenage daughter. My own daughter was picked on unmercifully at that age. We supported her and she is OK now; those were hard years. But things weren't printed and IM didn't pop up on her screen. Can you disengage IM? Is there a way out there to protect our children? I will read other posts and chime in later, perhaps. I am at a loss here.
I agree there were probably some underlying self esteem issues with the young teen. However, it was parents of her neighbor who created the fake my space of a young teenage boy who was interested in her. They communicated for several months before "he" turned on her and the messages sent to her in the final days were distrubing.
This was an example of where adults preyed on a young girl via my space.
The question you raise is a very troubling one, but I'm not sure that the answer is to try to control the Internet. It seems to me that there are a limited number of possible responses. Two of them come from seeing the problem as coming from the Internet itself. If we think MySpace bullying directly caused the suicide of Megan Meier, or if we blame the capabilities of the Internet for the harassment of individuals like Kathy Sierra, then we have to think of the Internet itself as the problem. Then the question becomes, can legislation control the problem? If so, how? But what if the Internet can't be controlled, or what if putting in such controls would create more harm than good?
The other response is to see the means by which these cruelties were perpetrated as a mere tool in the hands of cruel people. Bullying is not new; it has caused suicides and other forms of violence in the past, without the Internet. We have never had laws against bullying, even when that bullying provoked suicides and murder. Why would we hold the perpetrators of Internet bullying legally responsible when we have never done that to traditional bullies? Is the Internet bully more evil than the kid who leaves an anonymous note or starts a rumour? Why are we treating Internet bullying as somehow more heinous than the traditional kind?
You have some excellent points.
I am sure some individuals would communicate in a way sitting at home behind their computer that they would never do face to face.
I don't know why, but my comment was listed as "anonymous" But it was me. I take full credit, or blame as the case may be.
Judy
Judy,
I am glad you made the clarification. I wasn't sure who made the first comment.
I'd like to respond again to your first post.
I think as educators we need to teach our students ethical use of computers and the tools. Parents at home must be involved as well.
I agree - we must teach students the proper way to use the internet. I think what the parent down the street did is deplorable! But who in the world would ever think an adult would do such a sick thing to a young person? It defies imagination!
But, bullying has been going on forever and we, as parents, need to intervene at points. I believe parents - and I can only speak as a parent of grown children- need to teach children how to handle bullies, cyberspace or otherwise. They don't go away when we become adults; they just get sneakier. I tried to teach my own children that sick people are every where and how to handle them. I believe we can't protect our children from everything and we must teach how to handle unfortunate situations. Cyberspace holds another wrinkle that needs to be handled. But how?
This is aside from the unfortunate incident in the article cited. That situation is so out of the realm of anyone's thoughts, who would go investigating the perpetrator? Perhaps we need to teach that not everything is as it seems online or in life.
I would like to open my comment by saying what a great blog post. You have added great links and created an interesting topic to comment to. We all have grown in large increments within the last few weeks from taking this class!
Your question about holding the teacher or school responsible for bullying that happens within a school assignment while using computers raises a couple different thoughts from me. Students should be aware of their rights and limits while using school property when it comes to computers. I feel it is a privilege to use computers within the school. Privileges that are abused should be revoked. Schools must have policies in place to deal with these problems as they occur. I feel if a teacher and a school properly do their job at monitoring computer activity such bullying should be held to a minimum. On the other hand, I have seen rather free policies of schools and teachers that scare me. It is almost like they are asking for trouble. To hold teachers and schools responsible for incidents probably has to be looked at on an individual basis. As a teacher I would not want to be caught up in an issue over cyber bullying, and I hope I am taking the right steps to prevent such a problem from happening.
This is a very timely and well-developed blog post with excellent links. I read lots of educational blogs that condemn schools for being so "strict" in their network policies because there are so many good educational uses of Web 2.0 tools. But there are two sides to this coin. And your blog post shows the evidence. Network administrators weigh in on the side of safety because of the chance of tragic situations that can arise. Yes, schools and teachers are held accountable when the use of social tools in education lead to harassment and bullying. And yes, the individuals responsible for the bullying of Megan Meier should be convicted of a crime. Although cyber bullying is not something we see in our "little neck of the woods," it is a real danger. One that none of us can take lightly. We need to continually teach our children Internet safety. We can never let our guard down.
Your topic was very interesting to me this past week because the case that you cited happened in the neighborhood right next to one of my son's. Some of the towns in that area are now developing laws to toughen the penalties. As teachers, we do not ignore bullying that goes on in our schools. The same is true with bullying over the internet. We need to be vigilant and also take any available opportunities to educate our students on how to handle those situations. I am afraid that one of the reasons schools are reluctant to integrate more of the internet tools such as blogs is in fear that the cyber bullying will happen. As parents and teachers we must keep active in this area and constantly aware of what is going on. Mindy
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