Tuesday, November 20, 2007
« The U.S. Department of Mis-Edjukashun | Main | Playing multiple violent videogames incr... »
13 year old commits suicide, bullied by a mother on myspace!

First: LEARN HOW TO HANDLE CYBERBULLIES


Second: SCHOOLS THAT HIDE TEACHER WRONGDOING FROM STATES ENDANGER KIDS -
SAFE SCHOOLS = SAFE WORLD: RESOURCES THAT PROVIDE GUIDANCE FOR MAINTAINING SAFE SCHOOLS

Third - Social Networking Resources and Tools. There is nothing wrong with myspace or any other technology.


Megan Meier, 13, committed suicide allegedly because a 16-year-old boy had changed his mind and no longer wanted to be her friend. It was a cyberbullying case because the "relationship," from beginning to end, was conducted entirely online. Adding to the tragedy, the "boy" never existed. As in the New Zealand cases, the "owner" of the social-networking profile around which the "relationship" developed was a fictional character.

The cyberbully, the creator of the fictional profile and relationship, was an adult. The mother of a teenage girl who had parted ways with Megan allegedly created a MySpace profile for "Josh." The story she made up - because, she told the paper, she wanted to see what Megan would say about her daughter online - was that "Josh" was new in town, being home-schooled, came from a "broken home," and had no phone number. Helped by her daughter and another teenage girl, the mother reportedly had this fictitious boy contact Megan through her MySpace profile and ask her to "friend" him. The girl, who had been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and struggled with being overweight, reportedly was thrilled - for the six weeks last fall that the Josh profile's creators led her on. She committed suicide on Oct. 16, 2006.

The reports were that Megan was the victim of bullying since 3rd grade. In this case, it was the parents of another student who tormented Megan Meier. Other parents in the community knew what the Drews were doing, yet remained silent. Cyberbullying is simply a new subset of bullying that has been plaguing schools forever. Over 75% of the school shooters were victims of bullying. Cyberbullying is resulting in school avoidance, school failure, school violence, and youth suicide. The fraudulent account is probably only a violation of the MySpace Terms of Service. This is outrageous.
In many schools even if a student reports something bad in happening online the safeschool person cannot even go and look to assess the problem
There are major issues related to when schools can intervene with formal discipline to cases involving off-campus speech. Resource officers, counselors, psychologists, and principals ALL MUST have the ability and authority to immediately bypass the filter to be able to access any site on the Internet to review material posted by students to assess student and school safety!
Whenever the school district filter is bypassed, there is a record. So there can be accountability. You can suggest that your school district have a web form where any person who has the authority to bypass the filter can  ­ and does ­ simply reports: Date, Approximate time, Bypass accomplished by, At the request of, For the purpose of, URLs accessed (no need to report all ­ but just general area).

See detailed article in the St. Charles Journal that gives a lot more insight.
http://stcharlesjournal.stltoday.com/articles/2007/11/10/news/sj2tn20071110-1111stc_pokin_1.ii1.txt


Quotation of the Day for November 18, 2007 "I don't know what it is about this particular moment in human history which lends itself to the sanction of miscellaneous and casual
cruelty," says cyber-guru John Perry Barlow, vice chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Cyberspace, he says, "has a way of making us feel like other people are informational artifacts. If you cut data, it doesn't bleed. So you're at liberty to do anything you want to people who are not people but merely images."
~ John Perry Barlow, quoted in a story on the insensitivity all too prevalent on the Internet.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/13/AR2007111302302.html

The town's working on making online harassment a crime, a "Class B misdemeanor," the Journals reported separately http://stcharlesjournal.stltoday.com/articles/2007/11/14/news/doc473bc0aebb167666086063.txt>, "punishable by 90 days in jail and/or a $500 fine." At the state level, that would be a Class A misdemeanor, possibly leading to a year's imprisonment and/or a $1,000 fine, the Journals added. Missouri State Rep. Cynthia Davis, R-19th District, of O'Fallon (Mo.) said she would explore proposing state legislation but acknowledged that cyberbullying is a problem that goes well beyond town, state, and even national jurisdictions.


USATODAY's Janet Kornblum http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/internetprivacy/2007-11-07-online-dangers_N.htm looking at both the real risks and the misconceptions that have developed about how teens are victimized online. Not that dangers don't exist, but "some worry that parents are falling victim to 'predator panic' and overreacting to unlikely dangers, unintentionally turning children off to safety messages altogether," she reports.
Associated Press reports http://www.usatoday.com/tech/wireless/phones/2007-11-12-disney-cellphone-japan_N.htm> that Disney is partnering with Softbank, Japan's No. 3 mobile carrier, to offer cellphones complete with Disney content and services for kids in that country.


William Gibson http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/17227831/william_gibson_the_rolling_stone_40th_anniversary_interview says "one of the things our grandchildren will find quaintest about us is that we distinguish the digital from the real, the virtual from the real. In the future, that will become literally impossible. The distinction between cyberspace and that which isn't cyberspace is going to be unimaginable [as it is now to many young social networkers]. When I wrote 'Neuromancer' in 1984, cyberspace already existed for some people, but they didn't spend all their time there. So cyberspace was there, and we were here. Now cyberspace is here for a lot of us, and there has become any state of relative nonconnectivity. There is where they don't have Wi-Fi." I recently heard a group of women bemoaning the fact that teens actually say they "hang out" with friends in social sites, that they can say they hang out with people who aren't even in the same room. How anti-social, they felt. Maybe if a child, out of fear or anxiety, is social networking is replacing socializing with people in "real life," maybe not if s/he is just making use of another tool for socializing with real-life friends, nearby or distant.

Internet  | K12 Newsletters Mailing List
Tuesday, November 20, 2007 5:41:42 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Disclaimer  |  Comments [2]  |  Related posts:
Voting in 2008 A Report by Common Cause and the Century Foundation
The Ballad of Tom Dooley aka Tom Dula
Colombus Day Teach History Through Song
Palin has used personal yahoo e-mail accounts to conduct state business
Stevens Institute Cathching Up In Math and Science
[ECP] K12 Newsletters