Posts Tagged ‘facebook’

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Facebook Leads to the Arrest of a 14-Year-Old Bully

March 15, 2013

lashing

The constant stories of special needs students being bullied is frightening.

A 14-year-old boy has been arrested after a video of an assault on another pupil who desperately tried to defend himself was posted online.

The Facebook clip appears to show a teenager from Winifred Holtby School in Hull, East Yorkshire, repeatedly hitting another boy, lashing out six times with his fists and headbutting him twice.

Pupils have condemned the 27-second video taken on a school bus, which has been shared more than 200 times, with nearly 700 Facebook users expressing their anger and sadness over the attack.

What I don’t like about the reaction from the school is their reliance on policies to avert any personal responsibility:

He added: ‘While we will not specifically discuss this case, we do not and we will not tolerate the behaviour shown. The school’s behaviour policy clearly states our expectations for our students.

‘We will do everything we can by using the school powers that are available to us to uphold not only the reputation of the school but our local community as well.’

Sue Yardley, senior education officer for behaviour and attendance at Hull City Council, said: ‘This behaviour is absolutely unacceptable.

‘Schools have the power to discipline actions such as this, even when it occurs outside of school, in accordance with their discipline policy.

Their in-depth policies may have saved them legally, but for this to occur, parents and anxious members of the public should raise the obvious question – Is a set of policies sufficient to stop bullying behavior?

To view the graphic video click on this link.

Click on the link to read School Official’s Solution to Harassed Teen: Get a Breast Reduction

Click on the link to read Self-Esteem Crisis Even More Serious than the Obesity Crisis

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Posted in Bullying | Leave a Comment »

Who Needs Real Friends When You Have Facebook Friends?

December 18, 2012

friends

It is a shame that many youngsters would prefer collecting Facebook friends rather than taking the time and energy to cultivate real ones:

Some people like to have a few close friends on Facebook, while others have hundreds who they barely know.

Researchers now believe that the number of friends you have can depend on how successful you are, and even how often you move.

Researchers from the University of Virginia and the London Business school say the ‘perfect’ number of friends actually depends on several socioeconomic factors, and varies from country to country.

Shigehiro Oishi, a psychology professor in the University of Virginia’s College of Arts & Sciences, and Selin Kesebir of the London Business School explored the benefits of social networking strategies in two studies currently published in the journal Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

‘In the age of Facebook, many Americans seem to opt for a broad, shallow networking strategy,’ they say.

‘Yet cross-cultural research has shown that having many friends is not always viewed positively outside the United States.’

One reason that Americans may prefer a large social network, the researchers claim, is because Americans move around a lot.

Another important factor may be the economic conditions at a given time.

‘When times are prosperous, your friends are less likely to need much help, whether it’s covering a hospital bill or providing babysitting, and so a broad network of friends is easy to maintain,’ they claim.

‘But when times aren’t as flush, having more friends might incur huge costs in terms of both time and resources.’

Click on the link to read Parents and Teachers Should Not Be Facebook Friends

Click on the link to read Introducing the App that will Give Parents Nightmares

Click on the link to read Facebook’s Ugly Little Secret

Click on the link to read Facebook and Child Exploitation

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Posted in Social Media | Leave a Comment »

The Desperate Need to Instill Self-Respect in Our Students

October 25, 2012

One of my most important challenges as a classroom teacher is to instill in my students a confidence and self-respect that helps empower them to make smart choices and avoid being taken advantage of.

But no matter how hard we try, there is definitely an exploitative and often misogynist element out there that prays on young children (girls in particular) and makes the challenge of helping them stay true to themselves even harder:

A MUCK-UP day party involving jelly wrestling by school-aged girls has been blasted by parents and a school in Bendigo.

Bendigo nightclub, Universal on McCrae, is advertising a party for Year 12 students which will include female students from two schools wrestling each other.

The flyer for the event says girls from Catholic College Bendigo and Bendigo Senior College will compete against each other while the male students can compete in a beer pong contest.

The party, titled War of the Worlds, is hosted by Home and Away actor Dan Ewing and the nightclub will be open until 5am with discounted spirits available.

A parent of an 18-year-old student in the region said the promotion was “absolutely disgusting”.

“It’s misogynist, sexist and close to what a strip club would do,” he told the Bendigo Advertiser.

It is not the first time the club has held a jelly wrestling competition with photos from previous events on the website and Facebook page.

A spokesman for the club could not be contacted.

Bendigo Senior College principal Dale Pearce said the jelly wrestling competition was being advertised by the Universal on McCrea nightclub without either school’s consent.

“This is appalling,” Mr Pearce told the Bendigo Advertiser website.

The Catholic College Bendigo has also been contacted for comment.

 

Click on the link to read Just Wait a Minute! This isn’t Madagascar!

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Posted in Child Welfare | Leave a Comment »

Parents and Teachers Should Not Be Facebook Friends

August 31, 2012

Trust me, as much as being friends with parents may have its benefits, it is not a good idea:

Jill Schulman-Riemer has taught nursery through third grade, and is currently a private tutor and educational consultant in New York City. She says teachers and parents should keep their distance outside of the classroom, particularly online. 

The trouble goes both ways, she warns. “Parents friending teachers and teachers friending parents can be a slippery slope. You put a lot of  trust in your children’s teachers. We all need to stay in our professional roles with each other, and Facebook just isn’t a place for that.”

“Talk to them off line,” Schulman-Riemer advises. “Don’t use email or Facebook messenger. Try an actual face-to-face conversation. Explain that, of course, you’re always happy to talk to a parent about their child or anything school-related, but your policy is that you don’t friend parents on Facebook, and you prefer in-person conversations.”

Sure, friending your kid’s teacher may sound like a nice way to have a more personal connection with someone who’s an important part of your family’s daily life. But information on people’s Facebook pages can easily be misread or blown out of proportion. And while teachers recognize that they’re being judged on student performance and how they present themselves in the classroom, they shouldn’t be held accountable for old college pictures, or late-night comments posted on their timeline after someone’s bachelorette party.

If you go out and friend a teacher on Facebook, or accept their friend request, you do so at your own risk, says Carrie Mize, who’s been on both sides of the fence, as a parent of three young children, and a teacher of pre-school and elementary grades in Michigan, Virginia, and Connecticut. 

“If you choose to open up the personal side of things, you have to understand that it’s their personal life and you may see things you don’t like,” She says. “A teacher’s Facebook page doesn’t have anything to do with your child. The teacher doesn’t have their teacher hat on, and if you see something inappropriate, you just have to let it go.”

Click on the link to read Don’t Even Try to Huminise James Holmes

Click on the link to read Teachers Who Rely on Free Speech Shouldn’t be Teachers

Click on the link to read Facebook’s Age Restictions are a Joke

Click on the link to read Facebook and Child Exploitation

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Posted in Social Media | Leave a Comment »

No Wonder Children Hate School

August 29, 2012

Political correctness and stringent regulations are further stifling young children. Some of these schools rules are so bizarre and so out-of-touch. one wonders what lame brained soul conjured them up.

Any school that tries to persuade a young deaf boy to change his name because the hand signal for his name looks too much like a gun, has serious problems:

In a move blasted by rights groups, a 3-year-old-deaf boy has been told by his Nebraska school district to change the way he signs his name because the gesture resembles shooting a gun.

Hunter Spanjer uses the standard S.E.E., Signing Exact English. He crosses his index and middle fingers and waves them slightly to signify his name. And, Grand Island Public Schools’ policy forbids any “instrument” that “looks like a weapon,” reported NCN (see video above).

While crossing his fingers is a slight modification to the standard gesture, one meant to give it the personal touch, according to NCN, Hunter’s family is outraged by the district’s reaction.

“Anybody that I have talked to thinks this is absolutely ridiculous,” Hunter’s grandmother Janet Logue told NCN. “This is not threatening in any way.”

Hunter’s dad, Brian Spanjer, told The Huffington Post on Tuesday: “I feel like it was an overreach on their part and I expected a lot better from the local school district.”

 

 

Click on the link to read The Cartwheel Revolution

Click on the link to read Proof You Can Be Suspended for Anything

Click on the link to read The Case of a Teacher Suspended for Showing Integrity

Click on the link to read Primary School Introduces Insane No-Touching Policy

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Posted in Political Correctness, School Rules | 1 Comment »

Social Media: A Playground for Bullies

August 3, 2012

 

For all it’s benefits, social media is an invitation for bullies to wreak havoc:

The Internet can be a hostile place, and Twitter is no exception. According to a new study, about 15,000 bullying-related tweets are posted every day, meaning more than 100,000 nasty messages taint the digital world each week.

To further understand what happens in the virtual world, researchers from the University of Wisconsin in Madison trained a computer to analyze Twitter messages using an algorithm created to point out important words or symbols that may indicate bullying. In 2011, during the time of this study, 250 million public tweets were being sent daily — a number almost 10 times the population of the state of Texas.

Click on the link to read Teachers Who Rely on Free Speech Shouldn’t be Teachers

Click on the link to read Bullying is Acceptable when it’s Directed to a Teacher

Click on the link to read Punish Bullies and Then Change Your Culture

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Posted in Bullying, Cyber Bullying, Social Media | Leave a Comment »

Tips for Teaching Kids to use Technology Safely

July 31, 2012

Courtesy of The Washington Post are useful tips for helping to educate kids about safe use of technology:

1. Encourage parent leadership, within the PTA, PTO or other parent communities at your school to begin the discussion about safe and responsible online use by students at school and at home.  Gather an advisory group to determine how to get started.  Invite an expert guest speaker to kick things off.  Thankfully, there are many free, reputable resources available to parent communities through organizations such as Common Sense Media and through PTO Today’s Internet Safety Night program (sponsored by my organization, Trend Micro). Make it clear that it is an on-going dialogue versus a one-time event, as technology is constantly changing.

2. Communicate regularly to parent communities about how you are using technology in the classrooms, at each grade level, and how you ensure kids are learning to be savvy online citizens at the same time.  Make it part of open-house and parent-teacher nights.

3. Be clear with parents on how appropriate technology use is enforced through the school’s Code of Conduct and Acceptable Use Policies (AUP), which students (or parents) typically have to review and sign at the beginning of each school year.  Parents should understand what constitutes a transgression of the policy, how it will be handled, and how/if it will be reflected on your child’s school record.  It should also be clear how personal technology can or cannot be used on school grounds.

4. Be creative with ways to help parents and their kids use technology together.  Ultimately, schools and parents should not limit the discussion to being safe and responsible with technology. We want kids to also be successful users of it.  Find ways to use technology with families or encourage them to use it together through school-driven activities, events, fund-raisers, or other projects.  Have families research their genealogy together. Establish a blog contest or raise awareness or funds for a school activity using social media.  Or encourage family engagement in programs like the ‘What’s Your Story?’ campaign (sponsored by companies like Facebook, Trend Micro, Twitter, and Yahoo!) a program specifically designed to get youth, schools, and families talking about matters concerning the safe and responsible use of technology.

5. Recognize the positive use of technology in your schools through a formal or informal but public way.  Parents can be invited to be part of such a program, or at least encourage the right behavior with their kids at home.  Awards or acknowledgement can be given to individual students or groups of students, classrooms, or even families.  You can do this through a yearly or monthly “call out” in the school newsletter, website, or at a live school event.  If possible, showcase the activity that is being acknowledged (If it’s a blog, link to it in your online communications).

Technology can be intimidating to those of us who were introduced to it later in life.  The job of teaching kids how to use it appropriately can feel daunting when often times they seem better at it than we do.  But we cannot sidestep our obligation to make technology a tool our kids use safely and responsibly.

And while we do not have years of documented best practices to help schools and parents through this yet, anything you do today can help.  Thankfully, there are simple, low investment ways to start today.  It just takes a willingness to embrace what is already here, and a little courage to take the first step.

Click on the link to read 10 Best Websites for Teaching ICT

Click on the link to read New Tablet Being Designed Specifically for the Classroom

Click on the link to read Top 10 Educational i-Pad Apps

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Posted in Technology in the Classroom | Leave a Comment »

Video of Woman Saving Children From Runaway Van

July 12, 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCH6xKhnjPM

Well done Lezlie Bicknell on a most heroic act:

A New Mexico woman heroically jumped to save two children alone in a runaway van, even as her own vehicle slid into traffic.

Lezlie Bicknell says she was shocked to see a young child behind the wheel of a minivan she pulled up next to in an Albuquerque strip mall parking lot.

“There was a small child in the driver’s seat,” Bicknell, 40, told ABC affiliate KOAT. “I literally watched her shift it into gear. I knew what was going to happen.”

The two children were reportedly locked inside the minivan while their parents ran into a nearby convenience store, and one of the youngsters accidentally knocked the vehicle into neutral.

Video shows the minivan sliding backward toward the street, and Bicknell jumping from her truck to help. Then her own vehicle starts to roll backward, too.

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Posted in Child Welfare | 2 Comments »

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