Students are learning how to manage social media, online behavior

Like many kids her age, Bloomingdale High senior Tranae Robinson has dozens of social media applications at her fingertips and routinely logs into at least seven of them on her smartphone–Twitter, Snapchat and Pinterest included.
She admits teens could be more mindful of Internet safety and how they present themselves online, especially now that she and her classmates are allowed bring their own devices to school.
“It’s very nonchalant, the way we handle it,” Robinson said. “We don’t try to filter ourselves. Not everything is as private as you think.”
This school year, Robinson, along with every other student who attends a Hillsborough County (Fla.) public school, will be trained in how to handle themselves safely and responsibly online. The initiative goes hand-in-hand with the new program that lets them bring their phones, tablets, and laptops to school.
They are learning about the dangers of cyberbullying, how to create secure passwords, how to avoid identity theft and how to leave a positive digital footprint on their devices.

“It’s very important,” Robinson said. “Students are going to have them regardless. If the school district educates us, it will be more of a positive than a negative.”
Sixty schools so far–including all 27 high schools and most middle schools–have been approved for the bring-your-own-device program. Instructional technology supervisor Troy Suarez expects all schools will be on board by the end of December. Students will use the once-forbidden devices during class, for learning.
“It’s no longer, ‘We see it, we take it,’” Suarez said. “As we are rolling this stuff out, it’s a responsibility for us to prepare our students to be safe while they’re using technology, and teachers as well.”
Throughout the school year, media specialists will use information from curriculum-providers Common Sense Media and Netsmartz to form their own lessons, said John Milburn, the district’s supervisor of elementary library media services. Some media specialists use school morning shows as a platform. They also visit classrooms and teach in school media centers.
“As a parent, we’ve always sent our kids into the world to develop, learn and grow,” Milburn said. “We taught them to be safe, who not to talk to, where to go if you get in trouble. This is just another world–it’s a digital world. But they still need to know how to be safe.”
At the middle and high school level, media specialists have to get a little more creative because students bounce from classroom to classroom throughout the day.
For them, topics like determining whether information on a website is valid is incorporated into school orientation and into the school day when possible, said Christine VanBrunt, the district’s supervisor of middle and high school library media services.
Nikki Rideout, a media specialist at Woodbridge Elementary School, said teaching students how to act online has become part of her job.
“The media specialist position has changed so much,” Rideout said. “We are no longer keepers of the books. It’s an instructional technology piece we’ve brought under our wing.”
So far this school year, Rideout has met with several classes each week and other teachers have requested that she work with their classes, too. She has the students practice their social media skills on Edsby, the district’s online gradebook and communication site.
“The students are so receptive,” Rideout said. “We need to capitalize on that. By the time they get into middle school, it’s almost too late to fix it.”
The rollout of digital citizenship lessons in September was followed by the launch of a new website that describes for parents the benefits and dangers of 17 social apps.
The site also includes resources for teachers and information about the digital citizenship curriculum, which was selected by a school district committee formed last spring.
Included in the list are Vault, which is designed to hide other apps, Kik Messenger, photo-sharing service Snapchat, and the Tinder dating app.
An example of a warning to parents on the site: “Tinder’s terms of use indicate that it can be used by anyone 13 and up, but the app’s widespread reputation as a hookup site, its use of location, and its lack of privacy settings make this a no-go for teens.”
Robinson, the Bloomingdale High student, is getting a little extra digital citizenship training this school year–she is taking Social Media 1, which is being taught for the second year by Heather Hanks. Hanks, who also teaches journalism and photography, became the first Florida teacher to offer the class last school year.
“If we’re putting devices in the hands of our students, they need to be equipped to deal with the consequences,” said Hanks, who served on the district’s digital citizenship committee. “The county has kind of shied away from dealing with it before. Now they’re embracing it.”
Last spring, Hanks’ students created videos to share with students across the district, spreading a message that they should not carry themselves differently in the online world than they do in the real world.
One video shows a teen standing in the middle of a crowded hallway at school, yelling everything she is thinking. In another, a student shares her keys with others, showing that passwords shouldn’t be shared.
This school year, a social media course is being offered at two additional high schools, Hillsborough and Robinson.
School board member Cindy Stuart said she would like to see more schools begin offering the course.
“The student message is very strong,” Stuart said during a recent school board meeting. “It’s stronger than my message when I speak to my 16-year-old.”

Regularly searching education-related Twitter hashtags can help educators expand their professional growth

Social media remains a game-changer in education. Through platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, students are able to collaborate on projects or discussions about assignments.
Educators connect with peers across their district, state, or, in many cases, across the world. This ability to stay connected has led to the development of professional learning networks, sometimes called professional learning communities, in which educators build networks of peers they admire, those they share common interests with, and those they hope to learn from.
Much of this connecting occurs on Twitter. Many states have regular Twitter chats focusing on general education or highlighting specific education topics.

Below, you’ll find five hashtags that offer engaging and thought-provoking tweets from educators across the planet.
To access the most recent tweets categorized under any of these hashtags, simply enter the hashtag in the Twitter search field, or click on it within any Tweet that contains it.
#edtech
The #edtech category contains, as you probably guessed, tweets about education technology, technology in schools, and reasons why classrooms and students benefit from teachers who correctly implement and use technology during instruction.
Recent tweets cover critical thinking and The Maker Movement.

Adults tackle question of how much social media is enough, but not too much

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With smartphones and tablet and laptop computers now as common as pencils and notebooks in many classrooms, schools and parents alike are having to figure out how to guide students’ use of technology.
Access to the internet for students can mean access to a world of information, but it can just as easily get them to social media sites and apps. That can enhance their learning experience, educators say, but it does come with risks.
Piedmont’s schools are in the fifth year of a program that issues laptop computers to all students in grades four through 12. Students in kindergarten to third grade also use mobile devices in the classroom.
“We allow the use of social media, especially at the high school” said Piedmont Schools Superintendent Matt Akin.

The school system’s position on social media and internet usage has changed over time, Akin said. Instead of blocking most sites, Piedmont’s policies shifted toward a middle ground.
“YouTube was one of the first things we unblocked, because we saw all of the educational videos our teachers could be using,” he said.
As Jacksonville City Schools Superintendent Jon Campbell pointed out, students’ use of social media is here to stay.
“Social media is something that’s going to be there, whether we advocate for or against it,” he said. “We have to deal with it.”
Jacksonville schools began distributing tablets to students in grades four through 12 in 2013. Campbell said that popular social media apps, like Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat, are blocked and cannot be installed on the devices.
But there’s no way for school administrators keep students from using the apps on smartphones, he said. Such devices are linked to the internet through connections independent of the school.
As Roy Bennett put it, “the genie is out of the bottle.” Bennett is student services coordinator for Oxford schools, and he said administrators feel they’re playing catch-up with a generation that grew up online.
“It’s a challenge to stay a step ahead,” he said. Oxford students in middle and high school are given Apple laptops that they can take home. During the school day, social media sites are blocked on those computers. Bennett acknowledged that there’s nothing to stop students from accessing the sites on their own devices.
Internet etiquette
Instead of giving devices to its students, the Calhoun County school system encourages them to bring their own. That approach allows students to bring personal laptops, tablets and smartphones into schools for use on collaborative assignments.
Jenel Travis, technology director for Calhoun County Schools, said students use a specially set-aside network that provides them with Internet filtered according to federal standards, but does not block social media sites.
Smartphones and some tablets may have access to a cellular service provider’s unfiltered wireless network. Use of that network is against Calhoun County Schools’ rules, and students can be punished for it–if they’re caught.
“If they want to do something that isn’t great and they get off our network, they can do that,” Travis said. “That’s the network parents provide, and it’s out of my control.”
Travis said schools’ technology initiatives could be hamstrung if internet access on their networks was locked down completely.
However, school administrators and educators can try to teach students how to use social networks responsibly.
“We have a responsibility to teach our students good digital citizenship,” Campbell said.
That phrase refers to acceptable online behavior, such as being aware of privacy protections or reporting cyberbullying, and it’s one school administrators are using more often.
Campbell said Jacksonville teachers teach digital citizenship through an internet course, where they emphasize that anything students put online could follow them around forever.
“We call it a ‘digital tattoo’–once it goes out there, it’s always there. You can’t just wash it off,” he said.
Piedmont Superintendent Akin agrees that educators have a responsibility to teach students what they should and shouldn’t post online.
“We’ve dealt with a few issues where kids say things online they shouldn’t say. We had that 10 years ago,” before social media became popular, he said. “We try to hold our students accountable.”
‘Lock it down’
School administrators say parents share some of that responsibility, and each of the schools with technology initiatives has hosted training sessions to familiarize parents with their children’s devices.
Jeremy Jones’ three kids attend Piedmont Elementary, where they use iPads, iPods and MacBook laptops in the classroom.
Jones, who works in information technology for a local institution, said he wants Piedmont’s initiative to work, but worries that administrators did not give enough thought to blocking sites students shouldn’t use.
Jones said that at home, he controls what sites his children can visit and when they can visit them. His son can spend unlimited time on school-related websites; only an hour on others, he said.
Jones acknowledged that lots of websites have legitimate educational uses, but said “it’s a fine line” between the useful and harmful. Schools will always be behind in getting technology to control students’ Internet use, he said.
“You’re either going to have to lock it down, or deal with the consequences,” Jones said. “One consequence is, I don’t like it.”
He’s not ready, he said, to let his kids roam the digital world on their own.
“My son’s already asking me about having a Facebook,” he said. “Absolutely not.”

LinkedIn to acquire lynda.com to better connect the global workforce, says company.

LinkedIn is acquiring lynda.com, an online learning company that offers courses on business, technology, and creative skills with the aim of helping people achieve their professional goals–a move that could have big impacts on the way students and others find jobs and leverage skill sets.
Through a subscription to lynda.com’s service, individual members and organizations have access to a collection of courses taught by what the company says are industry experts, offered in various languages. In addition to individual subscribers, lynda.com serves corporate, government and educational organizations.
Through the acquisition, LinkedIn has revealed some formidable ambitions. Eventually it hopes to “map the global workforce” by creating profiles for each company, and job within that company, as well as the skill sets required to obtain those jobs. LinkedIn then hopes to connect workers to educational institutions and platforms like lynda.com where they can master those skills. (More information about this approach is in the video below).

Student messages on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook are now being monitored by the Orange County (Fla.) school district as part of a new program to curb cyberbullying, crime on campus and suicide.
Central Florida’s largest school district announced that it had acquired new software that would allow it to grab and then analyze social media messages posted from its campuses, whether from students or staff.
The software also would allow the district to search the thousands of messages posted on various sites for key words that might indicate trouble
The new program is one of several aimed at “prevention and early intervention” put in place by the district since the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., in 2012, said Michael Eugene, the district’s chief operations officer.
Orange officials acknowledged the online snooping might raise questions.
But Orange County School Board member Linda Kobert said that, although she worried about student privacy, as a parent of high school students she had also heard about “terrible” cases of cyberbullying.
“I think this is another way to prevent that or prevent harm,” she said, adding the district was taking advantage of “new tools to protect our children.
The messages — whether from Twitter, Instagram, YouTube or other sites — are “open-source information” publicly available to anyone with the right tools, said Doug Tripp, senior director of safety and security.
The district’s security staff will be looking for messages that relate to bullying, suicide and criminal activities, Tripp added.
Worrisome posts would be referred to school administrators or police, as appropriate, officials said.
Neither Lake nor Seminole county school district uses similar technology. But Seminole administrators have had discussions with Snaptrends, the Texas company Orange licensed the software from, and likely will talk more with the company during the summer, said Michael Lawrence, the district’s spokesman.
Before signing on, the district likely would try to gauge whether parents thought the “positives” from such a program outweigh what some might view as “Big Brother watching you,” he said.
“Would we step over boundaries? That would be an issue that would have to be navigated,” he added.
The Orange district began using the Snaptrends software several weeks ago and already found a student threatening “self-harm,” Eugene said. District staff contacted police, who helped the family get needed services, he added.
Snaptrends bills itself as “a pioneer in location-based social-media discovery,” with software that helps schools and colleges “gain insights into potential problems.”
The company declined to say how many school systems now use its program. But Eugene said other districts employ the system, as do Central Florida law-enforcement agencies.
Orange administrators announced the effort in an email to parents and staff sent late Wednesday and then in a news release early Thursday. They hoped the announcement would help head off end-of-the-year pranks and spark discussion during the summer between parents and students about appropriate social-media use, Eugene said.
The software, which costs about $14,000 a year, is in a “rollout phase” now and will be fully running at the start of the 2015-16 school year, Tripp added.
In an era of heightened concern about campus safety, Snaptrends’ tool allows the district to look at public information and “recognize content that appears to pose a concern to the safety and well being of students, teachers and staff,” said Jeff Croson, Snaptrends senior vice president, in a statement.
“Snaptrends is simply one more tool in the array of safety measures districts are taking to safeguard schools,” he added.

As cyberbullying increases, new laws and measures are helping combat tech-based bullying

The face of a bully and the definition of bullying have changed over the years.
Technology has come to replace the glaring student who pushes others down on the playground or the mean girl who uses word-of-mouth to spread her gossip.
Smartphones and social media have opened an entirely new door for classroom bullies, who are no longer limited to the classroom.
“A lot of these social media issues are occurring when students are not at school,” said Southeastern School District (Pa.) Superintendent Rona Kaufmann. “And often times what happens through social media comes into the school in one way, shape or form, just because of the sheer amount of people who have access to it.”
Taking action: Pennsylvania’s Northern York School District recently implemented rules for online behavior–for students, athletes and staff–to combat cyberbullying.
Superintendent Eric Eshbach echoed Kaufmann’s concerns about cyberbullying.
“It is a daily effort because a large majority of it doesn’t go on in the school building; it goes on after school hours,” he said. “We are definitely having conversations and encouraging students to report on any issues.”
Those reports could end up being a criminal matter under a new state law, Act 26, which Gov. Tom Wolf signed on July 10 and which takes effect in September.
Cyber-harassment, as defined by Act 26, is making malicious statements about a child’s physical characteristics, sexuality, sexual activity or mental or physical health. Cyber-harassment could be made electronically, either directly to the child or through a social media site.
The law makes cyber-harassment of a child a third-degree misdemeanor, punishable by up to $2,500 in fines and possible jail time.
Prevention: More than half of the country’s young people have reported that they have been cyberbullied, and among those who reported incidents, one-third said their bullies issued online threats, according to 2014 bullying statistics published by the anti-bullying website nobullying.com.
“It’s a real problem that presents a real challenge,” Kaufmann said of cyberbullying. “I think the real key to prevention is early education.”
Kaufmann said Southeastern heavily focuses on lower-level students with its anti-bullying initiative.
“They have cell phones in elementary school now, and the earlier we can reach them, the better,” she said.
School officials have incorporated anti-bullying lessons into curriculum, including in high school communications and computer classes and some English classes in the lower grades.
There’s particular focus on intermediate students, because they all have laptops, “and we want them to be able to handle them responsibly,” she said.
The district has an incentive program that rewards moral behavior, “basically this fake money that they can use at the school store to get themselves prizes and things.”
Parents: School leaders in Northern enforce anti-bullying rules on a case-by-case basis, Eshbach said.
“The word ‘bullying’ is way too general for me,” he said. “I hear people claim their children are being bullied, so I ask them to tell me the specifics. What kind of harassment are you feeling? Is there a need to involve law enforcement? Should there be harsh penalties or is this something we can handle with classroom consequences?”
He said it’s best to be specific about what type of bullying is occurring and “then take each of those incidents and give it the appropriate amount of credibility and treat it appropriately.”
Eshbach said parents are key in preventing bullying.
Kaufmann agreed.
“Especially with anything online, parents need to keep an eye out,” she said. “It’s difficult to be constantly policing, but so many times parents are completely unaware of what their children are doing on the computer.”
It’s all about teamwork, Eshbach said.
“We need to come together and really keep an eye on what students are doing online,” he said.

Survey reveals that the majority of classroom educators shy away from social media integration

A new survey finds that just 13 percent of participating educators have used social media as part of their classroom learning.
The University of Phoenix College of Education survey of 1,002 U.S. K-12 teachers found that 87 percent of those surveyed said they have not embraced social media platforms. Sixty-two percent of those surveyed said they are reluctant to use social media in the classroom, compared to 55 percent of participating educators in a 2013 survey.
Fewer than half of teachers surveyed (44 percent) said they believe social media can enhance a student’s educational experiences.
“We are living in a rapidly evolving world of digital and social media, and many students are totally immersed and well-versed in these platforms,” said Kathy Cook, dean of educational technology for University of Phoenix College of Education and former K-12 educator. “For teachers to stay current, keep students engaged and promote learning, it is important for teachers to acknowledge the influence of social media and understand how to use it to the benefit of their students.”
Lack of training could be to blame. Although 95 percent of surveyed educators said they have had training related to classroom technology integration, 62 percent said they had either minimal or no training around how to interact with students and parents through social media.
Forty-eight perent of those surveyed said they would like to learn more about classroom technology integration.
K-12 teachers raise many concerns, with 82 percent of those surveyed reporting that they worry about conflicts that can occur from using social media with their students and/or parents.
More than half (59 percent) said the use of personal tech devices outside the classroom makes it more difficult for students to pay attention in a group setting in the classroom.
Twenty percent have also felt intimidated by students’ knowledge/use of technology devices.
“Social media is here to stay, so it is critical to invest in our educators through expanded training,” said Cook.
Training extends beyond providing educators tools to integrate social media into the classroom, she added. In addition to being prepared to use social media as a learning tool, teachers also need to be able to teach students to be responsible with their online behavior.
“Despite challenges, tremendous opportunities exist for teachers to play a leadership role in students’ digital lives, helping them learn how to use social media and understand its impact both in and outside the classroom,” Cook said. “It is essential to train teachers in digital citizenship so that they can educate students about preserving their online integrity.”
Cook offered tips to help K-12 teachers integrate social media into their classrooms:

• Create student social media guidelines. If your school or district has guidelines for social media use, make sure you and your students understand them completely and are following the guidelines. If your school or district does not currently have guidelines for social media use, consider developing some.
• Try “closed” social media sites. Edmodo, TodaysMeet and other sites allow safe and secure social media experiences in a smaller school environment. You can also create private blogs or use sites such as Kidblogs or Edublogs, which limit access and comment abilities.
• Connect with other classrooms around the world. Projects such as Global Read Aloud and Skype in the Classroom allow you to connect students in your classroom with other students worldwide.
• Connect with experts worldwide. Social media tools can help you bring a variety of experts into your classroom so students can learn directly from people in the field they are studying. You can search and connect with experts on Twitter, Skype and other social media networks. Many authors and content experts may be willing to conduct a live tweet session with your students during which they can ask questions and get immediate responses.
• Involve your class in a social service project. Explore projects online that your students can get involved in to help make the world a better place. Choose2Matter is one global movement that may spark imagination about how social media can be used to help others.
• Learn more about social media use in the classroom. Join Twitter or use other social media tools to connect with other teachers and learn about their creative uses of social media. You can also take a class to hone your own social media skills.

The survey was conducted online by Harris Poll on behalf of University of Phoenix College of Education between April 14 and April 27, 2015, among 1,002 U.S. teachers aged 18 and older who work full time in education teaching grades K-12.