Teacher Bytes

Last week I had the pleasure of doing two presentations for the South Carolina Association of School Administrators (SCASA) at their annual Summer Leadership Institute in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. This is the event where school and district administrators gather to learn new things they can take back to hopefully improve education for their students. It was a great experience meeting with these people and getting a look at what is important these professionals at the management levels. There were two things that struck me during the four days I was in attendance.

First, unfortunately there is little in the way of literature marketed to administrators about technology integration. In fact I saw nothing on the subject. The conference operated a bookstore in one of the hallways. As I perused the titles I saw a multitude of subjects including but not limited to motivating staff, raising math and literacy proficiencies, management styles, and interpretation of test scores. The closest thing I saw to technology integration was a book about electronic portfolios and two books on bullying that had chapters on cyberbullying. This is disturbing to me because I heard the same story from other technology intergrationists or coaches: technology innovations are not getting administration support needed to be successful. Granted that administrators have other concerns than technology to run their schools but to find no books on the subject for sale was disturbing.

On the bright side, breakout sessions dealing with technology were very well attended. My cyberbullying session was near capacity and I was happy with the numbers in my session on using wikis as lesson plans. The audience was engaged, asking very good questions and taking notes on what I was talking about. Other sessions I sat in on did very well too. I found out that many schools in South Carolina are in the process of installing interactive whiteboards, another encouraging sign. The impression I came away with was that administrators do want to do more with technology but are not sure how to proceed. At least this is a start and more important a hopeful sign of things to come.

Recently I was notified that my presentation proposal on Cyberbullying was accepted by the South Carolina Association of School Administrators for their Summer Leadership Institute. The district I work for has also requested I give this presentation as well. While I am honored that I will be presenting before my peers and school leaders on this subject, I feel it is more important to get the word out about Cyberbullying and its potential consequences to schools.

For those of you who don’t know, cyberbullying is using technology to harass, humiliate, or otherwise cause harm to someone else for fun or some other kind of gain. It was the tragic story of Megan Meier that led me to do hours of research and propose this topic to SCASA to begin with. Megan was a middle school student who communicated with a boy on MySpace who professed to like Megan. Eventually, the boy turned on Megan calling all kinds of names. There were other messages attacking Megan as well. After a message was sent from her MySpace boyfriend that Megan would be better off dead, Megan committed suicide. It turned out Megan’s boyfriend on MySpace was the creation of a girl who had a falling out with Megan and was orchestrating attacks on Megan to get back at her. To make this story even more shocking, the mother of the girl in question allegedly participated in the incident.

Hopefully, this tragedy will have some good come from it. First, it has brought awareness to cyberbullying, hence my presentation. Second, I got an e-mail today from someone in our district about The Megan Pledge. A group of Tweenangels from Ridgewood, New Jersey have created a three-part commitment for tweens to not engage in cyberbullying. Part one is individuals sign a pledge not to engage in cyberbullying. Part two is where the entire student body would sign a banner displayed in public pledging not to engage in cyberbullying. Part three is those who pledge not to engage in cyberbullying would wear black with white polka-dots ribbons to show their support. For more information you can go to StopCyberbullying.org. Hopefully at the beginning of each school year or at least on Megan’s birth day, November 6th, schools will take time to educate their students about cyberbullying and take part in Megan’s pledge activities. Taking the time to educate people about the dangers of using the Internet and how to avoid them will turn the Internet into place where great learning can take place. For more information you can visit Stopcyberbullying.org or the wiki I am creating for my presentation for more information.