I participated in a discussion this evening, Monday, July 6th, at 8:00 p.m.  The title of this event was Cyberethics, Cybersafety & Cybersecurity (C3) – Sexting.  The purpose of this group is to “help inform the educational community about the ethical, legal, safety, and security implications of technology use”.  The leader of the chat was Davina S. Pruitt-mentle.  She is a faculty member at UMCP in College Park, MD.  She has been a member of tappedin since 2003.  I also learned that she is a senior researcher and policy analyst from Ed Tech Policy, Research and Outreach.

I felt this would be an interesting event to attend since we recently did a research activity on internet safety for our class.  Also, my husband is an administrator at a middle school and this is an issue that he has had to deal with throughout the year.  It is almost shocking to me that students as young as 11 years old are dealing with this.  I think this is an important topic for me to learn more about as a mother and as a future teacher.  Children have access to so much technology and with the benefits come the risks. 

This was a fairly large group.  There were 18+ participants.  It was a little bit difficult to keep up with everything that was being said so I am anxious to get the transcript and review the sites that were mentioned during the discussion.  The discussion went off topic often and there were a few participants that frequently strayed from the topic and made the discussion difficult at times.

Topics that were discussed were: What is sexting?  What problems/issues are associated with it?  Is it illegal?  We discussed whether or not cell phones should even be allowed in schools.  There were differing opinions on that and some of that depended on if they were elementary students, middle school students, or high school students.  One interesting point of discussion was that most of us, as adults, didn’t really know what was legal and what  wasn’t or what was considered “sexting” and what wasn’t.  So, one comment I made was that if we don’t know, how do children know?  We discussed the need for schools to  have and enforce a code of conduct.  Davina suggested modeling appropriate cell phone behavior and brought up the fact that there really aren’t a lot of laws yet.  We talked about the responsabilities of parents, teachers, lawmakers, and the phone companies.  Another interesting point that Davina brought up was that the U.S. has stricter regulations/feelings on pornography, sexting etc.

Overall, I feel like tappedin.org has a lot to offer and it seems like it would be a good way for educators to learn more about specific areas that they are interested in and a good place to go to ask questions.