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Do Students Have the Right to Post Negative Comments Online?

April 11, 2012 | 12:00 PM | By

Flickr: Zawezome

By Corey G. Johnson

Civil rights groups recently intervened in a free-speech controversy at the San Francisco Unified School District after a school suspended three high school seniors and banned them from graduation and prom over comments they made online.

The students were suspended from George Washington High School after a teacher learned about postings on a Tumblr page called “Scumbag Teachers.” Some of the comments allegedly linked to the students included: “Teaches Pink Floyd for 3 Weeks; Makes Final Project Due In 3 Days” and “Nags Student Govt About Being On Task; Lags On Everything.”

The school principal accused the students of cyberbullying. They were suspended from school for three days, banned from prom and told they couldn’t walk with their classmates during graduation. One of the students was kicked off the student council.

The Asian Law Caucus and ACLU of Northern California said they were concerned that the students’ rights were being violated and wrote letters to district officials questioning whether the students and parents were given due process. The district then reinstated the students.

The district’s initial punitive actions prompted student outrage on other Tumblr sites. One student stated:

Find it ironic how Washington led the American Revolution against the British soldiers for freedom from King George, and here you are, sitting in this school trying to control the students the exact same way the king was, by taxing not our goods, but our freedom of Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, aclu, Facebook, Free Speech

ACLU Blasts Schools for Blocking Gay Teen Support Web Sites

May 20, 2011 | 11:30 AM | By

David Lofink

The American Civil Liberties Union announced this week that it notified Oroville Union High School District in Northern California that the school is “improperly configured to block access to Web content geared toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities.”

Oroville Union isn’t the first to receive this message from the ACLU — a number of schools in Michigan, Kansas, and Missouri received similar notification in March. These actions are part of the ACLU’s “Don’t Filter Me” initiative, combating what the organization sees as the illegal censorship of LGBT educational information via schools’ computers.

“The school is perfectly fine letting kids see material… that is anti-gay, but they’re blocking students from seeing supportive websites.”

In its complaints against schools, ACLU challenges that districts’ Internet filters have been set up to block access to LGBT Web content. The ACLU was prompted to send the letter to the school district when Melina Zancanella, a junior at Oroville High School and president of its gay-straight alliance club, was unable to access Web sites aimed at helping curb suicide among gay teens. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Digital Tools, aclu, Internet filtering, Internet safety, LGBT

Weekly News Roundup

April 1, 2011 | 9:08 AM | By

Flickr: WilliaC

  • The VOIP service Skype officially launched “Skype in the Classroom,” a directory to help connect educators with others who are using the service. Skype has recognized that teachers are already using the service to connect their classrooms, and so it wanted to make it easier for teachers to find others and to share Skype lessons and resources.
  • Google Summer of Code is now open for student applications. The program gives college students the opportunity to spend the summer doing real-world, open-source programming with mentor organizations. These organizations include Wikipedia, Moodle, and many, many others. Applications are due April 8.
  • The computational knowledge engine WolframAlpha has launched two more of its Course Assistant apps: one for Astronomy and one for Multivariable Calculus. The apps are available for iPhone, cost $4.99, and beg the question: why on earth would you bring a calculator to class when you can bring WolframAlpha.
  • The ACLU has started a campaign, reports eSchoolNews, demanding that high schools remove filters that block access to websites that support lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities.
  • Sesame Street has launched an e-book reader for iPad. The app itself is free, and books are available for subscription. GeekDad‘s Daniel Donahoo points out, however, that there aren’t any free copies for you to sample before you buy, but he does not that the quality of the content there is high.
  • Professor Dan Cohen has just released a database of over one million course syllabi, gathered from the Internet between 2002 and 2009. The data is available for people to download, and via analysis and visualization, I’m guessing this data could give us some very interesting insights into changes in college instruction. Cohen is the director for the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.
FILED UNDER: Digital Tools, aclu, google summer of code, iPad, sesame street, Skype, syllabi, wolframalpha