A secondary school teacher who says she has been abused on a social networking website by her pupils has told the BBC about her ordeal.
The woman, who asked not to be named, has reported the “horrific” material she found about herself to the police.
Full story here.
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For me, stories like this make the teaching of Internet Safety and Responsible Use even more important. Would better understanding of this issue have stopped it in the first place? Should there be clearer laws against it? Are teachers able to take action with the current laws? Do we educate our young people enough about publishing to the web and understanding the rights and wrongs of what is and is not acceptable?
Would be great to have your thoughts.
What the pupils did to this teacher is clearly wrong, and appropriate punishments should be in place and used; the same discipline that would occur had the bullying happened offline. I cannot say if better Internet Safety education would have stopped the pupils in this example, as what they did was clearly horrific. It does worry me that some teachers may read this story and argue for more blocking of the web in schools. To me that is the wrong approach. We cannot stop young people publishing to the web. Through sites like Glow blogs, we can, however, give them the space to use the web responsibly.
Stories like the teen who was sacked from her job because of something she had posted on Facebook (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/essex/7914415.stm) provide great teaching material when dealing with this subject in schools.