Foiling Cyberbullies in the New Wild West

Every classroom in America must be connected to the information superhighway with computers and good software and well trained teachers,” urged President Clinton during his January 1996 State of the Union address. Six years later, the National Center for Education Statistics reported that 99 percent of U.S. public schools had computers connected to the Internet (2002). Add to this picture the omnipresence of Internet access at home and the near-ubiquity of mobile phones, many with text-messaging options, and we can conclude that our students are careening down the information superhighway at full speed.

This technological explosion and ease of access to powerful new communication tools would have occurred without Clinton's urging. No one had to drag our schools and students kicking and screaming into the 21st century. But technology—specifically, the misuse of technology—has caught many of us off guard. It's hard enough to keep track of students while they're in the school building. Now school administrators and teachers are being asked to oversee students in cyberspace, which anyone can access just about anywhere, anytime, day or night.