« UPDATE: To vaccinate or not to vaccinate, that is the question | Main | Top 10 reasons to attend NSBA's annual conference »
February 9, 2007
School districts now dealing with YouTube videosJust when you think you've heard it all in the vast arena of cyberbullying, a new complication pops up. BoardBuzz was alerted to this article in yesterday's Los Angeles Times that details a whole other target—teachers.
Sure, we've covered cyberbullying and online social networking before (here and in our online discussion here) but targeting teachers adds a bit of a twist for school districts. The Times article details several secretly taped videos of teachers (and some of students) popping up on the popular video site YouTube and points out
YouTube, MySpace and other websites are sprinkled with videos taken in high school classrooms around the country—often, it appears, without permission of the subjects. Many are relatively tame—others not. One popular YouTube video called "The Angry Teacher" shows a male instructor increasingly losing his cool to a classroom of unruly students. Another shows an agitated teacher pulling a chair out from underneath a student.But policing these secret videos is proving a challenge for educators, who say they must balance protecting the rights of students to express themselves in this digital age with the need to shield classmates and teachers from ridicule.
It's difficult for school districts to know how to handle these cases, protect students and teachers, and still respect students' rights to freedom of speech.
But educators point out that most students post and read offensive materials on their home computers.That means that school districts need to take the issue to parents, said Lisa Soronen, staff attorney for the National School Boards Association.
"In most cases, if the school contacts YouTube or MySpace and asks them to remove it, they will. And the easiest thing to do is contact the parents and tell them what's going on. In most cases, they'll put a stop to it."
Looking for more information? Check out this story from ABC's World News Tonight yesterday for NSBA Executive Director Anne Bryant's comments on the issue. You can also catch Bryant live today at 12:20 ET on MSNBC's program The Most, where she'll discuss the story further. And read this summary of a New York Times article about another twist to this issue: a controversy in New Jersey where a student secretly recorded his teacher making statements to the class about religious views.
Posted February 9, 2007 11:22 AM | Students
Trackback Pings
BoardBuzz Feed
