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In my educational position, I often times need to work with students when they use digital media inappropriately. One incident that comes to mind is an 10th grade girl who approached me about a text she received from her boy friend. The girl and the boy had been dating for several months when the boy decided to send text messages to all of his friends, and others, about how awful the girl was and that he was breaking up with her. He hadn't shared this with the girl and she found out from others in the hallway of their school. The boy shared details of their dating experience in great detail and about how "bad" she was. None of this was true and she was devastated. The boy even Photoshopped the girl's head on inappropriate bodies of women and sent those (luckily nothing was pornographic). The girl and her friends were upset, sad, and embarrassed. The girl even missed several days of school.
When the girl shared this with me, we went to the Guidance Office and shared what happened with the Counselors and Principal. I had the girl take screen shots of the offending texts and photos (which later proved very valuable). The boy was brought in and asked if any of what happened was true. He denied it but when presented with the evidence, admitted that he did this and apologized to the girl. Luckily, most students knew that the girl was not at all like what he shared in his messages and the photos were obviously fake. The students rallied around the girl and she recovered well. The boy underwent many sessions about learning to respect others and how to use technologies appropriately. He also lost, following district policies, the use of school technologies for a specific period of time. The girl started a group that helped any student who was the victim of inappropriate technology use which helped raise awareness that inappropriate use of digital media has victims and a face.
I learned from this experience that education about digital citizenship is essential in the curriculum. Videos were created that shared the importance of digital responsibility, meetings for the community were held, and school counselors stepped up their efforts to be proactive rather than reactive (as the Common Sense Media video shared). We have a long way to go and new materials are being developed. We are revising School Board policies to address the ever-changing repercussions of digital inappropriateness. It only took one girl to have a very bad experience to propel our district into action. I wish we would have been more forward thinking to anticipate this so she wouldn't have had to have gone through this. I believe that this incident has helped prevent others from having the same thing happen to them.
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