Digital Smarts - Disturbing Trends: Technology and School

As the school year rolls around, technology is yet again under the microscope. To that end, Education Week, a publication for teachers and administrators, recently ran an article on three trends that teachers and parents need to be aware of as the school year begins: texting and its bad influence on grammar and spelling, sexting, and cyberbullying. The article points out that slang and the lack of grammar rules used in texting are making the teaching of writing in preparation for college and the workplace increasingly difficult. Also the problem of sexting, even though the implications have been discussed with teens ad nauseam, still rears its ugly head when presumably private things sent digitally are circulated and take on an unflattering public life. Sadly, the third trend, cyberbullying, another subject of constant discussion and even awareness at schools, does not seem to be going away. On a more positive note, the article mentions a recent survey in the United Kingdom that, while showing that three in five of the 2,000 youngsters polled said they had done something 'risky' or anti-social while online, three quarters (75%) had blocked another user, two thirds (68%) had supported someone else who had suffered cyber-bullying and 74% had 'stood up for themselves.'