Wilson quote

I did this for something else but am putting it here so I can find it again...

Good old times

OK, that was so easy even a tech director can do it. Thanks to Maggie on the TeacherLibrarianNing for the head's up on this fun tool.

Can students cyberbully teachers?

Twice over the past month or so, I've heard reference to teachers being "the victims of cyberbullying," specifically in regard to comments on the Rate My Teacher site.

Most recently, Dr. Micheal Carr-Greg from Melbourne, as part of a very compelling and balanced keynote on CyberSafety at the Tech-It-Up Conference in Kamloops, BC., spoke of instances in which online comments made by students were so distressing to teachers that they suffered such emotional distress that they needed to take professional leave.

 I have a couple questions about using the term "bullying" to describe such circumstances.

First, my personal understanding of bullying assumes that their is an element of the strong preying on the weak. The big guy picking on the little guy. In traditional educational settings, the "big guy" is the teacher; the "little guy" is the student. While we can and should call out libelous or threatening actions by students toward teachers, I just wonder semantically if "bullying" is the right word? Are we in using the term too broadly, lessening its overall impact?

Second, I am not sure how inappropriate sites like "Rate My Teacher" actually are. Do we not use online tools to anonymously "rate" just about everything else - from hotels to movies to physicians? Are there any such sites that don't get their fair share of disgruntled wack-jobs (pardon the technical language) with wildly outlying assessments? If there was a "Rate My Technology Director" website I might feel differently, but were I a classroom teacher today, might I think about using such sites as impetus for changing my classroom practice? I know I value the comments - especially the critical ones - about my speaking and writing, and I do my best to use them to improve my work. (See Constructive Criticism.) Of course, no one has (yet) threatened bodily harm because of a bad keynote address.

Just a few idle thoughts this early Sunday morning, waiting for a flight home...

Image: Norman Rockwell, The Bully Before <http://www.best-norman-rockwell-art.com>