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TipSoft for Education Launch

Posted on January 28, 2013 by William

Last week PublicEngines launched TipSoft for Education, a cloud-based product to help schools combat the problems of bullying (including Cyberbullying), drugs, weapons, violence and other offences. In conjunction with that launch, many people attended last week’s webinar highlighting one of our customers, Blount County, TN, called “Five Effective Steps to Solving the Bullying Epidemic.” That Webinar can be found on the PublicEngines’ home page or below.

TipSoft has been the standard for tip-based communications and management for years. And while we already have many education customers using TipSoft , we thought it was important to launch TipSoft for Education specifically for the K-12 education market. This is because we’ve witnessed four important trends recently that we know are affecting the K-12 environment.

Four Trends Affecting K-12 Education

1) State Mandates – Especially in light of the rash of bullying incidents, almost all states now have anti-bullying legislation, and many require schools to have a solution in place that allows students to report issues of bullying and harassment. In fact, 49 states have passed new or newly amended anti-bullying legislation. This increased requirement has become a burden on schools that TipSoft can fulfill.

2) Accountability – Schools today are facing an increasing demand for accountability in addressing incidents when bullying occurs or when students bring drugs or weapons into the schools. TipSoft provides a robust incident management application to show that information has been collected, disseminated, and an ability to report that information back out. So, with TipSoft, schools can accurately log and show what they have done when an incident occurs.

3) Increase of Funding Tied to Attendance – Many states have now tied the allocation of federal funds to average daily attendance (ADA). When students miss school, it costs the schools between $20-$50 per day they are absent. With more than 160,000 students skipping schools each day because of fear of bullying, have a solution that can literally pay for itself in allowing schools to hold on to precious federal funding is essential.

4) The Need for Alerting – The recent shooting tragedies in Sandy Hook, Connecticut and Lone Star College in Texas have shown that when a shooting occurs, there is a gap in the ability to effectively warn those at the school, as well as parents and community members of the incident in providing them with safety instructions and updates. In the case of the Lone Star College incident, an alert was posted on the college’s Website instructing students and faculty to take cover. We view this as inadequate for schools. TipSoft Alerts, which has the ability to broadcast text messages to subscriber’s phones, is a much more effective and immediate solution that delivers information right to users’ phones.

Because of these requirements, we think TipSoft is the ideal application to help schools combat the issues of bullying, cyberbullying, violence, weapons and drugs in schools. One of the things we are most proud of is the number of suicides that have been prevented in schools, as highlighted in last week’s presentation. One of our customers, Safe2Tell, has recently recorded a milestone of more that 1,000 suicides interventions, which originated from information coming into TipSoft. TipSoft is a proven application and is run by more than 1,000 organizations, including police forces, the US Navy and Air Force, and many universities.

Part of that success comes from the ubiquity of the application for users—students can submit information from a mobile app, the Web, or by text, as well as ease of administrators in using the cloud-based application, along with the unique ability of schools being able to forward and share information with local law enforcement. Those features have made TipSoft the number one application for law enforcement for years, and we expect it will have the same level of impact for K-12 education as well.

The Profile of a Cyberbully

Posted on October 22, 2012 by Jeff Beaver

Around the school yard it’s easy to spot a bully, but when harassment takes place online, cyber bullies often torment their victims behind the mask of anonymity, making it difficult to hold them accountable. Just who are these cyber bullies? Are they vengeful youth lurking in online chat rooms or are they “friends” on Facebook? What’s the profile of a cyberbully?

While research suggests that anyone is just as likely to be a bully or a victim, here are a few common profiles of youth-tormenting cyberbullies:

The Peer Predator

It’s not surprising that most cyber bullies are the same age as their victims and equally as likely to be a boy or girl. These peer predators are more apt to be the Facebook “friends” of their victims. According to a 2004 study by the Journal of Adolescence, 68% of these offenders (typically age 9-14) use the Internet for four or more days per week, while those whose use the Internet most often for chat rooms are three times more likely to harass others online than those who don’t. As the peer predator passes age 15, bullying becomes more violent and often evolves into sexual harassment.

The Pedophile

On Facebook he is the dreamy 17 year-old boy or girl everyone has a crush for, in real life he is a middle-aged man, logging into Facebook from his garage to seek out shy, withdrawn, or handicapped children who are vulnerable to his advances. Most often men (though they do include women), these perverts gain the trust of their victims and convince them to take pornographic photos of themselves–which the pedophiles promptly share online with the victim’s peers. Just last week, teenager Amanda Todd killed herself after a string of harassment emanating from an incident where a mystery man posted a photo exposing the teen’s chest.

The Parent/Impersonator

Its probably a teen’s worst nightmare to be ‘friended’ online by their parent, or a friend’s parent on Facebook or Myspace. But when parents impersonate teenagers online in an attempt to take justice into their own hands or “investigate” activity in their child’s social network, it can get really nasty quick. In 2007, a Missouri mom posed as a foreign 16-year-old boy to feign interest in teenage girl Megan Meier, a former friend of her daughter’s to investigate what Megan was saying about her daughter online. After online manipulation and harassment the girl committed suicide at the Missouri mom’s urging.

Holding Cyberbullies Accountable

Too often these faceless bullies torment their victims without facing consequences for their actions. For youth victims however, their tormentors aren’t faceless: the profile of a cyberbully is often the kid sitting next to them in class, perhaps a soccer teammate, or a facebook friend, people they know but are too embarrassed to report. Stopping “the peer predator”, “the pedophile” and “parent/impersonator” and other online tormentors is possible by encouraging victims to speak out–identify and report cyberbullies to school administrators and law enforcement when necessary.

Bullied Bus Monitor Video Goes Viral

Posted on June 21, 2012 by admin

This morning as I poured over the latest USA Today headlines, a story about the following video going viral over the last few days caught my attention. And it got me thinking, what is it about kids where they feel the need to bully, pick on, and just down right be rude to other people – whether their fellow classmates or, as in this example, 68-year-old bus monitor Karen Klein? As of the timing of this post the 10 minute-plus video has received more than 1.6 million views and many more video responses and comments. What we’re really interested in from the perspective of the education system is how do we teach kids the importance of respect for each other and what type of discipline is an appropriate response?

While the video is difficult to watch, the feel good story coming from the episode is that one viewer, moved by what he watched, used the popular fundraising site indiegogo.com to start a modest fund to send Klein on a much deserved vacation with a $5,000 budget. The public’s response? The fund as it sits this moment has received $256,498 and is growing so rapidly that the Website hosting it is experiencing traffic overload – http://www.indiegogo.com/loveforkarenhklein.

So what do you think – beyond parental disciplining, what role should the education establishment play in teaching kids about the negative affects of bullying?

By the way, Klein’s response to the pestering, “Unless you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

Looks like Ms. Klein is getting the last laugh.

*Please note the following content may be viewed by some as profane and vulgar.

Parents Need to Teach Children that Cyber-Bullying is Wrong

Posted on December 16, 2009 by Samuel B. Hislop

Rather than properly disciplining their child for the act of cyber-bullying, some parents are taking the low road and suing schools for punishing their child’s act of hate.

According to a recent story from the Los Angeles Times, some parents and free-speech advocates are fighting back against school-issued discipline, claiming their children “have a 1st Amendment right to be nasty in cyberspace.”

Continue reading →

Bullying Increases in Intensity—More Criminal Charges

Posted on July 10, 2009 by James Gunter

Although it is unclear whether these incidents have increased in intensity or whether more people are reporting them, parents and schools are growing increasingly unafraid to prosecute bullies as criminals. USA Today reports that, in the last 20 years, criminal charges and parental litigation have increased in cases of juvenile bullying.

In addition, it seems that the bullying cases are bringing to light more disturbing and cruel assaults than in years past. For example, the USA Today article cites cases involving sodomizing with broom handles and hockey sticks and simulated rape in addition to physical beatings. And in at least one case, a student was held down while the bully rubbed his genitals on the victim’s face.

What makes these cases worse is the fact that majority of them are not isolated incidents, but rather once a victim comes forward to a parent or teacher a history of bulling and abuse is uncovered.

The key to preventing this type of abuse before it starts is an open line of communication between parents and children, teachers and students. Make sure your children know that they can talk to you about anything. Create the type of relationship with your child where they will feel safe talking to you in an open and honest way. In addition, talk to your children about bullying and speaking up when they see it. Many of the cases of bullying uncovered a number of witnesses that for some reason or another did not tell parents or teachers about the abuse of another student.

Communication is key to keeping your children safe.

Source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-07-09-rape-bullying-school_N.htm

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