Earlier this week, Facebook launched a new initiative to augment its response to potentially suicidal members by offering them the opportunity for a private chat with a trained crisis representative from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
This service will be available to people who use Facebook in the United States and Canada.
The new service enables Facebook users to report a suicidal comment they see posted by a friend to Facebook using either the Report Suicidal Content link or the report links found throughout Facebook.
The person who posted the suicidal comment will then immediately receive an e-mail from Facebook encouraging them to call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or to click on a link to begin a confidential chat session with a crisis worker.
Preventing suicide is everyone’s business. Nearly 100 Americans die by suicide every day, and in the past year, more than eight million Americans 18 or older had thought seriously about suicide.
Here's a free printable on this new program. Feel free to share it with teachers, parents, youth pastors or anyone else who works with youth.
In this infographic you can find out more about Facebook's security infrastructure and an overview of the tools available to all users to increase their level of account security.
Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn’t know the first thing about either.” —Marshall McLuhan
On October 10th Oprah Winfrey will launch an all-new five week series, Oprah's Lifeclass, where she will reflect on and share the lessons that she learned during the 25-year history of The Oprah Winfrey Show.
The Oprah's Lifeclass, which airs on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), will also feature an online companion course "Life Work" that will feature exclusive videos, articles, quizzes and advice from leading experts to help students get their life on track and moving in a new direction.
What is truly exciting is to see OWN embrace both emerging social platforms like Facebook along with the web for online learning. Although, this shouldn't come as too much of a suprise that Ms. Winfrey is taking 'the classroom' anywhere the students are gathered and prepared to learn.
During her 25 years on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Ms. Winfrey turned the network television into the world's biggest classroom. Whether it's building schools in Africa or educating her live audience in Chicago or viewers at home in San Antonio, Stockholm or Sydney, education has been at the core of Oprah's message.
When the tornado devastated the town of Joplin Missouri, teachers turned to Facebook to help locate students. A new measure could make that a bit more complicated.
Missouri Governor Jay Nixon recently signed a bill into law that would ban exclusive contact on social networking sites between teachers and students. Senate Bill 54 passed with unanimous support.
A small part of the wide-ranging SB54, makes it illegal for teachers to be "friends" with students on any social networking site that allows private communication.
That means teachers and students can't be friends on Facebook or can't follow each other on Twitter for example.
It was meant to prevent teachers from developing inappropriate relationships with their students. But to use Facebook parlance, not everyone is clicking the like button.
NPR's All Things Considered's Michele Norris spoke to an eighth grade teacher from Joplin, Mo., who opposes the new law. Randy Turner, who teaches English, said as teachers your job is to reach out to students and that means going where they are and now a days students have shunned e-mail and are using social networking sites to communicate.
But Turner argues instead of protecting children, this new law may be hurting them. "We may be preventing them from talking to the very people who may be able to help," he said.
In his address to the Council on Foreign Relations in May 2010, Secretary Arne Duncan stated:
“We must improve language learning and international education at all levels if our nation is to continue to lead in the global economy to help bring security and stability to the world and to build stronger and more productive ties with our neighbors….We have never been more aware of the value of a multiliterate, multilingual society, a society that can appreciate all that makes other cultures and nations distinctive, even as it embraces all that they have in common.”
This Guide has been prepared as part of the Department of Education's effort to expand global awareness through collaboration between students and teachers in the US with their peers around the world.
On these pages, teachers will find many projects and suggestions to begin or expand classroom projects that reach across the globe and enable students to learn WITH the world, as well as about it.
In each section of this Guide we have also provided links to elementary, middle and high school projects and links to organizations that are involved in international education via the Internet and Web 2.0 tools.
Yesterday the NSW Teachers Federation in Australia announced that public school teachers have been granted permission to use Facebook, Twitter and other social media in the classroom. Students are still blocked.
The president of the NSW Teachers Federation, Bob Lipscombe, cautioned teachers to take care about who they became ''friends'' with on Facebook to ensure their professionalism was not compromised. He reminded teachers that any information they posted would be imprinted in the public domain.
The Department of Education has developed a social media policy in consultation with school principals and teacher groups. The policy, which is available on the department's website, has been distributed to all public schools. The guidelines advise teachers to be honest, polite and considerate and to use common sense.
The other big news was an official announcement from Facebook about the 'Facebook for Educators' handbook that was co-written by Linda Fogg-Phillips, BJ Fogg and myself.
Linda also joined the live event to talk about teachers and Facebook. We are looking forward to getting this document to you and hearing your feedback! So stay tuned!
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