Anne Bubnic's EasyBlog

In this information technology age, children and youth in West and East Oakland face the additional disadvantage of a digital divide, which separates ethnicities, socio-economic classes, genders, and ages. Youth from low-income communities rarely have access to cutting edge communication technologies or, just as importantly, to empowering uses of them. A comparison between the number of computers per Oakland school with the schools’ statewide academic performance ranking, or API, revealed that some schools with high numbers of computers have very low API’s. This discrepancy suggests that simply having technology is not enough; rather, to improve student academic outcomes, technology must be meaningfully used.

Click here for Local Video coverage of the event.

The teacher's guide for this film may be downloaded from the Digizen.org web site as a PDF file.

95 percent feel that Internet safety is a very important or somewhat important issue to them
• 97 percent feel that protecting personal privacy is very or somewhat important to them
• 56 percent feel they do not have enough or no privacy at all online
• Across generations, protecting personal privacy is very or somewhat important to 99 percent of Older Americans, 98 percent of parents and 93 percent of teens

A Today Show interview with Olivia Gardner could be a helpful addition to the lesson plan on Olivia's letters.

Upate: The child was found dead and buried near an uncle's home on July 2. The uncle is a registered sex offender. Bennett's former stepfather, Raymond Gagnon, was also formally charged Wednesday with obstructing justice in the case. The 40-year-old Gagnon was on a regular visit to Vermont when he was arrested. According to the affidavit, Gagnon told police he accessed his former stepdaughter's MySpace page from a computer at his San Antonio home after getting login information from Jacques.

Police said they have evidence that postings to the account were altered to make it appear that the 12-year-old had discussed a secret rendezvous shortly before she disappeared.

2-4 cite the following cases:

1. Gebser v. Lago Vista Independent School District (1998), the U.S. Supreme Court found that a district was liable for an employee's harassment of a student when district officials knew of the harassment and failed to take any corrective action

2. Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education: Supreme Court found that a person can bring a private lawsuit against a school system under Title IX for student on student sexual harassment. (This is the case that established the "deliberate indifference" standard.)

3. Stowe Regional High School Board of Education v. P.S., the 3rd Circuit Appeals Court ruled that a school system's failure to prevent bullying and harassment based on a disability resulted in a failure to provide a free appropriate public education as required by the IDEA.

"In wake of these Supreme Court decisions, federal and state courts have applied the "deliberate indifference" standard to allegations that extend beyond gender discrimination to other types of harassment and bullying."