11111

11111

General Session - Conference Presentation Only (no formal paper)

Considering Faculty Readiness for Digital Safety in Schools
Thanh Truc Nguyen, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, nguyen@hawaii.edu

In this roundtable general session, we are seeking participants who are interested in helping to craft professional development for school faculty in regards to digital citizenship and Internet safety in schools. Currently there are four different bills (one house and three senate) being presented for consideration in the 26th state legislative session. As these measures are considered, the nation is tuned in to see whether the state of Hawaii, one of only six states without anti-bullying laws (including cyberbullying), will finally adopt an anti-bullying stance (note: Hawaii does have an anti-harassment law).

In a recent study of Internet safety issues, 112 Hawaii public school faculty participated in a questionnaire of issues surrounding digital safety in schools. From our survey, we found that 82% of responding school faculty felt that children should learn about Internet safety in schools. However, over 50% indicated that they rarely or never address Internet safety as educators; the remaining said maybe once a month (17%), once a week (13%), or daily (3%). School faculty are comfortable using computers (84%), trust their students' actions on computers (70%), and are prepared to talk about Internet safety issues with their students (77%). The data indicates that school faculty are dedicated to and ready to learn more skills to create a safe learning environment for their students.

We hope session participants will learn more about where school faculty stand on certain issues and will contribute their perspectives on next steps should anti-bullying legislation, which requires school faculty training, becomes law.

All Audiences internet safety, anti-bullying, cyber bullying, teacher professional development, digital citizenship