Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly feature, Analyst Angle. We’ve collected a group of the industry’s leading analysts to give their outlook on the hot topics in the wireless industry.
We all know that bullying is a major problem in K-12 education with it being more of a problem (but not exclusively) in high school (typically 9-12th grades). This problem is exacerbated by social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, as well as the bring-your-own-device movement, which gives students access to social media and other online sites virtually 24-7. There’s also the problem of how to detect thoughts of suicide and intervene in time to provide assistance to a young person before they take their own life.
There are a number of good articles about cyber-bullying (e.g. here and here) but there’s little discussion about how technology helps manage this problem before it leads to a traumatic event. Prof. Thomas Holt of Michigan State did a study that showed that 25% of K-12 students experience cyber-bullying at some point.
I suspect the majority of students know about it even if they aren’t a direct participant. Even if the cyber-bullying activity is anonymous or done via “catfishing,” about 85% of those who experience cyber-bullying know who the bully is and it’s usually somebody with whom they are in contact at school. And, even though this primarily happens digitally outside of school hours, it often carries over to physical bullying at school.
And, here’s the really scary part, those who said they were cyber-bullied were also most likely to say they had considered suicide. The issue at hand is how to use digital technology to intervene and lower the rate of or, hopefully, prevent cyber-bullying that can result in a disastrous negative spiral ending up as suicide. Stop the cyber-bullying and you stop real bullying and, in turn, you stop many teen suicides. To underscore the severity of the situation, cybe-rbullying is quickly becoming the No. 1 issue for school administrators over content filtering and copyright protection.
Everything we do online creates a digital footprint. Therefore, it is possible to trace anonymous sources of bullying on the Internet back to their source, and it doesn’t take the sophistication of the NSA to do it.
You might be surprised to find out that a number of companies provide sophisticated Wi-Fi management services to educational institutions. These firms are working with K-12 administrators and teachers to help solve some of the most serious problems that affect the educational system most prevalent in K-12 but also in higher education. Higher education has additional problems such as ensuring the student is paying attention to his or her education rather than spending too much time in “diversions” such as video/online gaming and illegally downloading content.
One company that is helping the K-12 education sector deal with some of its most serious problems is Nomadix, a leader in Internet-access enablement. Their Wi-Fi and wireline Internet access appliances have intelligence that goes far beyond the simple Wi-Fi routers that we buy and use in our homes. Nomadix helps K-12 IT administrators analyze traffic over Wi-Fi and wired links while other companies focus on analysis of the cellular data traffic that includes text messaging and mobile phone Web browsing.
Here’s how it works. The intelligent analysis is provided by the Nomadix Internet Traffic Optimizer. This provides a high-speed appliance that enables IT managers to review traffic patterns and content usage to provide them with data insights to more efficiently allocate bandwidth and throttle traffic accordingly.
Web content filtering and network security features protect both the network and its users. The software that provides these services is built into NITO and enables the education organization’s IT department to setup and apply a number of rules and associated actions. Furthermore, full reporting is available on board the appliance, which allows IT managers to drill down on data and analysis patterns, IP address usage, most visited domains, search terms and more.
NITO has the ability to review text messages (sent over Wi-Fi and wired networks), e-mails and websites visited like Facebook to identify a certain behavior such as bullying and communicating in an inappropriate manner. This is achieved with full oversight and control by the school’s IT management who can also define new rules that are specific to the school’s administration’s policies.
NITO has a growing library of websites (called the “black list”), which is updated daily, that students cannot visit while using the school’s Wi-Fi network. The school’s IT management can add to or delete entries.
I’m sure that some people will object to NITO analyzing students’ messages as well as alerting staff to a condition of bullying or mental duress. The schools have the responsibility to educate and maintain the well-being of the students while under their oversight. And, students and parents are fully notified that their use of the Internet will be monitored with each family needing to have at least one parent sign that they understand and approve of the analysis and alerting process.
Technology has fueled bullying and morphed it into a very serious situation. If technology is playing a role in creating this problem, then hopefully it can play a role in providing tools to combat it. While there is a lot of discussion by schools administrators about setting policies and intervening, it seems that technology should be recruited to play a role in supporting these efforts.
When looking at technology to address this issue, there are several recommended capabilities:
–It is key to have granular management and monitoring of websites and social media. Solutions must do this very granularly and flexibly such as by site, specific content, context, specific construct, based on key terms, during configurable time periods or for certain duration.
–Content plays a huge role, and you need to be able to filter and track based on content, context and construct. For example, solutions should provide a window into the content, how the page is constructed, links to the page, the context of the content, third-party advertisements, etc. Basically, they need to look at the entire Web page, not just the URL.
–Prevention is part of the solution too. It’s vital to not just monitor ingress (incoming) and egress (outgoing) Internet traffic for specific activity, key terms, key sites, etc., but also to put an alert function in place that is triggered by key words or other warnings. For instance, the ability to block bullying terms on ingress and egress is something any solution should offer.
–Solutions should be flexible and have an easy-to-use management interface with a detailed reporting feature that can provide data for analytics to support process improvements.
–It is important that any solution be adaptable to fit the IT infrastructure through the ability to configure the monitoring and filtering based on hierarchical roles and organization structure.
My good friend Tom Greaves is founder of The Greaves Group, a respected research and consulting organization focusing on the K-12 market. Tom is also co-author of several studies, including “America’s Digital Schools” and “Project RED,” which surveys digital technology in K-12 districts. Tom sees cyber-bullying as a big issue of school district liability: “Last month, a Tennessee district was sued for $1.1 million because of alleged cyber-bullying. This would have paid for a lot of filters.”
The debate is intense right now regarding safety, security and privacy. We certainly don’t want to have analysis of student’s digital communication to be done without oversight and approval of the activities. Each student should be managed in a professional and supportive manner.
Here are a few things that everyone can do to prevent cyber and real bullying:
–Assess bullying in your school – Get involved and work with the school’s administration to find out how bad a problem it actually is.
–Engage parents and youth – Launch awareness campaigns and have students participate in the process.
–Create policies and rules – Put a policy making group together made up of students, parents and school administrators and get all parties aware and their buy-in.
–Build a safe environment – Establish a culture of zero-tolerance for people who are proven to be cyber-bullying.
–Educate students and school staff – Build cyber-bullying into the curriculum and train both teachers as well as parents about the problem and how to deal with it.
If these digital analysis systems can help school administrators intervene against negative behaviors such as cyber-bullying and help affected students who may be suicidal get professional help, then such intervention may clearly help save young people’s lives who may, as a result, live to become a positive contributor to society. If you have a child, make sure you do something to participate in the process of preventing cyber-bullying.
J. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D. is Principal Analyst, Mobile & Wireless at MobileTrax L.L.C. As a nationally recognized industry authority, he focuses on monitoring and analyzing emerging trends, technologies and market behavior in the mobile computing and wireless data communications industry in North America. Dr. Purdy is an “edge of network” analyst looking at devices, applications and services as well as wireless connectivity to those devices.
