News Report 2

On October 10, 2008, George W. Bush passed a bill that will required any school that are receiving money from the government for telecommunication programs to educate its students about “appropriate online behavior”. This bill is called Broadband Data Improvement Act and it is designed to help protect young people from the dangers of the web. In 2006 a bill called the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) was proposed and while it made it through the House of Representatives easily it did not get passed by the United States Senate. DOPA proposed that schools and libraries block all social networking and online chat websites to protect students from online predators. Many groups though felt that what DOPA proposed was not appropriate and that instead students should be educated about those types of websites. The new bill was designed in the hope that students will learn how to deal with things such as cyberbullying, and how to appropriate communicate through social networking sites with putting themselves into danger or getting themselves into trouble.

I think that this new bill is a good idea and that all schools should considers taking part in this. The bill states that only schools receiving money for a certain type of program are required to participate but I think that all schools should consider educating their students about the dangers of online social networking. An appropriate time in my mind for school to begin teaching this would be when students first enter middle school. I believe it is around this age that young students will really begin to get involved with online social networking. The internet can be very dangerous and students may get themselves into trouble if they are not fully educated on the dangers of the web.