“After School:” Mobile SM App for High Schoolers Offers Potential Headaches for Educators

Yesterday, I stumbled across this post on the Washington Post web site: “Millions of Teens Are Using a New App to Post Anonymous Thoughts, and Most Parents Have No Idea.” It turns that our students now have access to a high school version of the app Yik Yak called “After School.” Yik Yak has been quite popular among college age users for some time. For those not familiar with Yik Yak, or the high schooler app After School, these apps allows users to post messages anonymously that only other users in the general vicinity of the message poster can see. Apps like Yik Yak have been implicated in posting anonymous threats and cyberbullying online. (For example, see “What Is Yik Yak, the App That Fielded Racist Threats at the University of Missouri.”) What’s more, this “After School” app is also at the heart of possible postings of cyberbullying and postings where users threaten to bring guns to school. (See “Why Parents and Administrators Are Freaking Outv About an App Called After School.”)

It is easy to sound the alarm when these kinds of social media platforms arise, but it turns out that this particular app has been around at least a year. It appeared in the App Store and the Google Play Store last fall according to web site Fusion (See here), but it was removed twice because it was used for cyberbulling and posting gun threats. It returned this past April, and its developers claim to have a whole bunch of new safety features, including algorithms that block certain words and it is also said to use human reviewers who examine each post.

Well, for those of us familiar with web filters in schools, we know all too well that the best of these kinds of safety measures are far from foolproof. Many students are masters at trying to get things through the filters, and we’ve given them years of practice. But my beef with After School actually goes beyond that and is captured best by a question: Why in the world would we give high school students an anonymous platform like this when we know from experience that many are not ready to handle the freedom of any posting much less “anonymous posting?” It seems to be the equivalent of giving students the keys to a sports car with a cooler full of beer in the front seat and simply telling them not to drink and drive. After School is simply a platform that has the potential to facilitate irresponsiblity and possibly dangerous cyber-behaviors because students often thrive on web anonymity.

What’s more, I take exception to After School’s FAQ page which seems to suggest by its language there that schools have somehow endorsed this product. (See the After School FAQ page here.) On that page it states at the very top, “Anonymous and Private Message Board for Your School.” Those words seem, at first glance, to make a link between the message board in After School and the school the student attends, but that is far from the case. The school and its administration have no connection, control, or power over this product. That’s why many school administrators are quite upset about this product.
I am not sure an all out panic about this product is warranted, but I do think we need to educate both our students, and especially our parents about the potentially dangerous uses of this app.

We also need to make clear that this app basically allows students to set up their own cyber community, totally disconnected from our schools, that is supposedly monitored by this company. We as parents and educators, by allowing our students and children to use this app, are placing a large amount of trust in algorithms and faceless individuals out there somewhere to monitor the safety. The truth is, we at the school and district level, with all our web filters and cyber-safety gadgets have an extremely difficult time with cyberbullying and web threats. What on earth would make us think that out there in cyberspace a company can do that better? While After School has been around and is not really new, it operates on assumptions that ultimately will probably cause its own demise. That is the idea that anonymous posting for high schoolers can be effectively monitored. Just looking at their disclaimers in the app store should be concern enough. Check it out:

That’s quite a laundry list of items of things parents would object to having their students exposed to.

I don’t usually rate apps with thumbs up or thumbs down, but this one gets double thumbs down because it is a potential cyberdisaster at every school.

Great Resource for Helping Students Manage Their Online Reputations

According to Matt Ivester in his book lol…OMG: What Every Student Needs to Know about Online Reputation Management, Digital Citizenship and Cyberbullying, “Many of today’s students are finding themselves with a very real permanent record---one that reflects every poor decision of their youth, and is stored online forever.”

Most of us remember those moments of major embarrassment in high school, and fortunately we are often the only ones who remember those incidents. That’s because the only record of those events are our memories.

Today however, our students engage in online behaviors that are recorded permanently. Their indiscretions and behaviors are recorded for posterity and the world to see. But how can we as educators help students engage in online activities without permanently damaging their lives and reputations with youthful mistakes? Ivester's lol...OMG is a book guaranteed to get the discussion about responsible online behavior started.

Ivester's book is a excellent resource for educating students in areas such as:

• Understanding How Creating and Posting Online Content Is Both Global and Permanent
• Understanding How What They Post Can Haunt Them for A Long Time
• How to Avoid Engaging in Careless Content Creation
• How They Are Creating Their Online Reputations
• How to Become a "Conscious Creator of Content"
• How to Engage in "Active Reputation Management"
• Issues with Cyberbullying and Why It's a Problem
• Becoming Responsible Digital Citizens

High schools are guilty of leaving students to their own devices when it comes to managing their online reputations, so should we be surprised when they end up as news stories in the national media?

The time has arrived for schools to teach students how to effectively manage their online reputations, be responsible digital citizens, and effectively deal with cyberbullying. To assist with that instruction, Schools will find Ivester’s book, lol…OMG an excellent resource for engaging students in conversations about their online behaviors. In a writing style that high school students should find easy-to-read, this book doesn't try to convince students avoid online activity because it is too "dangerous." Instead, it assumes students are going to be online citizens and gives them no-nonsense advice on how to survive online without permanently damaging their reputation.



Matt Ivester’s lol…OMG: What Every Student Needs to Know about Online Reputation Management, Digital Citizenship and Cyberbullying makes an excellent addition to your school’s reading list, or a great gift for any high school student heavily engaged in online activities.

Cyber Law: Guidebook for Writing, Revising, and Implementing Technology Policies

“Legal regulation of education is not new. It has just become a lot more complicated now that computers are in the classroom.” Aimee Bissonette

With those words, Aimee Bissonette aptly describes the quandary 21st century school administrators find themselves in as they navigate the constantly changing conditions of relationships between technology and schools and those who use it. Often, the technology is changing faster than school leaders can address the issues that the use of that technology by students, staff and teachers brings to the school environment. Twenty-first administrators are constantly looking for resources that offer clear guidance on these complicated issues. That’s where Bissonette’s book Cyber Law: Maximizing Safety and Minimizing Risk in the Classrooms can help. This book provides readers with lucid, specific advice on how to develop effective technology policy, on what the legal issues are in the development of that policy, and measures schools can take to be proactive in order to avoid the legal minefields and having their schools appear in national headlines.

Cyber Law is cover-to-cover advice for school leaders looking to write new technology policy or revise current technology policy, and Bissonette, even though she’s an attorney, uses an engaging, non-technical style. For example, she provides very clear advice on what schools should do when writing cyberbullying policies. She assists school leaders by helping them navigate the thorny issues of First Amendment Rights and free speech when drafting rules and regulations regarding student expression in a technological environment. She also provides clear advice for school policymakers on how to navigate those same free speech issues when it comes to dealing with teacher and staff expression through the Internet. The advice Bissonette gives is clear and comprehensive. Every technology-related legal issue from cyberbullying to copyright law is covered in this book.



While Bissonette wisely cautions that her book is not a substitute for legal advice, it does provide a legal overview of the litigation landscape that has an affect on technology policy development. For example, she provides a complete overview of the legal cases that impact decisions on how schools can address cyberbullying. She provides that same overview regarding how school leaders can set policy that guides teacher and staff use of school network systems. She even reviews FERPA and copyright law as it might pertain to technology policy development. Her book is not a substitute for legal advice, but it certainly is a starting point for school leaders to begin discussing what their technology policy looks like and how it might be made more effective.

Finally, Cyber Law has specific measures schools should take to protect themselves from litigation interspersed throughout all chapters of the book. Beginning in chapter one, Bissonette gives school leaders advice on what kinds of elements should be included in cyberbullying policies. She provides clear guidelines in chapter two regarding what schools can do to reduce inappropriate behaviors from students as they engage in the use of school technology resources. In chapter three she provides a clear checklist for addressing teacher and staff use of Internet systems in school policy. Throughout the book, Bissonette provides specific ideas on how school leaders can protect their schools and districts from litigation and tragedy.

As we continue to wade deeper into the rapids of 21st century education with its changing technologies, we can certainly use all of the advice and guidance we can get. Aimee Bissonette’s book Cyber Law: Maximizing Safety and Minimizing Risk in Classrooms is an excellent resource for 21st century school leaders faced with setting, revising, and enforcing technology policy.