Cyber Bullying and Filters- Can't we just filter the cyber bullies?

In our school we have had some serious issues with cyber bullying. It is something that is so tough to control because it sometimes happens outside of school but it has huge effects inside of school. Last year we had a big problem with a specific group of girls that was involved with cyber bullying and ended up causing a fight inside the school building. I think there need to be specific punishments laid out in the event of online bullying. The case we had at school ended up with the students being suspended and really effecting the atmosphere of the school for awhile. It creates a tension and I think bullying someone online is just as bad as doing it in person.

On a separate topic I think the filters in school can be both a blessing and a curse. The problem with a filter is twofold. First, the students can find ways to get around them. In our school they download firefox (we use internet explorer) and can go around the filters which are set up for internet explorer. Another problem is that they block certain things that I would like the students to be able to look up. I did a project recently where the students had to look up current events relating to Lord of the Flies and they weren’t able to look up ANY pictures (google images is blocked) and they were blocked from many sites that would have been helpful (i.e. sites about Nazis) On the other side, the filters do keep out other things that are obviously inappropriate for school. If I have a whole class doing research it would be impossible to see all the screens at once so we must have certain controls set. It makes a troubling conundrum. I would like to be able to just trust the students and the internet but that is obviously not completely possible so we are stuck with an imperfect system for now. But it really would be nice to only filter out the cyber bullies...