Educational Technology Initiatives for Preventing Cyberbullying

In order to prove that a defendant is negligent, a plaintiff must prove the elements of negligence, which are duty, breach, causation, and damages. This relationship between duty and negligence was at the essence of a famous U.K. court case (Donoghue v Stevenson, 1932). Since Donoghue, the whole world has become a neighbour online. Since Donoghue, the “neighbour” principle is extended to anywhere, any time. Today, everyone takes anywhere, any time for granted; the law has yet to catch up. This chapter describes recent attempts at preventing cyber-bullying through legislation and educational initiatives. There are many educational initiatives already in place about cyberbullying awareness and prevention: some federal, some provincial.

Adverse Effects Discrimination

Legal writers call it “adverse effects discrimination” and “adverse discrimination effect,” which describes a situation in which a policy that seems on its face to treat everyone equally actually has an adverse impact on a protected group. Applied to gender inequality, ageism, and differential provisions for workforce training, there are plenty of cases to support the principle. One of the most notable Supreme Court cases in Canadian legal history is Gosselin v. Quebec (Attorney General). This chapter is an overview of some of the opinions published about Gosselin that exposes the Charter as negative law and constitutes part of a needs assessment for judicial instruction about deciding cases of equity.

ODR

Most people in a dispute would rather use online dispute resolution (ODR) than go to court because it is less costly, more convenient, operates outside the formal court structure, and does not require legal representation. Unfortunately, these same reasons that attract most people to online dispute resolution also attract a more powerful clientele with the money to hire lawyers that have greater resources at their disposal than their less fortunate counterparts. This chapter describes a persistent problem in online dispute resolution, namely that substandard ODR presentations made by inarticulate and lesser dispute-wise disputants can make for uneven bargaining conditions, a perfect setting for human conflict. Brain-scanning technologies offer us a new perspective on gaining and maintaining attention during conflict and a model of instructional design from which inexperienced disputants can learn to prepare successful dispute-wise presentations.

Applying Patent Laws and Regulations to Educational Technology

European universities have increased their emphasis on commercializing original research so as to compete globally, to keep-up with changing demands of the knowledge economy, to offset decreased public funding, and to cope with the massification of education. “Commercializing” in this sense implies applying for patents. This chapter highlights the application of patent laws in the UK and Europe to educational technology. One of the most promising conditions under which patent law can be applied in educational technology is the peer-to-patent, originally introduced in the U.S. Another is expert-peer online assessment for resolving online disputes. The post-and-vote formula should be considered if this initiative is restarted in the future.

Academic Domain Names as Unregistered Trademarks in Educational Technology

Academic domain names are not only addresses for communication, like postal addresses or phone numbers, but rather distinctive badges of origin that denote a unique set of educational services. More than badges even, domain names are exogenous orienting attentional cues that orient public attention to an academic domain name. Domain names, as attentional cues, evoke a psychological state of familiarity, acclimatization, adaptation, alignment, acculturation, and even reconciliation. After that, protection of the badge may be required against fraudsters who hope to trade on a good domain name.

Attitude Training for Police Cadets

The news has not been good for mental health training programs for police in Australia, Canada, the U.S., and the UK. Police training is seen as inadequate to prepare police officers to identify and deal with persons with a mental illness. This chapter describes one approach of writing a proposal to conduct a comparison of attitude-training programs with police cadets. The main aspects of writing a proposal are covered: the background, problem statement, hypothesis, and the design of the treatments for comparison. Isolating the main features of each treatment requires designing some instruction based on factors that can influence police attitude toward suspects with a mental illness. Contemporary design guidelines are recommended, which should be informed by the designer's personal assumptions about how people learn from multimedia.

Delete, Delete, Hang-Up

Whereas most members of social media are enthusiastically exercising their legal right to express themselves freely, some seem unwilling or incapable of assessing the high risk of disclosing information about their most private thoughts, interests, opinions, work, and health status, particularly in times of psychological distress or personal tragedy. This chapter updates criminal activity associated with frequent use of social media. Some believe that the conceptual elasticity of the term “cyberbullying” has been used to push for a tougher crime agenda, while obscuring tragedy of the suicides in Canadian federal parliamentary debates.

Class 41 Trademarks

Traditionally, a trademark was used as a badge of origin: either a mark, a sign, or a sound that told potential buyers exactly who was offering a particular product or service. Today, the Class 41 trademark denotes a registered educational mark, not solely as a source of revenue, but also as a badge of origin. More often, an educational mark is not meant as a source identifier or even an identifier of an endorsement, but rather to further the expression of the user, to comment or criticize the trademark owner, but also to satirize broader social issues through the juxtaposition of the trademark. New to trademark historical development, perhaps, is the idea that a trademark, whether seen or heard, is an exogenous orienting attentional cue.

Copyright Distinctions in Educational Technology

Copyright law is the most recognizable form of intellectual property in the world and perhaps the most misunderstood in educational technology. This is not surprising due to the current climate of uncertainty and financial austerity in higher education. Universities in the United Kingdom in particular are facing significant challenges. Brexit brings uncertainty for treatment of European students in the UK for research collaborations with Europe and for British partnerships across Europe.

Lawful Trojan Horse

News outlets don't usually report on training methods in counter-cyberterrorism, particularly lawful trojan attacks. Instead they describe recent cyberterrorist attacks, or threats, or laws and regulations concerning internet privacy or identity theft. Yet Europe is looking to do just that to head-off the next major cyberattack by creating rules for how member states should react and respond. Several news outlets, for example, reported that Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) were using a Trojan Horse to access the smartphone data of suspected individuals before the information was encrypted. Although the urge to strike back may be palpable, hacking-back can put power back into the hands of the suspect. The consensus now is that government action is preferable to hacking-back at attackers.