The Importance of Being Proactive: Suicide Clusters, Prevention Programs, and Postvention Methods in the High School Setting

The purpose of this paper is to explain the phenomenon of suicide clustering and suicide contagion in relation to teenagers and the education system and to provide detailed recommendations for both the prevention and postvention of youth suicide in the school system. Due to the prevalence of mental health issues in teenagers, especially depression, it is important for educators to be aware of the risks of youth suicide attempts and completion, as well as the inherent dangers of clustering that may occur. The phenomenon of suicide clustering will be explained, including the methods by which clustering occurs, as well as the risks schools face when a student commits suicide because of the increased chance of a suicide cluster. The common risks and warning signs of suicides, contagion, and clustering will be discussed. Additionally, the risks associated with LGBT and special needs youth will be analyzed in order to suggest proper prevention training for educators of these students. Furthermore, an extensive, threefold prevention program and curriculum that includes school personnel, students, and parents will be analyzed and recommended. Moreover, the use of school-wide risk assessment, a relatively new concept in suicide prevention and intervention, will be explored and recommended. Also, postvention efforts—including the roles of the school corporation and the dangers of glamorizing teen suicide—will be suggested to minimize the risk of contagion and clustering. All of this will be completed through literature review and data collection from peer-reviewed journal articles.Kayla SiddellHonors DiplomHonors CollegeCunningham Memorial Library, Terre Haute, Indiana State UniversityUndergraduateTitle from document title page. Document formatted into pages: 41

Jihad online : how do terrorists use the internet?

Terrorism is designed to attract attention to the terrorist's cause and to spread fear and anxiety among wide circles of the targeted population. This paper provides information about the ways terrorists are using the Internet. The threat of terrorism is real and significant. As the Internet becomes a major arena for modern terrorists, we need to understand how modern terrorism operates and devise appropriate methods to forestall such activities

Exploring social gambling: scoping, classification and evidence review

The aim of this report is to speculate on the level of concern we might have regarding consumer risk in relation to ‘social gambling.’ In doing so, this report is intended to help form the basis to initiate debate around a new and under-researched social issue; assist in setting a scientific research agenda; and, where appropriate, highlight concerns about any potential areas that need to be considered in terms of precautionary regulation. This report does not present a set of empirical research findings regarding ‘social gambling’ but rather gathers information to improve stakeholder understanding

Social Contagion\u27s Impact on Decision-Making Among Millennial Parents Seeking a Christian School

Connections in a social network influence people in both positive and negative ways (Christakis & Fowler, 2009), and this study describes how connections in a virtual network affect school choice decision-making in a market heavily saturated with school choice options. This is a qualitative ethnographic study of millennial parents who experience social contagion across online platforms. Participants have at least one child enrolled in a private school in Shelby County, Tennessee. Social contagion is what flows between participants in a social network and influences decision-making (Christakis & Fowler). This study examined influence as the specific social contagion impacting school choice decision making among millennials in Shelby County, Tennessee

Exploring Image Virality in Google Plus

Reactions to posts in an online social network show different dynamics depending on several textual features of the corresponding content. Do similar dynamics exist when images are posted? Exploiting a novel dataset of posts, gathered from the most popular Google+ users, we try to give an answer to such a question. We describe several virality phenomena that emerge when taking into account visual characteristics of images (such as orientation, mean saturation, etc.). We also provide hypotheses and potential explanations for the dynamics behind them, and include cases for which common-sense expectations do not hold true in our experiments.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures. IEEE/ASE SocialCom 201

Epidemic: Learning Games Go Viral

In this case study, we document the development and user-testing of Epidemic: Self-care for Crisis, an online educational resource that invites users (aged 14-20) to develop game-based knowledge and practices around prevention, self-care and (mis)information in the face of contagious diseases - a timely project, given the ongoing anxieties, and false (and not so false) alarms, over SARS, Avian Flu, and H1N1. The game Contagion, the forerunner to Epidemic, mobilized the conventions and mechanics of single-player adventure games to engage players 'experientially' with health- and disease-related understandings: we configured the same basic self-care information as "narrative knowledge", intended to mobilize players' attention and intelligence voluntarily, using narrative as a rhetorical strategy. We were using narrative's traditional, paradigmatic function within literate cultural forms of interpellation - stories of playful, pleasurable persuasion designed to engage players, Epidemic takes a decidedly different tack towards delivering the same educational content. Reconfiguring digital play within social networking conventions affords us a design-based platform for fundamental theory development in game-based learning. Epidemic's modular, Flash and XML-based design allows for accessible and straightforward creation and editing of educational content, both textual and visual: players can generate and publish their own virus-like avatars, stop-motion animations, and disease-related public service announcements. Some interesting divergences in play-based education on community health/self care, between interactive narrative and social-networking configurations for ludic knowledge representation, appear noteworthy.  Our user-testing, we argue, signifies a further innovation in the field of educational game design, leaving behind the clichéd concern over 'what did you learn today' in favor of focusing on when and how laughter, engagement and attention are most at work. Taken together, these innovations instantiate an approach to digitally-mediated learning that construes and practices assessment differently than in traditional education (and in educational technology design), which are more concerned with propositionally identifiable learning outcomes.  In the case of Epidemic, however, we are more concerned with how play-based learning design can best support the cultivation of responsible and critically-informed attitudes towards public health

SMEs in Focus : Exploring the experience of micro, small and medium enterprise owners in Malta

Report commissioned by the Ministry for Fair Competition, Small Business and Consumers in 2011. In-depth qualitative interviews were carried out on a purposive sample of business owners (n=31) to explore the relational dynamics at the root of doing business. Analysis focuses on two key intersections across macro/micro dimensions: the interface between the State and the Individual; and also that between the Market and the Individual enterprise. Key themes: Entrepreneurial motivation; Process of Process of ‘Rationalisation’ and ‘Regulation’; Enterprise owners’ perceived burdens/assets; Influence of family and gender; Collaboration and CompetitionMinistry for Fair Competition, Small Business and Consumerspeer-reviewe