Text Messaging Featured Article

Boston Public Schools (BPS) has launched a free anti-bullying texting service from Blackboard (News - Alert).

Thanks to the new TipTxt, a two-way texting service from Blackboard, the district's 58,000 students will now confidentially be able to notify school officials of bullying or other school safety-related activity via text across its 128 schools.

BPS is the latest in a series of hundreds of schools and dozens of districts that have made TipTxt available to their communities in time for the 2013-2014 school season.

Blackboard’s TipTxt encourages students to confidentially notify school officials of activity related to bullying or school safety. Blackboard offers the service for free to all K-12 schools and districts in the country.

Officials with Blackboard said that TipTxt is a tipline that allows for confidential text conversations between students and school officials about critical challenges that students experience such as bullying and issues that relate to bullying, such as abuse, self-esteem or confidence problems. Armed with this insight, officials can provide resources, advice or other follow-up to help on a case-by-case basis.

"Ensuring the safety and well-being of our students is a top priority and essential to our mission of accelerating students' academic achievement," said John McDonough, interim superintendent at Boston Public Schools, in a statement.

"Bringing TipTxt to our schools is another example of how the City of Boston is committed to using proactive, innovative, and educationally sound strategies to prevent bullying," said McDonough.

"We're excited to partner with BPS in an important effort to support kids having a safe and positive school experience," said Jay Bhatt, CEO of Blackboard.

"We know that students are increasingly using mobile devices, and texting is an important part of how they communicate. With TipTxt we wanted to leverage this trend to increase the likelihood that students will reach out for help and not have to deal with issues alone," Bhatt added.