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Every day, an estimated 160,000 children miss school due to fear of attack or intimidation by other students– an alarming, disheartening statistic. The good news is that the vast majority of students already have a bullying prevention tool in their pocket. We just need to give them a way to use it.

That’s why Blackboard is proud to announce today that we are offering TipTxt, a two-way anti-bullying service for students to confidentially notify school officials of bullying or school safety issues, to every K-12 school in the U.S. for free. All schools need is a dedicated phone line, and Blackboard will absorb all other costs. We’ve never done something on this scale, and no company has made such an offer. To add even greater visibility to this effort, we are thrilled to be partnering with the National PTA.

Did you know? Blackboard is involved in local partnerships to connect students to the global marketplace. The state of North Carolina, for example, urges schools to collaborate with national and international partners — such as Blackboard –to discover innovative strategies that will enable change and foster global connections.

Students@Work is a partnership project between the North Carolina Business Committee for Education (NCBCE) with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, which was created to focus on middle school students, as these years are a crucial point for preventing future drop outs. Roughly one in five North Carolina students will not graduate from high school in four years, and organizations like the NCBCE are working year round to change this number. The goal of Students@Work is to promote career awareness and establish a connection between students and potential employers.

The student voice is a necessary and defining opinion in marketing and determining future initiatives on college campuses. For most universities, elections are held in order to democratically decide the representative to speak for the student population. After several years of limited turnout and lackluster campaigns, officials at West Lothian College decided to take advantage of the mobile student body and emerging mobile technologies by conducting student elections using the Blackboard ConnectTxt service, allowing student to vote for their candidates via text message.

For years it seemed, the rest of the world was hooked on SMS – while Americans were slow to adopt the technology. But is that really true today?  Is the US still behind, or have we caught up?

Consider: of the 5.6 trillion text messages sent around the world last year, 2.3 trillion were sent by Americans – that’s over 40 percent of total global SMS traffic.

Consider: the average US mobile subscriber sent over 660 texts annually – that’s more per capita than any other country on Earth.

Those are some of the remarkable statistics you can find in this infographic from Blackboard Connect, “Rising Text: Do you have the tools to meet the challenge?”

A seismic shift has occurred in the way Americans communicate – and it’s happened while we weren’t watching.  Sure, if you pay a teenager’s cell phone bill, you won’t be surprised to learn that young people send over 3,400 texts every month. But did you know that 65 percent of Americans say they ‘need’ SMS, and 45 percent say they can’t live without it?

At this year’s BbWorld 2012 event, higher education leaders and officials will get together to trade user experiences and innovative program successes using Blackboard technology with peers from around the world. With each conference, attendees hear presentations and participate in sessions discussing common challenges to identify unique solutions to implement on their campus. For the last few years, it has been apparent that most higher education officials continue to look for ways to better engage the mobile student population. This year is no different, as many mobility-minded sessions are sprinkled throughout the agenda. Depending on the department, university officials and instructors aren’t just looking to know how to utilize available mobile tools and technologies, but many are looking for proven programs using mobile devices to better address the needs of their campus community.

As this year’s Catalyst Award winner for innovation in communication strategies, Dionne Curbeam is familiar with developing and implementing mobile strategies to engage the student population at Coppin State University. Serving an academically promising but financially challenge student population, Coppin State pays special attention to students to help ensure their educational success and that they graduate on time. Having tried various methods of outreach, include email, Coppin State officials decided to utilize text messaging as a way to communicate quickly and effectively with students. Sending text messages out notifying of campus updates or reminding of upcoming events or activities proved extremely successful. The text messages were so popular that Coppin State is looking to institute a similar program for instructors and professors to send out course-specific messages by implementing the Connect for Learn service. Students and instructors alike delivered positive feedback to the more instant and personalized means of communication by the school. Dionne Curbeam and Ahmed El-Haggan will be discussing their mobile communication plan during BbWorld 2012. The session, “ Analyze, Enable and Interact: Using Blackboard Technology to Reach and Retain At-Risk Students” will be held on July 11 at 10:55 a.m. in Room 391. To learn more about this year’s BbWorld Sessions, visit the website. To register, click here.