Teachers and Social Networks
I would be interested in hearing your opinion on teachers using social networking in particular when school life and out of school life overlap. Should there be a school policy for social network usage by teachers ? I have been pondering with other social network education users this very idea, one suggestion is a policy along the lines of :
The school recognises the massive educational potential of Web 2.0 Technologies including and not limited to Social Networking, Blogging, Micro Blogging and media sharing sites.
The school encourages staff to use these technologies but for research purposes and the sharing of good practice. In using such technologies and platforms staff should adhere to the following guide :
Staff should not mention the school in a negative manner. This includes all stakeholders (pupils,colleagues,parents).
Staff should refrain from commenting on incidents that occur within the school directly.
It is expected that, as in every area of communications, staff will maintain proper professional distance from pupils currently at school: this must include rejecting requests by them to be added as friends, and taking all the measures available within the platforms to deny them access to profiles, personal information and online communications, keeping this strictly to whoever is on friends lists.
It is permissible to have past pupils on your friends / contact lists.
So… what do you think ? Would a policy like this be a step too far ? Is such a policy even needed within a school setting ? What about micro blogging platforms such as twitter where opinions are public ? I know many heath professionals who tweet opening under their own name etc should teachers be able to do the same or should their timeline be private ?
This really is an open suggestion and I would appreciate any comments either below or directly.
9 Comments
I’d like to think that we could rely on the professionalism of teachers to work out what is the correct thing to do. As soon as we have a policy for something it suggests that people aren’t trusted. This can become a self fulfilling prophecy.
If we want teachers to be “reflective practitioners” (don’t really like that term but it will do) then we have to allow them to use whatever means they choose to do this. There have always be some people who bring the trade into disrepute. If they do it via social networking sites then it should be easier to root them out.
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I’m unsure what you mean in the stakeholders bit. All stakeholders shouldn’t slag off the school or staff shouldn’t slag off kids?
It’s a good policy and a good idea. I’d like to see kids and staff signing up to the same policy though – I think it’s important for the kids to see the teachers have rules too!
We’re doing SQA units on Weblogs and Social Software in class. I’m looking forward to ‘teaching’ Facebook!
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I have four of my ex teachers in my phone book, two as friends on my Facebook account and speak with several friends who are teachers who use Facebook and Twitter.
I feel that the rules above go without saying, but unfortunatly do need saying.
On blogs, I feel that they should keep the school they are at annoymous, I would hate to think that a parent or child could read about themselves by doing a google search for example, but I feel that sometimes the only way to tell the truth is to tell it as it is and that includes the bad/negative aspects of the job.
And of course there is always one kid (or teacher) who will find a way round these rules.
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There is one statement in your suggested policy that concerns me:
“Staff should refrain from commenting on incidents that occur within the school directly.”
There are many, many teacher-bloggers out there who write about their experiences in school, including evaluations of their own lessons. How does this statement affect them? As a reader, these types of blogs are often the most useful to me, as they offer ideas for things that I can try in my own classrooms… with practical experience of someone who has already tried them.
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DigMo Reply:
September 20th, 2009 at 11:11 am
@Mark Warner, yes I agree, there are stacks of experiences that are perfectly fine to talk about. I think the line is trying to describe discussions about those incidents that are not classroom based etc, the private, sensitive ones.
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If schools ignore Social Networks they will be letting young people down. The use of and understanding of Web 2.0 is a basic part of eSafety, digital literacy and citizenship. I think the challenge that schools have is – how they manage and differentiate this as a learning experience. I guess it’s about transferring the ethos and values of your school into a virtual space.
We ran a project to explore some of the challenges. The kids (year
eventually created their own code of conduct and became moderators of their own Ning space.
http://www.clc-oldham.org.uk/case.php?id=5
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I am not a teacher. I don’t even play one on TV.
However, the majority of my working life since I left school has been spent in youth work (although only in a voluntary capacity at the moment).
Before I ditched my facebook, bebo and MySpace accounts (short, uninteresting story) I did have ‘friends’ on each whom I first met as young people I worked with, although each is by now an adult. My last professional youth work role just predated my signup to these various services.
IM and SMS raised some of these questions for me, though. Accountability and appropriateness were the issues. Where IM is generally private, how to reconcile that with safe, sane, good practice? Likewise SMS: it’s difficult to maintain a visible accountability in 160 character bursts never seen by anyone else.
Yet in working with young people where I was, both IM and SMS were significant, effective forms of communication.
Over time my personal policy developed through saving logs of IM conversations to just not having them, and eventually only using SMS as a vector for announcements and the like.
I’m not sure how I would proceed with facebook et al. From the outside, your suggested policy seems pretty reasonable. I think it’s definitely necessary to have a stated policy in place.
Real names and findability are interesting questions for anyone with an online presence. They are definitely more immediate concerns for folks in certain professions, but self-censorship in the online world is a key skill that needs learned by everyone. How can that be modelled and taught to our young people? Several years ago, I took the deliberate decision to use my full, real name online. There are only a couple of identities I use in various fora and other venues (each with my real name in the profile), and knowledge of them and half an hour with Google can yield a lot of information about my lifestyle, hobbies and interests.
As I say, it was a deliberate decision, and one I have to be aware of every time I write a blog post or compose a tweet – not least because members of my family, my wife and members of my management committee all follow me on twitter and read my blog! Now, when I imagine young people with whom I have a professional relationship typing my name into Google, it becomes even more pressing. There are things I have considered writing about, or even mentioning in passing, online – and have then decided against doing so.
Ideally common sense would govern all of these communications. But, as you know, the main thing about common sense is… Therefore a stated policy becomes necessary, including from the point of view of institutional liability. What is probably more important is the sane and flexible application of that policy. Which, in my experience of institutions in general, is a much tougher task.
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Just a few months ago a teacher in Charlotte NC was fired for negative comments about the school on facebook, she wrote that she was teaching in the most ‘ghetto’ school in Charlotte. Her comments were harsh, inappropriate and unprofessional. I and the colleagues I know may be smart enough to know what professional behaviour and professional distance is, both in the real world and the virtual, but clearly not all teachers are capable of this. Maybe guidelines are necessary to protect oursleves personally, as much as our professional integrity. We want to still be able to use this sites both professionally and socially so it is important to keep their purpose clearly defined. I think the suggested policy above, is more than suitable although it may need a little tweaking to avoid misinterpretation.
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I am a teacher in North Carolina. We were told at a staff meeting today that the state policy said we as teachers could not accept friend requests on Facebook from anyone who is enrolled in a K-12 NC school. That just doesn’t sound correct to me, and I can’t find anything in black and white that spells out a policy regarding facebook contacts. I have a facebook with MANY students as my “friends”. Mostly they are my former students wanting to keep in touch. Others are my cousins, nieces, nephews, or neighbors that want to stay in touch. I was thinking about how to use facebook to help my students this year. We could post homework, announcements, or messages of encouragement to the students and their parents. It would be an open forum for discussion and would help maintain the lines of communication between school and home. I would like to know if there is a state-wide policy or even a county-wide policy for my area. If we don’t have one, I think we need one so we can all be on the same page. Maybe we may need to use facebook in education only by creating a page for our school or for a group within our school. Then the students could “like” that page and still get all the same communication. I’m not sure about how that works though since I’ve never created a page. I would just love some clarification. I don’t want to risk my career for the chance to keep in touch and connect with students, but at the same time I feel as though we will be missing out on a great tool to improve education if we totally eliminate the use of facebook with students.
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