Follow Up to Befriending Students on Social Networks
By Paul McMahon on Mar 18, 2009 in Learning for a Flat World and tagged cybercitizenship, cybersafety, ethics, online environments, teachers
There were a few comments sent to me personally about the post I put up yesterday about teachers and students “friending” each other on Facebook and other social networks. I can understand that many teachers were reluctant to use the comment function on the blog but I have to say that we desperately need to have these conversations!
OK there was a further post to the Oz Teacher Network about the topic yesterday from Nancy Willard of US based Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use. I think she said what a lot of teachers had said to me personally. Here it is for your interest.
Any teacher who links to a student on MySpace or Facebook is an ABSOLUTE
FOOL!!!!! I strongly support and advise district policies against this for 2
reasons:1. There is a vast amount of flirting that goes on on these sites. Student
get crushes on teachers. When a teacher gets a flirtatious message from a
student, that teacher is already in trouble. Respond back with warmth and
you are an online predator. Respond critically and the student could exact
revenge. The teachers who are most likely to get into major trouble are the
younger ones who have not had to deal with student crushes before and who
may still be in the flirting online mode. The risks include arrest and life
as a registered sex offender.2. People on these sites send friendship requests to friends of people they
have linked to. A teacher would become the ³guarantor² of all of his or her
online friends including all of the material these friends post and the
friend¹s interactions with students.This being said, it is exceptionally important for teachers and student to
be communicating in these interactive environments. Which means schools must
set up carefully managed and monitored interactive environments.Do not underestimate the concerns raised by legal issues. These include:
FERPA, copyright, defamation, invasion of privacy, and free speech issues
related to student postings. Another issue is plagiarism.Nancy
–
Nancy Willard, M.S., J.D.
Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use
http://csriu.org
http://cyberbully.org
http://cyber-safe-kids.com
Please do post comments here as other teachers really appreciate them.
8 Comment(s)
Hi Paul – I’d have to agree with most of this. I find it uncomfortable when students stumble across me on Facebook and want to be my friend. I think that “10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know”(http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/02/facebook-privacy) is required reading for all teachers. I’ve followed it and put students into a very limited profile. I am also against teachers using Facebook as a way to communicate with their classes — not just for the U13s, but all kids. I don’t agree with the arguement that if you don’t use this then they won’t to the learning space. I’ve used a wide variety of tools for the last 5 years and it’s all about behaviour and accepted class rules. My VLE is an extension of my classroom. It’s scaffolded, it has links to resources, and we have educationally focused discussions. This is how we work. End of Discussion.
Facebook is where I socialise, and just as I don’t want to run into students in Wan Chai or LKF – I’m not keen to run into them in Facebook.
Context is everything with on-line communication as it is in life. The problem is that we are all very use to the context of the analogue world; the classroom; the playground; the shopping precinct (mall); the teenage party.
Dangerously social networks like FB et al, blur analogue social contexts. So you accept an invitation from a student to support a ‘cause’, to model proactive citizenship and suddenly you are know every posted detail about your student and their friends and they know as much about you!
To parallel this in the analogue world – A student asks you to join Amnesty International and the instant you sign the membership slip, you are transported to your students’ party with any amount of ‘inappropriate’ activity going on around you, while a video of your last ‘big’ Saturday night out’ plays on the wide screen HD plasma screen,
Presented with such a perverse scenario many colleagues I have spoken to suddenly realise the significance of their on-line transactions with their student. A few have literally reached for the block friend/delete button.
While it is important to be reminded of the ‘nth’ outcome of inappropriate interaction with students online – we cannot build a policy on threats of criminal proceedings. There is no doubt boundaries need to be established, but not at a line of prosecution.
Paul you are absolutely right that these discussions need to happen – but I suspect that any attempts to demarcate appropriate on-line interaction with students, will be a bit like mandating that all teacher teach in a particular style.
Brilliant Comment Lee-Anne,
Great to see that schools in Hong Kong are now starting to enter into a dialog about this sort of thing and I really hope that we continue the dialog at the conference later this year.
Too many Hong Kong schools I visit seem like they are years away from having a school-wide discussion on parents, teachers, students and social networking. Some are even still at the point of banning them and saying that discussion about this topic at school is not relevant! Can you imagine that? It is a bit like looking at an undernourished kid who we know does not get what he needs at home and saying “we don’t do feeding at school, you have to come ready to learn your chemistry”.
Right statement in theory but wrong in sooo.. many ways!
I was alerted to the fact that a lot of the Aussie discussion had been catalysed from discussions on Doug Johnson’s fabulous Blue Skunk Blog here http://is.gd/o8Hy Amazing how the problems (and reactions to them) are the same everywhere!
Thanks again
Paul
Gilbert,
I agree with what you say but I am concerned that you equate discussions on what parents/teachers/students do on social networks with discussions on teaching styles.
The former is a chance to explore possibilities and establish shared guidelines based on a relatively new phenomena that we are all coming to terms with. I regularly run into teachers who have no idea that it is even possible to secure their profile on facebook or that communicating with a student under 13 on a US based SNS such as Facebook, My Space or Xanga is condoning breaking the law! I think that the time is right for good, rich, no-blame discussions about this area. The ones I have with parents, especially when I do workshops, are received incredibly well!
The latter issue is a deeply personal one tied into a teacher’s livelihood and can cut to the bone.
Hope this makes sense!
Thanks for the discussion, always appreciated!
Paul
@Paul
It is vital that teachers, students and parents are aware of the legal boundaries that encircle the issues of informal social networking. But once we have established those boundaries, there is still much to be discussed about the parameter of interaction within them.
Perhaps my comment about teaching style is slightly out of alignment with the discussion in hand and goes to a deeper argument about the use of learning technologies and pedagogy.
Assuming the best of our colleagues the issue of inappropriate online interaction will soon pass with effective policy and CPD. My reference to ‘teaching styles’ is perhaps more about the next step. Not so much about what is ‘legal’ social networking, but what is ‘effective’ social networking for learning?
My real fear is that the pressure to create policy; means that the vast majority of teachers and administrators are making decisions based on ignorance. We may run the risk of making the ‘McLuhan error’ and apply the old classroom paradigm to the new situation.
I think your post makes the legalities of on-line interaction as clear as those that govern our analogue teaching environments.
Is the discussion you propose to simply operationalise these laws and guidelines? If we go beyond that might we not limit pedagogic possibilities in our rush to ‘protect’ teachers and students?
I see comments such as, “Any teacher who links to a student on MySpace or Facebook is an ABSOLUTE FOOL!!!!!” as being…well…foolish. As individuals who work closely with children teachers do have to be aware of their “public image.” However, shunning students on facebook shouldn’t be a requirement.
danah boyd has done a fair bit of research on social network sites and has found teen behavior online is equivalent to teen behavior offline (see article here). They’re not running amok online- they’re socializing just like they might at the local mall.
I feel that educators shouldn’t put anything online that they wouldn’t want the general public to see (including their students or their students’ parents). Chris Lehmann (principal of SLA in Philly) wrote a post about a conversation he had with a student over facebook. I really like Chris’ observation at the end of the post: “Oh… and yes, this all happened because kids and teachers “friended” each other. These are the conversations we can have when we all remember that we have to interact as people, not as subject and object, and not just teacher and student. If and when the technology facilitates that, all the better.”
Friending students on facebook facilitates building relationships between teachers and students. If teachers can maintain appropriate and respectful relationships offline it shouldn’t be an issue online.
Hi Ben,
Thanks so much for your comment. Your thoughts on this subject reflect the diversity of opinion on the issue and the very reason why these conversations need to take place.
Though many of the connected teachers in the blogosphere share a common understanding of the power of having democratic relationships with students and model effective use of communication and collaboration to learn and grow personally and professionally, this is not the general situation for all schools and educators. There are very traditional views of education and the role of teachers here in Asia that set up an expectation that there will remain a “professional distance”. Teachers who step outside of this, especially where elementary aged children are concerned, may find themselves out on their own in any situation where a complaint is involved.
There are also issues when a teacher uses something like Facebook to have a life outside of school and the “outside life” of a teacher conflicts with the values of a parent. See this post I wrote about an incident with a friend of mine a few months back. http://xpatasia.edublogs.org/2008/11/24/a-timely-warning-for-teachers/
Keep the great reflective comments coming!
Cheers
Paul
@Gilbert,
I know that from where you sit you have a different view of this topic as you are surrounded by the best teachers in HK who have access to great PD from facilitators on staff. You have to realise that this is not the case for many schools in HK or, indeed, other parts of Asia.
To them, proceedures and guidelines for the use of social networks for students is a bit like showing them bylaws for intergalactic travel! I kid you not when I say that there are schools in this town that are years away from any Acceptable use of computer resource policies. A colleague of yours made this post in observation of a study of e-learning readiness of Hong Kong teachers. http://is.gd/oosU As she noted, “If you are a female teacher over 31 then you are less likely to be e-Ready than your male colleagues. This is damming in a profession that is a) aging and b) dominated by females!”
As someone who has done Professional Development in ICT for learning with the EDB of Hong Kong for around 30% of what I could make as a supply teacher, this is unlikely to change soon.
To answer your question, the discussion I am proposing is to just get it out there for decision makers in education in Asia to be aware that this is happening and try to bring in people who can assist them to develop some sort of overall policies and guidelines for the new world of learning which extends into the murky waters of online.
It needs to be that every learner has the ability to feel that the school is allowing them opportunities to learn in any way appropriate. This should not be something only on offer to the few students whose parents are in a position to send them to the very best schools with ICT facilitators on staff.
Hope that makes sense.