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.

Photo: College Student Friends http://www.flickr.com/photos/34705690@N06/3241587112/

I have copied a summary here for your interest:

Some think it is okay to include students as friends but are very circumspect; others think that it is crossing the line between private and professional lives, particularly with current students; others set up particular pages for particular purposes; others think it has no place in their lives.

Most people said that if they got a request from a student to be a ‘friend’ they took care to “let them down” lightly but some said they just ignored the request. It was suggested that if a student asks to be your friend, that you befriend their parents instead. Some said they would agree to a student asking them, but would never ask a student.  Others asked if the young people even want us in this place, and if it is our role or responsibility to be available to students 24/7 in this manner.  It was asked whether we take the time to consider the time and management aspects of setting up a page, even for a specific purpose.

There was general agreement that we should not condone breaching the T&C of 13+ and that if this was known to have occurred, it could become a teachable moment on Internet safety.  It was agreed that Internet safety and ethics need to be taught explicitly, and information needs to be sent to parents about their responsibilities in this.  Ignoring breaches was seen as a breach of professionalism. However, if we do have FB pages that students can access, then we need to model the appropriate behaviour as part of that explicit teaching.

There was advice about the legal aspects of digital duty-of-care, and some schools do, indeed, have policies about appropriate out-of-school interactions with students. Others asked for examples of these policies, particularly relating to interactions in the Web 2.0 environment..

Some suggested that to be online with a students in this environment was like being alone in a classroom with them, although others thought that it was making any interactions more visible. There was concern about inappropriate posts being made either by students or your other friends, or being made to the students, and the students being able to access inappropriate material by going to your friends’ accounts.  (It is this aspect that means that these sites -and most Web 2.0 tools – are blocked to students in most government schools, at least, in Australia.)

Someone suggested that it can work both ways – if a student is maligning the school or another student, then it shows up on the teacher’s page and the school can deal with it.

There were many, many concerns about privacy and how and where  information you posted might end up.  Someone pointed out that the first thing the media does if they get a sniff of a story is to troll Facebook and MySpace et al to see if the person has a page.

A previous discussion about what would be appropriate for reaching the under-13s for library news etc suggested a ning was a better environment because it could be more easily managed. Even though this also has the 13+ restriction, it was suggested a responsible adult could create additional accounts over which they have control. Reading Clay Shirky’s excellent book ‘Here Comes Everybody’, which explains everything you could possibly want to know about social networks and tools, was also suggested.

And finally, it was suggested that Facebook Group could be established where only the members of the class are invited..  Members of the group do not need to be “friends” with one another in order to be a part of the one group.  A student is the administrator of the group (along with the teacher) and everyone can post resources for our class within the group’s site. Discussions have started on the current assessment pieces which the teacher occasionally logs into to make sure they are heading in the right direction.  Students also post links to resources which can be annotated and due dates are shown in the calendar of both the group and personal pages.

An enriching discussion

Barbara

Barbara Braxton
Teacher Librarian
COOMA NSW 2630
AUSTRALIA

Photo: Facebook Touchgraph http://www.flickr.com/photos/bike/3293404080/

In a world adapting to life-long-learning, the concept of certification becomes quite complex. Having lived in Hong Kong the last few years, the amount of study in formal courses is something that is a huge industry here. Indeed, it is not uncommon for many HK residents to be studying for their 3rd or 4th degree! I am not the only one who thinks that the number of pieces of paper that a candidate produces at a job interview can have very little to do with the ability of the person to do the job in a truly effective way.

Returning to our teachers here, many of them are demonstrating the attributes often heralded by Higher Education establishments as the characteristics of a good academic student. They are reflecting on their practice, carrying out elements of action research, reading the latest writings on the topics of interest, either via the IBO curriculum resources site, other academic database collections or even blogs that discuss issues of “thinking curricula“, “inquiry approaches“, “information literacy” or other topics of interest related to the changes affecting them. The only difference with the teachers and the students of more formal bricks and mortar higher education establishments is that the teachers are not getting any formal certification for their studies.

I wrote some time ago about Professor Stephen Heppell’s vision for turning leading edge schools into Universities and I now see that the International School of Bangkok offers something similar via a collaboration with Buffalo State, State University of New York (SUNY) in the US. My concern about these initiatives is; what if I am a teacher at a smaller, less connected International School? What are my options and not just for me but for my Learning Community being set up within my school? Can’t we have some sort of flexible model that sees some work being done in the school and via the net and supported by holiday classes or a model where an academic is resident in the region for a period for some classes run along the lines of Professional Development but counting for credit to a higher degree?

This has to be a good way forward. How often do we hear that PD in schools is very ineffective when done on a “Seagull Basis” (fly in, drop a pile and fly out). There is a real opportunity for Universities and schools here if they can configure it right. I have been talking with people at HKU about this and our conference next October might be a good time to generate some discussion and interest.

Photo: IKBLC Group Study11 by UBC Library Graphics

Just last evening I had news of a similar thing occurring to a teacher I have close contact with here in Hong Kong. This teacher, like others I work with, shares details of life as an expat teacher on Facebook. It may not come as a huge surprise to anyone reading this that the out of school life of an expatriate teacher occasionally involves visits to places where beverage slightly stronger than iced tea is served. Photos of such happy establishments and the beverage partaken usually find their way onto many Facebook photo albums and, if the privacy settings for your photo albums on Facebook are left as the default, as most are, then the whole world is able to see what you are getting up to and with whom if they wish.

This HK teacher informed me that they were called into their Principal’s office and told that a parent at the school had been referred to their Facebook account via a student and had reacted very strongly to what they saw on it. As a result, the parent had put in a complaint to both the Education Bureau of Hong Kong and the school concerned to suggest that the teacher be found unsuitable to teach children.

Fortunately, the school and the Senior Management Team were very rational and discussed the matter with the teacher and asked them to either secure or remove the offending material.

Would your employer be as understanding?

Perhaps it might be worth the time to secure your information on social networks so that you are never in the position to have to find out.

Update: Dan Everest of Yew Chung International School – Primary Section contacted me after reading this post and sent me a guide to securing Facebook(PDF) and another on Facebook Photo Safety(PDF). I have linked to them here for your reference.

Photo: Warning, warning warning by Spotted drum ♥

I decided to turn this into a few powerpoint slides as I often talk about teacher take up of technology and limit myself to showing the diffusion of innovation curve below.

or even the Gartner Hype Cycle:

I am not sure that I really want to draw reference to this article that I was recently pointed to about K-12 teachers being part of the most “Technology lagging sector”. This is a PDF where you will see on slide 21 that “The lowest IT-Intensive industry sector was Education…well below coal mining and every other sector!”. The accompanying data from the report are on pages 57 and 58 of this report. There you will see Educational Service proudly sitting at the bottom of the Bottom-Half Less IT-intensive Industries table, ranking below such worthy competitors as “Amusement and recreation services”, “Rubber and miscellaneous plastics products”, Water transportation” and of course “Stone, clay, and glass products” (”coal mining” is at the bottom of the Top-Half table, way out of our league…).

Anyway, back to the ACOT study, which is much more positive and i think I would like to use some of the ideas from the table to show what is possible to get teachers to move through more quickly with support from someone like myself. Here is my attempt at putting these stages into a Powerpoint.

I really don’t know where I stand on all of this as I am dealing a lot more with educational leadership here in Hong Kong and I can’t help but lay a lot of the blame there. When you read the inspirational posts of a leader like Chris Lehmann and then look for the same sort of inspiration from educational leaders here, it is sadly lacking.

I keep thinking about the work and words of Professor Martin Seligman who is now working with Geelong Grammar in setting up their new wellness center and the way he describes someone truly happy and content with their work. I am paraphrasing but essentially he mentions that people most happy with their situation in working life are those who feel that they are doing something meaningful and the level of challenge is just beyond the individual’s comfort zone. How easy would it be for a leader to set this up in a school situation, especially when integrating ICT into learning is part of that agenda.

You can see a short video of Seligman here but his interview with Richard Adey on the ABC last year was where he speaks about the fulfilled worker.

Sadly I don’t see evidence of schools being set up along these lines. The challenge comes with getting paper based forms in on time and submitting work programmes. I live to see true leadership where teachers are set off to really help to transform learning in the school.

Maybe setting teachers the 23 things challenge is a start?