Teachers texting or communicating with students through social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace has been prohibited by one Mississippi school district.
The Lamar County school board approved the policy earlier this month after becoming concerned that casual contact between teachers and students would be unprofessional. “The only intent is to limit the personal communication between teachers and students,” Superintendent Ben Burnett told The Hattiesburg American newspaper. “We don’t need to let it cross the line between professional and personal communication.”
Few of my students had Internet access, but those that did had the ability to instant message or email me. And I can see how a class Facebook page could be a powerful resource for communicating with students and families. So while the point of this policy is obvious–to prevent inappropriate contact between teachers and students–it’s worth asking if broadly prohibiting a particular tool rather than looking at how it’s being used takes a potentially powerful resource away from teachers.
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Somewhat to my surprise, I see the logic in that approach…
I just set up a “GoodReads” account for my daughter, and once I’d said I’d be her “friend” all of a sudden it’s asking her if she wants to invite all my friends to be her friends. Social networking sites make it hard to compartmentalize your life unless you make a special effort to do so — for example, having one persona where you talked to your students and another where you talked to your drinking buddies.
In the not-too-distant future I would guess that there would be software easily available for schools to set up in-house social networks. My daughter’s school uses SchoolLoop which does quite a bit — students can e-mail teachers and each other, teachers can e-mail students and parents either individually, or as a group. I think there are fancier programs available, too.
. . .software easily available for schools to set up in-house social networks. . .
I’ve created a Ning site, which is very similar to MySpace but can be configured so only invited people can enter, and it has quite a lot of control over configuration. It’s the most useful tool I’ve found for teaching writing, and I did more (online) writing conferences because of it than I ever had managed before: http://www.ning.com/