Last week Michael Kaechele wrote a blog post about students following their teachers on Twitter. The post generated a lot of comments on all sides of the question. This is especially true for the things we post on Twitter. If your updates are not protected, anyone can see the things that you post on Twitter. In fact, due to real-time search engines, you don't even have to have a Twitter account to see someone's updates. There are two ways to deal with this, protect your updates or accept that everything you post on Twitter is public. Some people might suggest that you could block people from following you, but again, that doesn't prevent someone from seeing your updates in a search engine.
Students friending their teachers on Facebook is a different scenario than students following their teachers on Twitter. On Facebook, your updates are protected from those who you don't approve. Likewise, accepting a student's friend request on Facebook is much different than having a student follow you on Twitter. The act of accepting a student's friend request is an active choice whereas not blocking a student from following you on Twitter is a passive choice. The question then is, should a teacher accept a student's Facebook friend request?
There are a number of variables to consider before deciding if you should or shouldn't accept a student's friend request. The answer is not the same for every teacher. Thanks in part to Dateline, as a moderately young (31) male teacher if I accept a female student's friend request, the perception is very different than the perception of an older female teacher accepting that same student's friend request. For me the answer is clear, I do not accept any friend request from students (male or female) nor do I accept friend requests from recently graduated students. I explain this to my students and their parents at the beginning of each school year and they all understand.
On the other hand, a great example of the good that can come from a student friending a teacher on Facebook or Myspace can be found in the example of Beth Still and her student Mundo. The short version of that story is via Myspace Beth was able to reconnect with Mundo who had dropped out of school.Through this connection Beth was able to get Mundo back into school to finish his coursework for graduation. In Beth's case having students in her social network services was a great thing.
20 comments:
This fall, my school introduced a policy forbidding faculty from contacting students on social networks. I don't think the policy says what the administration really wants to say. I read the policy to mean that I can let a student friend me but I cannot write on that student's page or email that student through the social network. What the administration seems to want is to keep communication in the school's network, where it can monitor the traffic, but the policy does not accomplish that end. I don't read the policy as applying, for instance, to Twitter, which I believe is microblogging, not social networking, and it doesn't apply to texting, blogging, youtube, etc. In fact, my school encourages the use of Ning, which is social networking, so I don't really know what the policy means. The real question is what's right and safe and in the best interest of our students. I wish the policy would just say as much.
I don't think it's the school that should have a policy on this. I would say it is a personal decision each have to make. I never connect with my students on FB but if they request friendship with me I approve. I haven't got that much of interest on my FB page anyway. FB, Twitter, you name it, must not ever be a part of my professional life, so if I connect with them I do it as a person, not as their teacher. And yes, I believe it can be done and no one will be harmed.
Nowadays I have two profiles on FB, one personal and one "teacher profile" as a part of a project.
I have actually blogged about this myself at my blog http://teacher20.org.
My school doesn't have a policy on social networking, but we've all agreed that we will not accept requests to be facebook friends until after the students graduate. If students add us we explain that we as teachers need to keep our lives outside of school separate from what happens in school. They are disappointed, but since my 8th graders are allowed to talk to me on google chat (thanks to having a google sites page) I feel that this is more than enough.
Good policy! Mine, too. I use Twitter for work and Facebook for friends and family only. I'm an elementary school library media specialist. One of our teachers accepted a friend request from a child's parent because they were friendly and the child was not in her class. Guess what? The child is now in her class. She can't unfriend the parent without hurting her feelings. So she has to filter everything she puts on Facebook. It's better to draw boundaries early on.
Yes, they can be your friends depending on what kind of relation you have with them, i.e., if you care about them and their parents allow the connection. I have some of my students on my Fcbk account and the posts we both do are ok, we just comment on everyday stuff. It's not formal, it's friendly cause my relation with all of them, apart from being their teacher is that of being their ears when they have problems.
When Social Networking started becoming popular, I was teaching sixth grade on an Army base in Germany and most of my "friends" on Myspace were my students or former students. It was a great way to keep connections as we all eventually left for new assignments, and, as the "it takes a village" motto is quite alive on these overseas bases, it allowed me to keep an eye what the students were doing outside the classroom.
Fast-forward three years to Georgia, where I teach now, and my policy has changed a bit. I have kept the Myspace account as my "place for students," as I transitioned all of my personal social activity (locked down outside my "friends") to Facebook. I will let the students add me on Myspace at the end of the year. I figure that if a student wants to stay connected with you after the school year, it's not such a bad thing. You've formed some sort of bond, which is a part of teaching, after all.
Our school system hasn't made a rule, though it has been encouraged not to "friend" students on social networking sites. My independent streak says, "Whatever," but there are a couple of recent news items that do concern me:
First, a Georgia teacher was recently fired after a parent saw pictures on her Facebook account of her drinking. http://onlineathens.com/stories/111009/new_514612877.shtml
(Note that teachers in GA do NOT have the same union process that the teachers in ME do)
Also, Louisiana just passed a law where schools will have to document all electronic communication between students and teachers. http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=61297
While I understand that there are teachers out there who do make poor choices with regards to students, I am disheartened by the prospects of everyone's communication being monitored when there are so many of us doing good things with students online.
Richard,
I originally set up my MySpace account about four years ago to connect with my students. I never sought students out, but I would tell them they were welcome to friend me. MySpace served as a great place for me to connect with students who were not as outgoing in class. Once I discovered Twitter and educational nings I started to use my MySpace account less frequently. I eventually closed out my MySpace account and now use Facebook to connect with old high school and college friends as well as colleagues from my PLN. There are discussions on there that I would just prefer students not be part of therefore I do not friend students.
My school does not have a policy in place regarding teachers and students friending each other, but if we did I would guess that it would be not only be allowed, but encouraged. I teach at an alternative high school where we stress the importance of communication skills. The method by which we communicate with our students does not really matter as long as we are opening up the lines of communication.
I don't friend students or their parents. I do not comment on students at all or about work much on facebook.
We had a problem with a staff member making out of line posts about her dislike of a student. Principal flat out said do not comment about students you are not related to on line period. (We have teachers with kids at our school who post pictures of their kids)
I use twitter as a professional tool.
Facebook has a very nice solution to the problem of friending students, and that's called Pages. You can make a Page for yourself on Facebook and allow anyone and everyone become your Fan, totally separating your personal FB account with your professional life.
I just finished an article on my blog about this, . And be sure to Fan me :-).
I've also set up two separate Twitter accounts, one personal and one professional (@mr_rcollins. My personal Twitter account is not protected though, I just always keep that in mind when I post anything.
we don't have a policy, but here in little nz things are significantly different from the usa. while school doesn't have a position on social networking (yet), staff are encouraged to build relationships with students inside and outside the classroom to help bolster achievement. of course, this is easier to do in a small town in a small country. the examples Mrs Petrowski has cited, and others that i have read about, are horrifying, so i am so happy that nz is litigious-free and common sense tends to prevail over hysteria. of course, we're living in a different culture from the usa.
thankfully for everyone, there are more than two networking choices. most kids here start out social networking on bebo. they tend to flee bebo like lemmings at about 16 (for fb), but still keep a profile up. i have a profile on bebo where my students can friend me, get class news, leave a message, IM, or whatever. i put up quick quizzes for them to take on whatever we're studying, as well as links to things i think they may be interested in or that will help them with their studies.
using more than one social network is helpful. my (usa) family are all on fb, so that's personal and kept private. i use twitter for my pln, which i imagine would bore my students to tears, so bebo gives my students a place to communicate with me in a forum they use and enjoy without infringing on my privacy.
cheers,
kelly
My school has no policy- but i do. I will not friend students until after graduation. I don't want the responsibility or issues of knowing what current students are doing outside of school. As a mandated reporter, I could see issues with what I might see or find out on Facebook.
However, after graduation, they are all adults and things are a whole different situation. It is really nice to keep up with what former students are doing and get feedback on their college experience.
I decided this was best for me and my opinions. Until there is a school policy I'll follow this.
I am student teaching next semester. I am 43 years old and have a FB profile. FB has changed their privacy settings and I have already organized a group for students. I don't have a problem with accepting students as friends, but I will retain every communication with them. I already have templated messages when a student friends me (I will never friend a student), and if I accept one, I accept all. However, if a student is not of age to have a FB profile (I'm student teaching 7th grade), I will not accept their request. My FB profile has nothing on it I ashamed of and it's "family friendly". Beyond that, if it really becomes a concern, I have the intention of starting a FB group for my class and parents and students alike would be welcome to join it. This would prevent actual "contact" through being a friend, but allow public and open discussion. FB is not simply a social network anymore and to believe otherwise is naive and ignorant of its possibilities. I receive many teaching resources via my FB news feed and am a fan of many, many museums', government offices', and professional education websites' pages. As a matter of fact, my life would be easier if all of the feeds I subscribe to would post through FB.
@ET, the problem isn't that there is nothing wrong with your account now, it's when you start reconnecting with old friends and family, and you start to post pictures of your children or what you did last weekend. Not that you did anything inappropriate, but there should be some privacy to your life.
FB Pages or Groups are a lot better solution than trying to mix your personal and professional life. We installed Buddypress on our Wordpress MU installation so we could start to get the benefits of social networking internally.
Originally I accepted any student when I had MySpace because I saw the positives of knowing what is going on in my students lives. Before I knew it though, I was getting 10 request a day and felt it was getting out of hand. So I immediately moved to a new policy of accepting/adding students after they graduate. I no longer use MySpace, just Facebook because of the ease of privacy. I make a lot of my stuff private to those students so that much of my private life stays that way. Our district currently does not have a policy for Social Networking, but after I created a Ning for Faculty and Staff, its development and use was put on hold until a policy was in place for its use.
Mr. Collins,
I understand and definitely agree with setting up a FB page or group. It's something I had considered when I started my education program a few years ago. I really don't understand why more teachers don't use one. But I think the use of a FB profile has some benefits over a group even with a possible loss of privacy. With the new FB privacy settings, you can even control who sees what posts, thus allowing you to post a status that students don't see.
It's been my experience with FB Groups that young people don't seem to actually use them all that much. They seem to use them more as a "badge" on their profile than for real interaction with others!
There is a larger issue than profile v. Group or privacy vis-a-vis professional & personal. It troubles me that teachers & school systems want to use technology but don't want to seem to use the technology that kids are using. Instead of being scared of it, the effort should be made to teach by example in its ethical use. For example, a professor at my university wanted to create a FB group for her Intro to Education class (EDUC 2100) & the Education Dean said "no." Somewhat silly since they also have classes about how to incorporate technology!
If education doesn't get on the ball with technology, it will be left behind and deemed irrelevant by the very students it professes to teach!
I have a personal "no friending current students" rule because then I get asked about what page the homework was, etc. However, the day after the last day of school, they can friend me. I never send a student a friend request; I always let the student initiate. I'm considering starting a Page for current students. Our school hasn't yet come up with a policy.
Our school does not have a Social Networking policy for teachers, yet. However, while I do not have anything on my Facebook page that I would not want my students to see I just do not think it is necessary for them to be my friends on FB.I can certainly see the value of interacting with students on a SN site in certain situations but in my case there are plenty of other ways for us to connect - virtually and physically. In addition, I can never be quite sure what my college-age sons, nieces and nephews will post on my wall and would just as soon not have to worry about one of my students or their parents viewing those posts.
I have had a couple of students ask to "friend" me on FB but I just tell them that my personal policy is to not friend current students or alums until they graduate from high school. They seem to be perfectly fine with this and just "friend" me the day after graduation ;-)
@ET, yea I wouldn't mess around with groups. Pages are a lot more useful since activity on their will show up in Fans news feeds, so they know when something has happened.
The state government has put a policy out for state school teachers not to have any contact with students on social networks at all. Whether they are a student from your school or a student from another school. Just don't. Prior to this my policy was always not to friend my students on facebook or myspace (when I had it) or any other social network. I am happy to friend them after they graduate should they request it however definitely not while they are in school. Now with facebook's new privacy settings I have grouped all former students together in a list so that I can make sure my privacy is protected should I need it to be.
I don't believe that we have a formal policy here in Leon County, FL. My personal policy, however, is that I do not accept friend requests from current students at our school. Once they move on, I'll accept their requests.
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