To post or not to post: Is the risk worth the benefit?

After reading my previous post and the attached articles, do you have an opinion? I am mixed on the issues. First, teachers should have the right to maintain a social networking profile, but should also be responsible for what they post. This is a no brainer. Their position as a teacher notwithstanding, they should be expected to act in an appropriate manner online as they do physically in public. The faceless audience of the world wide web should not encourage behavior that would be unacceptable outside in public. This is common sense. As to the issue of allowing students to access teachers profiles and communicate with them via Facebook, I would say absolutely not. This is extremely inappropriate, even in the most mundane cases. I have had other teachers argue that they have “class pages” where students can ask questions and make comments related to class. This may sound good in theory, but the fact that one Facebook page is linked to an innumerable amount of other pages is an issue. Recently, a teacher had charges brought against them because one of their students whose Facebook page was linked to theirs, threatened to commit suicide on their profile page. Unbeknownst to the teacher, local prosecutors viewed the teacher’s inaction as neglect. (I have tried to find the article detailing this, but have had little success.) Nevertheless, this incident is a clear example of the dangers of accepting student friend requests or allowing access to a teacher’s profile page. Facebook allows profiles to remain private. I believe that in this case, teachers can and should be allowed to maintain their own profile page as long as they take every acceptable measure to block student access to their page. However, guidelines for usage should be established by the school or district to serve as a stern reminder and warning to teachers who utilize social networking sites.

Is this overkill? Is this a “non-issue” for teachers as the onus should be on the parents of students?

“No way to that friend request!”: Why teacher’s social communication profiles are a tricky, slippery slope.

As with many things in nature, with every positive technological innovation, there must be a negative response. Such is the case with internet social networking tools such as MySpace and Facebook. I started a Facebook page some time ago with the hope of reconnecting with old college and high school friends. I have to admit, it’s been fun learning what my acquaintances are up to and how much their children resemble their parents. As an active member of the Mount St. Mary’s Alumni Association, I have personally seen an increase in alumni participation through the use of these social networking sites. However, my euphoria came to a quick end when I received my first friend request from one of my 8th grade students. It was then that I realized the web is not necessarily a private community. Of course, I denied the student’s friend request and spoke to him the following day about the inappropriateness of teacher/student communication on the web. With every reason I stated for the inappropriateness of such behavior, he countered with a well thought argument as to the benefit of students being able to contact their teachers via the web. Needless to say, he didn’t win the argument. However, he offered some pretty compelling arguments. The following three links offer some outstanding arguments regarding the major pros and cons to teachers and online communication:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/04/27/AR2008042702213.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/08/12/studentsteachers.online/index.html
http://www2.hickoryrecord.com/content/2009/mar/02/see-you-after-class-teachers-facebook/news/

Is the risk worth the benefit?