A.
I am a huge fan of using social media to fuel your personal learning network (PLN). I began utilizing Twitter nearly two years ago, but really embracing it as a PLN support system, a year ago. I have made connections with fellow educators around the United States, and connected to resources that have transformed not only my classroom, but the classrooms of my coworkers. I have spent a great deal of time sharing the power of social media with my coworkers and have even set up smaller twitter chats to help them see how they can connect with other educators. One of my most powerful connections involves a teacher who lives in Tennessee. We met in a twitter chat and discovered the following: we both teach technology, we both teach at a Title 1 school, we both teach students who have little to no WiFi access outside of school. It is so powerful to share ideas, tips, and plans with someone who has a similar teaching position. It is so rare, particularly when you are a specialist, to find someone who is doing just what you do, and I only found her because of social media. It is important to remember, however, that my twitter account is a professional one -- it isn't appropriate for me to retweet news from my favorite film actor or musical group. As a professional, I must make sure that my twitter account is professional too. This caused me to create two twitter accounts - one is personal and one is professional. Thoughtfully and carefully tweeting, retweeting and responding is important as I maintain a professional social media footprint. B. I do not follow any students on social media. I do follow several former students, but did not start following them until they were 18 years old. Having taught high school for nearly a decade, I found this a necessary and essential policy. I do NOT want access to my students social media accounts, and have made my personal social media accounts private. According to district policy, teachers must not be social media friends with students. However, I do occasionally accidentally stumble across a student social media account, or have researched a student's social media in order to solve a problem, or research issues of bullying. One extreme case occurred when I was teaching high school, and one of my freshman girls was suicidal because of them rumors a boy was spreading about her through social media. I contacted my principal and showed him the posts that had written about her, and her own posts about her personal despair. We met with her and her parents, and were able to get her the help she needed. While, I disagreed with some of the responses my principal made (the boy suffered NO consequences for his actions), I am grateful that I took the time to listen to my student, and had the technical savvy to research the situation. Today that young lady is twenty-five years old, and a crisis counselor. Social media was a powerful tool in this situation, and gave me the evidence I need to force the principal to take this issue seriously. I do not have a class Instagram account or class Facebook account. Having spent a year being filmed for a documentary, I am VERY aware of the necessity of waivers and student's privacy rights. I have seen some fantastic examples of using a class Instagram, and am not necessarily opposed to its use but would NEVER include pictures of my students faces without permission, and would endeavor to use pictures of projects and work, rather than people. It is ESSENTIAL to be familiar with your district guidelines, your school's guidelines, and which students have opted out of your school's media release. I've included a link to the document we created regarding creating social media guidelines because I'm really proud of the document we created, and also because I think it is important and useful information to consider.
3 Comments
James
6/21/2017 06:02:19 pm
Jen,
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Nai Saelee
6/22/2017 02:41:34 pm
Jen,
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Nancy
6/23/2017 06:15:18 pm
Hi Jen,
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AuthorJen has been teaching school for awhile now. She's learned some stuff, but she's got tons more to learn. Archives
October 2017
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