Monday, November 1, 2010
GS Ed Wk post #4
In the September 29th issue the article "Educators advised to be cautious on Facebook profiles" really got me thinking about how we as educators need to be extremely careful what we put out publicly. How we conduct ourselves in the public eye can reflect on us scholastically. Students have access to a tremendous amount of technology in today's world including information on/about their teachers. Unfortunately this means that we do need to have higher standards for ourselves when putting personal information online or anywhere our kids might have access to it. The article said that "educators need to behave in a professional manner, realizing that one's actions reflect directly on the status and substance of the profession" and I agree. In a world with so many technological devices available to students we do need to be "moral exemplars". Almost every year there are teachers who are fired due to misconduct in various degrees. Children, especially young children are modelers, they will repeat what they hear and see and its a matter of trust too. Older kids need to know they can trust their teachers...if we are not morally sound then they are not going to take us serious as teachers.
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Educators do seem to be held to a higher standard than others. Consequently we do need to think of anything we post on the internet as something that could show up on the front page of a newspaper. Not only are there problems with keeping clear boundaries between educators and students, there is also the issue of how the personal information you post may impact the way the students see you and consequently how they treat you as an educator. There is a 3 year old article from the OEA that is worth reading related to this topic; it's called "MyImage: Protecting Your Reputation in the Age of Social Networking". Just change MySpace to Facebook and it's pretty much still current information. Note the bulleted section towards the end of the article with specific recommendations. Here's the link: http://www.oregoned.org/site/apps/nlnet/content.aspx?c=9dKKKYMDH&b=1074961&ct=3721877
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