The Senior Staff speaking at the New Teacher meeting this year made social media a point of emphasis. As I sat and listened to them address the beginning teachers before school started, I found myself rolling my eyes as they droned on about facebook and texting.  We have policies in our district strictly prohibiting teachers “friending” students on facebook, and if they text students they must copy an administrator.  I remember thinking how archaic this must sound to these new teachers because surely this conversation isn’t necessary.

Fast forward a few weeks into the semester to when I learned about a teacher new to our school district who accepted students as friends on facebook and who also has tweets about drinking. This teacher is UNC grad and is not a first year teacher. In an effort to be accessible to his students, he has given his phone number to students so they can text him their questions.  He felt like he was covered because he sent home a permission slip for parents to sign.

But then parents complaints started.  As you can imagine, a couple of parents were uncomfortable with their daughters texting a young, male teacher as late as 10 or 11 at night.

Learning this story made me frustrated because I know my district, in a conservative county, will establish policies for all teachers if a few teachers don’t show the ability to make appropriate decisions.

I do feel that my district recognizes the power of social media, and they are trying to harness that power while ensuring that they don’t expose the district to any liability.  Last year, the district they enrolled all the students in Gaggle, which gave the students an email address, access to a social wall, an online course platform, blogs, and filtered You Tube.

It is a secure platform with some of the best that social media has to offer.  But it feels contrived and isn’t as intuitive as Twitter, WordPress, Moodle, or even Edmodo.  So I can’t help wondering if we aren’t better off teaching staff and students how to be digital citizens by using social media tools appropriately rather than investing our time and money into a secure substitute?

photo credit: mkhmarketing via photopin cc