Teachers - Social Media and Your Professional Life May Not Mix

Younger teachers have always had email and are comfortable with social media sites. This can cause problems in your professional life because you are used to saying and doing what you like on your own sites. However, there are a growing number of cases of teachers being fired for unwise or inappropriate material on their sites. In some cases they have been fired for completely unjustifiable reasons. If they sue, they may eventually get their jobs back or at least get restitution. Even if this happens, however, several years of income can be lost and the publicity may keep them from ever teaching again. It's best to avoid getting into a mess like this in the first place.

The advent of Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube have changed our perceptions of privacy and private life vs. public life. I am astounded at the things people will write about themselves for the entire world to see. Many of these are things they would never admit to people in person.Teachers need to think twice before posting.

The following are potential danger spots:

YouTube: This is one that you have little control over. Teacher baiting has become a great game for kids. Kids will intentionally get a teacher worked up and then video the teacher responding. Substitutes are often the victims but it can be regular teachers as well. All it takes is a couple of kids who don't like you, or who are just bored. Don't believe me? Go to YouTube and type in "angry teachers." The best solution is to make sure that students don't have cell phones out. But because they are so small this is difficult to police. Yet another good reason to keep moving around in the room.
Your Facebook page: Teachers have been fired because of the content on their Facebook pages, even when those pages are not accessible to students or parents.
Flickr or other photo sites: If you post a photo that your school deems inappropriate you may be fired. Tops in this list include pictures of you drunk, in disarray, kissing someone, doing anything illegal.
Blogs: In blogs if you say negative things about your school, district or students you may be fired. Yes, this is probably illegal, but it is happening. As far as the world is concerned you love your job and want to work there forever. Keep complaints to friends, and never write them down.
Private Behavior: Yes, outside the school building you have a right to behave as you wish, within the law. But understand that if students, parents, fellow teachers or administrators see you vomiting outside a bar on Friday night it can cause big problems for you. Use your head!
Doing controversial things in class: Clear it with your administrator first. This often happens with social studies teachers who are trying to re-enact a particular time period. There are some terrific activities that kids can learn a great deal from. But none of them are worth losing your job over. Do something else.
Showing all or parts of R-rated movies. There are many R-rated movies that are excellent teaching tools. The beginning segment of Saving Private Ryan is a good example. However, no matter how valid your reason for showing it, no administrator is going to support you if a parent comes unglued about it. I did show portions of R-rated films on occasion, but I certainly would not do it in our current anti-public school environment. Find another way to get your point across. It's simply not worth taking the risk of losing your job.
Remember that teachers are considered to be public figures and are open to public scrutiny. Most teacher contracts still contain a morals clause. While it may grate on you, it's best to keep your personal activities off line. Teachers are under enough fire and criticism as it is. Don't allow yourself to be caught up in a situation you could have avoided.

For additional protection I recommended joining your teachers' association. You will be provided legal counsel if something does happen.

The Internet As an Educational Tool? Not While The "Sleaze Factor" of Pornography Is Uncontrolle

There is no doubt that the internet provides enormous educational potential. Teachers have known this from the very beginning. Unfortunately, the "bottom feeders" of the internet have been equally aware of the potential for wealth from the "Sleaze Factors" of (1) plagiarism, (2) unethical and unsafe issues, and (3) pornography. Until there is a way to eliminate, or at least control these issues, allowing open access to the internet for anyone under the age of 18 should be considered negligence; and schools simply will not be able to use the internet to its full educational potential. I dealt with the first two "Sleaze Factors" in other articles. This article will concentrate on the pornography issue.

I discussed this issue a little bit is another article, but pornography is such a serious issue for schools that it can't be discussed too often. Obviously there is a great deal of money to be made in pornography, because pornographers spend so much time, money, and effort in creating sites for people to stumble upon. It isn't sufficient for the thousands of interested people to go to published sites for their pleasures. Instead, these site owners also have to trick other people into going to their sites as well. This should be a crime!

As soon as schools could afford to do so, they started creating computer labs and adding internet access to those labs and classroom computers for the benefit of students and teachers alike. For a short time, the ability to find educationally sound websites was, indeed, wonderful. We had a new resource at our fingertips that would revolutionize education. Some people were predicting the end to schools and elimination of the need for teachers within a very few years. These predictions never take into account the "bottom feeders" of the world, who, for whatever reason, must destroy everything good.

Before this process of creating computer labs with internet access was even complete, students started finding that if they misspelled the name of an educational site or accidentally made a wrong keystroke, porn sites appeared. Needless to say, parents were NOT happy! Schools immediately started installing filters on their systems that would not allow certain sites to be accessed. Then, all likely misspellings needed to be added to the list of "cannot be accessed." Then, frequently researched topics brought porn sites instead. So schools started adding seemingly harmless words to the "cannot be accessed" list.

I taught mathematics. Seems like a safe topic, doesn't it. Wrong! I know I am naive, but I really don't understand what these people get out of forcing word after word off the acceptable list. Schools have no choice but to continue this process. Our tax payers very much resent having schools providing porn to their children, and rightly so. Parents have also been forced to put filters on their home systems in order to protect their children. Now, we have schools starting to buy class sets of iPads--the newest technology, but again filters become an issue. It is all very sad!

With all of these "Sleaze Factors" at work at the same time, legitimate research sites are becoming few and far between, plagiarism is more of an issue than most students and parents even realize, and using unfiltered computers is just plain dangerous for our children.

There are no simple solutions in sight. Certainly First Amendment Rights are important and need to be considered, but the safety and educational importance for our children are at least equally important. As a society, we need to be making some very important decisions related to the hierarchy of importance of these concerns and we need to do this sooner rather than later.

The only positive thing about all of this is that schools and teachers are becoming more important than they ever were. Where else can you trust that the people involved have your child's best interests in mind? It certainly is NOT on the internet.

Why The Internet Will Not Eliminate Teachers or Schools As Some Have Predicted

Recently, I read a few articles about the future of education. In each case, the author was predicting that the massive collection of knowledge of the Internet would make traditional schools obsolete. Teachers and schools will become unnecessary. I don't claim to be any kind of visionary, but there are many reasons this prediction will not come true.

During my teaching career, I experienced the entire "technology in the classroom" movement from the first arguments over allowing use of small four-function calculators in the classroom, to the introduction of the first computers for classroom use, to graphing calculators, the developments of the internet and the World Wide Web, interactive white boards, iPhones, iPads, etc. I heard the predictions and I've watched what actually happened. Consistently, the reality falls far short of the prediction.

The Internet is by no means a new educational tool. The Internet has existed for many years and its benefits for teachers has been advanced for all of those years. In the early days, once school computer became prevalent enough to allow for 1 or 2 computer labs and schools could access the Internet, there actually was a short period of time when students and teachers frequently used this educational tool. There are many excellent educational sites that have provided wonderful lesson plan ideas and materials for classroom use.

It didn't, however, take very long for parents and schools to discover that there was a major problem developing with allowing open access to the Internet. Those of us who are naive and always see the good and the positive potential in people, and who expect the same from everyone, were caught off guard by the arrival and rapid increase in the amount of pornography on the Internet. Suddenly, we had students watching porn in our school libraries and computer labs!

You can argue First Amendment Rights all day long, but that won't change the fact that the majority, if not all, parents do not want their public--paid for with their tax dollars--schools allowing, even providing, porn to their children. The solution to the problem became and will continue to be the #1 reason that schools or any educational facility--even homes--will never be able to use the full educational potential of the Internet: FILTERS!

I wish I could make that word as big and flashy as it needs to be to convey the full impact this has made on the educational uses of the Internet. While parents demand tighter and tighter controls on what their children can access at school and are finding the need to do likewise at home (as witnessed by the rapid increase in the number of websites devoted to providing filters for home computers, iPods, iPads, etc.), the "Internet Bottom Feeders" keep developing ways to circumvent those same filters. (My growing cynicism is telling me that the people providing the filters are likely the same ones making the filters necessary.)

The list of valuable educational sites that have become unavailable continues to lengthen as porn sites appear with every possible mis-spelling or keystroke error a student might make. The length of the list of seemingly harmless words that now have to be filtered out would shock most of you.

Is the Internet set to eliminate teachers and schools? Certainly not anytime in the foreseeable future. With much of their internet access now heavily filtered, it has become very difficult for students to do any meaningful, valid research.

There are many other reasons that the Internet is ceasing to be a viable educational tool for children. The Internet becomes more dangerous to our children every day, and the information found there is often false or plagiarized. Sources can no longer be trusted. These issues will be discussed in other articles; but for now, schools and teachers are more important than they have ever been for the trusted, truthful exchange of information.