Teach42

Steve, I couldn’t agree more! I have a Facebook and MySpace page. I don’t go there often, but I’m there for two purposes. First, I want to connect with fantastic educators (like yourself) that are part of my PLN. Second, I want my students to find my page. I’ve seen pages of other teachers, even some in my own school, that make me cringe. Hot tubs and beer bottles? Come on! These things are public after all. Sometimes I believe we see ourselves as “educators” but not “professionals.” What a shame.

Taylor the Teacher and I happen to be discussing this article on Twitter right now. To answer your question, I would be willing to share mine – it’s pretty vanilla – pics of my family, biographical info about me, and my blog posts. Not that I’m looking to “friend” students, but I do think there’s something to be said for modeling appropriate online behavior.

We can cut loose and have fun just like anyone else, but just as one wouldn’t do so in front of students (or clients), I wouldn’t leave a record of it where students can access it, either.

I’ve had this conversation quite a bit with people recently and is a topic that I must write a post on. My friend was talking about how she wanted to online identities one for her professional world and the other for her partying. My advice “We can only be one person online” so you need to think very carefully about your online presence. Online has history so don’t show your dirty laundry in public.

This seems to be a big theme this week for some reason. We’re the role models parents *WANT* their children to look up to. I also have a MySpace and Facebook profile, and use both for personal and PLN reasons. Students DO follow/friend me, and it has made teaching more effective more times than not.
That said, it takes extra care to maintain my profiles, Twitter stream, uploaded photos, etc, so that they are appropriate and positive. Simple answer to your question: Yes, I would, and do share my profiles with students/parents/fellow educators. If only they’d let us teach students how to make their profiles appropriate as well.

Yes–there should be NO question when it comes to teachers and public anything. I hate to say, they should no better, but maybe somebody has to.

We ARE educators. It is rather simple. So simple, it must be difficult to fathom.

Thanks for the wake-up call. I think one issue is that so often we don’t see waht our profiles look like from the outside. That is, we see our pages when we’re logged in, not when we’re someone else. Perhaps a good idea would be to ask a friend to take a screenshot of my profile and send it to me, tell me what he or she can see, and ask for feedback.

We need this kind of accountability in our world, what bothers me is that none of these teachers’ friends (that we know of, I’m openly assuming here) took the person aside and mentioned the fact that the profile is less than favorable and might be a stain on an otherwise good teacher.

That said, hey Steve, go look at my Facebook profile! I think it’s pretty plain and basic, and I don’t have anything on Myspace. Let me know if you see something!

We need to hold each other accountable!

Chris

Hi Steve,

Personally, I hope all teachers blog, keep their blogs public, and model some of these principles:

- responsibility of course
- asking open and honest questions about education
- that ALL people have first amendment rights, including teachers and students
- that no one should be content with the status quo
- that everyone has the right to be controversial
- that everyone should be brave in their ideas, in their writing
- that we talk about how and why we make the ethical decisions we do.

I am concerned that we will cow teachers into either not sharing their ideas or only publishing those things that are completely “safe.” That would be a detriment to the field of education and society.

All the best,

Doug

@Doug: Aaaahhhhhh, VERY good point. And I do agree that people shouldn’t just write ‘safe’ things, so long as they’re doing it deliberately and conscientiously.

In my presentations about Facebook safety, I try not to tell people “Don’t put ‘bad’ things in your profile or keep it completely sterile. Make it whatever you want it to be. However, do so DELIBERATELY. If you’re going to put a picture of yourself drinking in your profile, go right ahead. But be sure you’ve admitted to yourself that some people may judge you based on that photo, you could possibly have action taken against you because of it, and have to be held accountable for it.” If you’re fine with those things, then do what you want! I 100% respect people’s rights to do what I think might be bad decisions, because ultimately they are the ones who will have to deal with the consequences.

The shame in it all to me is how many people are surprised by who is finding their information online. “I didn’t know students could see that” is a phrase no teacher should ever have to utter. A much better answer would be, “I knew students could see it and posted it anyway because it is my right to do so.” While I may disagree with the content posted, I would never disagree with ones right to post it.

@Chris Great point! After all, I do know of a few friends who are teachers and have profiles that may be walking a thin line, and yet I haven’t said anything to them yet. I think I need to. Thanks for pointing that out!

Hi Steve,

Yeah, we start our new teacher and student teacher training by suggesting everyone removes their “naked beer-bong” pictures from MySpace!

I suggested these blogging guidelines for teachers (and these will appear in an upcoming L&L Bloggers Café column).

http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/blue-skunk-blog/2007/1/26/blogging-and-a-little-common-sense.html

I like your use of “deliberate.” I think that clarifies the issue a lot!

All the best,

Doug

My district recently started a Ning network. It is open only to our teachers. When a teacher asked who would police what went on our pages, the answer was that each person polices his or her own page and models what we are required to teach our students about online behavior.

Having said that, I do have a Facebook profile, and I spend a lot of time there. I’ve reconnected with my high school friends and will see many of them this summer when I travel to Colombia. I don’t have anything questionable on it, and removed the FunWall application after a distant relative posted some unsavory pictures there. I know we are educators, but we are people, too.

Now, if you want to see an inappropriate example of educator online presence, take a look at this guy’s podcast about educational technology. It contains a segment to review and recommend cigars. Yep! Good ole cancer sticks…I’m so embarrassed to say he’s from Virginia.

@Bea First of all, major kudos to your district for taking action! That’s fantastic. Interestingly though, the idea of throwing in wine and cigar reviews doesn’t offend me. It may be because I’m a recreational cigar smoker myself, but despite that I think it may be because I have no major moral issues associated with it. If I worked in a school where anti-smoking campaigns were prevalent, I might feel very differently. Otherwise, so long as they aren’t getting drunk or peppering it with crude humor, it doesn’t really offend me. I think it may be more of a regional issue, regarding the level of concern it raises.

I’d be curious to hear other people chime in on this one.

An item like that doesn’t offend me, but that doesn’t mean its 100% okay. It’s questionable at best and I would probably ask the teacher to move it.

I think when you become a teacher or accept any role that involves helping children you give up some things. Both your public and e-life should be pretty clean and tight. It’s part of making this a “real” profession. How many of us had the professor that hung out at the bar. How was he viewed? How would the parents view me if I roll into the lot with music and smoke pouring out of my car?

Do what I say and not as I do is a tough way to teach. The very least you could do is publish under a “pen name.”

I agree with Doug that teachers often try to be too safe. However, I also understand that there is a certain reasonable level of expectation about teacher behavior online. I have MySpace,Facebook, Twitter, and I write several blogs. My personal blog has a “wine pick” occasionally, but I don’t see a problem with that. I am an adult and I drink responsibly. I believe if a student sees the wine pick blog, I could just as easily be seen as a positive role model as a negative one. I think you are right, Steve, a person just needs to be prepared to defend what they say or show on their profiles, so they need to put thought into it.

I always started the school year teaching my students about responsible internet behavior. It is important for them to understand that what they put out there is out there forever (even if they delete it later, they don’t know if someone might have already posted it elsewhere). My last employer did a search for my name before I even came in for an interview and boy, was I glad that I had kept everything appropriate out there!

I basically told the kids – don’t put anything out there that you wouldn’t want your grandma to see. I also told them that 10 years from now, when they are trying to get a job, are they really going to want to have to explain the naked spring trip pictures to a potential employer?

P.S. one thing I was shocked to see come up on Google searches were posts to private Google groups – so everyone should also be aware that even those are accessible by the general public.

But one thing we need to remember is that there are malicious spoof accounts setup to deliberately ridicule educators. That is one reason why I use facebook and myspace with my info on.

Because if I don’t own my profile, maybe someone else will?

Like Doug implied, this has to be part of teacher training. It is true that many folks just don’t know how public their online stuff really is! Deal with the ignorance first.

Then, it’s time for choices. I don’t think I’m with Sue on the single online identity — I have different names I use on different networks and sites, to separate the personal from the professional. At the same time, I’m aware that such a system is not infallible — it’s more for my convenience than security.

The other choice is how much to let others see. Like Steve says, we must be deliberate in what we post. I tend to be more liberal than most, plus most of my students are legally adults. I might do things differently if I taught young children. But I have a right to an online life, and if I posted a photo of myself doing something odd, I’d expect questions and be open to that very issue. Why am I smoking? Because I’m addicted. Let’s talk about addiction….

I also like the idea of discussing such profiles with our students. I think it’s good for adults to make mistakes, then correct them. I think that’s often a better model than being a goody-two-shoes to start with.

Last note: I can run into my students anywhere — so can you. If I’m in a bikini at the beach (hah!) or am seen at a party, it puts me out of the usual context and students get confused anyway. But I have a right to be in a bikini or go to a bar. Online is another place where I have the option to be who I want to be. I’m just more acutely aware that anyone can connect what they see with who I am in my job, that’s all.

@Steve
A profile on MySpace, created as an independent individual should be fine. I do draw the line at making disparaging comments about the students in your district. Why be a teacher if that is how you feel about the kids? A picture that shows the person drinking a beer at a party is fine. There are no messages anywhere around that party picture specifically advertising and promoting the use of alcohol. It is just something that happened, a normal event in a normal person’s life. All is fine in moderation, I think.

A podcast created by an instructional technologist, addressed to other educators, and including numerous references to the person’s employing school division is different. Explicitly advocating the use of tobacco goes well beyond the right to have a life. This guy is linking this to his role as an educator. NASCAR, tennis, soccer, everyone has decided not to advertise alcohol or tobacco products so kids won’t get the wrong idea from their role models. Why shouldn’t this apply to this educator, the most obvious role models?

Please don’t take this as an attack. I used to be way more permissive before I had kids. Now I always see things through my eyes, then re-evaluate trying to see how they would see and what they would understand from it.

[...] War Is Boring wrote an interesting post today on Comment on Teachers Behaving Like Middle Schoolers by Myspace »…Here’s a quick excerptA profile on MySpace, created as an independent individual should be fine. I do draw the line at making disparaging comments about the… […] [...]

Steve,
Ever since seeing your ‘permanent record talk’ (in Pittsburgh @ TRETC 2006) I thought about this concept in a different way. I used to hide behind privacy options, but I changed that. I’m a middle school teacher, but I view my online presence as one facet of the persona that I would like the public, in this case students, colleagues, families, the community, to see of me. I’m more of a Facebook user than myspace, and have a personal policy that I do not ‘friend’ anyone who I am currently teaching. That being said, there are plenty of kids that like to say hi and don’t get a chance, it’s like the new version of the stop by the classroom that the older kids always do (usually at the beginning of the year)

Facebook has changed the way our kids interact, keeping in touch with alumni [critical for the club I run] is easier than ever, kids are talking to each other, even across the borders of rival districts, a mere 2 miles that seemed like the iron curtain when I went to the universally reviled ‘neighbor to the north.’ Why shouldn’t facebook change the way our kids interact with us?

The biggest reaction I get is from my middle schoolers who, among other fantastic notions believe that the internet is created for them (perhaps for the sole purpose of evading their parents notice when they get into mischief) , and that someone of my advanced age (27) has no business using online networking sites.

My only concern is when my personal life, mundane as it may seem, spills over onto my facebook, blog or other aspects of my online presence. The persona I take on when blogging the wonderous events of my new daughter on our family wordpress.com page are tempered by the thought that it is linked to my facebook. Posting my twitter to facebook means that I may not be able to be as candid as I might like about conditions in my school, problems, frustrations, and other aspects of my professional life that may be misinterpreted.

Final note: I strive to represent myself well no matter where I do it, be it online, in the grocery store, if I go out for a drink in the neighboring restaurants (shock – horror!), and in my online life. This isn’t really a new phenomenon, teachers have always been held to a high standard, and there have always been teachers who do foolish things as there are in every profession. Today we just have more opportunities at our disposal to act stupid.

[...] Dembo posted today about a Washington Post article about young teachers and their Facebook pages.  It got [...]

Your post is timely again, as this issue has made it’s way to my school district. See my latest post: http://macmomma.blogspot.com

Lee’s most recent blog post.. Private Becomes Public, Once Again!

Lovely post. Please add my email address to your list and email me the updates if possible. I always like to read your blog and comment on it.