NYC Teachers Forbidden To "Friend" Students 238
betterunixthanunix writes "The New York City Department of Education has issued rules covering student-teacher interactions on social networking websites. Following numerous inappropriate relationships between students and teachers that began on social networking sites, the rules prohibit teachers from communicating with students using their 'personal' accounts, and requires parental consent before students can participate in social networking for educational purposes. The rules also state that teachers have no expectation of privacy online, and that principals and other officials will inspect teachers' profiles. Oddly, the rules do not address communication involving cell phones, which the Department of Education's own investigations have shown to be even more problematic."
What about parents of students who are teachers? (Score:0, Interesting)
Question in the subject.
Freedom (Score:5, Interesting)
Freedom of association? Does that apply? Why do educators seem to love tossing out personal rights and freedoms? Between this, video cameras on laptops, insisting on viewing personal accounts, etc, it's just disheartening. Why not RFID tag them all or lock them in cells on their personal time?
But... (Score:4, Interesting)
How does this square with the federal legislation wending its way through the system that would prevent employers from looking at social networking data of employees?
I'll say. My small community had a teacher busted for sexting a student. And when I was a kid, way back before the 'net and cell phones, there were rumors that certain teachers would give certain students "extra-curricular" attention. One teacher in our local district ended up marrying a student. It happened after the student graduated, but there were rumors that "stuff" was going on between them while the student was still in school.
I'm not sure technology has much to do with it: if teachers and students really want to hook up, they'll find a way.
Re:The issue is about supervision (Score:4, Interesting)
In university about half my students in classes will tend to befriend me on facebook (it's a bit less than that but close enough). Anytime anything out of the ordinary happens I posted it on facebook, as well as via e-mail.
Students are *far* more likely to get a facebook message than they are an e-mail. Lots of them, and, frankly this baffles me because it's the same device, will check facebook on the bus etc. but not e-mail. I suppose that's in part because the university has a habit of sending out a lot of crap that they don't care about, whereas on facebook the information they don't care about now can be easily skimmed over.
Doing anything 'regular' on facebook, course notes assignments that sort of thing doesn't make a lot of sense. Virtually all universities have some sort of classroom management software (webct/blackboard/sakai etc.) for that stuff, and students need to check that on a daily basis for work stuff. But if class is canceled, or a particular lab is closed, elevator not working, that sort of thing, facebook is much more effective than e-mail. I'm not sure that makes sense in highschool since highschools aren't usually giant tens of thousands of persons campuses with a huge number of people coming and going in dozens of buildings at different times.
The biggest plus I've found to facebook is when the students graduate you get to know what they're doing. And, importantly, you can connect them to the next batch of students looking for work and so on. One of my students from 3 years ago works at amazon, so I sent him a graduate who's super excited about amazon this year sort of thing. Again, I'm not sure that would make as much sense at the highshool level, although it's always nice to know what your former students are up to.
Re:Freedom (Score:4, Interesting)
Weirdly, I am simultaneously:
a) offended that they're applying such arbitrary restrictions to teachers -- it seems, technologically, stupid, and I've had teachers that are friends
b) pleased, since facebook is a pretty popular venue for creepy guys, and
c) surprised that teachers associating with students on facebook is a big problem, since it seems extremely unprofessional to me.
I have friends that teach and are Facebook friends with their *former* students, but association outside the classroom really should be conducted in a professional manner.
Re:What if the teacher is the child's parent? (Score:5, Interesting)
They would be violations of school policy, not misdemeanors / felonies.
Well, that depends a lot on what they mean by "principals and other officials will inspect teachers' profiles."
If they just look at the profile, fine, whatever.
If they log in AS the profile, there's a problem: everyone on that teacher's friend list who has a non-public profile is now visible, and accessing their friends-only profile info under that circumstance is, potentially, a federal crime.
So the next burning question is... (Score:5, Interesting)
Does Khan Academy http://www.khanacademy.org/ [khanacademy.org] count as a "social network" according to the New York City Department of Education?
-- Terry
Re:What about parents of students who are teachers (Score:3, Interesting)
The guidelines say no DOE employee my have any social media contact with any DOE student who they are not related to. This effectively means that ALL DOE employees may not user personal accounts to communicate on social media sites with ANY student under 18 living in their district boundaries.
So, if you're a kindergarten teacher with a 17 year old son, it is not appropriate to use social media to (for instance) plan a birthday party for your son.
While I understand why the district might want the rule to be so broad (read: simplicity and lawsuits), it is so broad as to be nearly meaningless, and will likely be ignored in many cases where it shouldn't be. Much more sensible would have been guidelines such as:
"It is inappropriate to use personal social media to communicate with any student for which the employee has a direct supervisory role or has had a direct supervisory role in the preceding two(2) academic years. For example, teachers may not use personal social media to communicate with their students or students of other teachers in their teaching team. School administrative employees may not use personal social media to communicate with students who attend their school. It is strongly recommended that any DOE employee using personal social media to communicate with a student not subject to the above guidelines receive prior consent from the student's parent or guardian and review their communication with the student's parent or guardian regularly."
While my set of guidelines seems strict, it should be sufficient as the consent and review provisions did not specify "in writing" and so can be done verbally. It also isn't so broad as to outlaw usage that is clearly reasonable. More importantly, such rules are more likely to be followed when it appears that the administrators made an attempt to really codify the appropriate and inappropriate uses, and didn't just take a "personal use of social media is evil" stance.