Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Employee use, misuse, and abuse of social networking sites

A very interesting article on the NSBA website discusses when teachers should be disciplined for inappropriate blogging. At the conclusion of the article are these suggestions:

Considerations for Blogging Teachers

  • Public v. anonymous: are you willing to sign your name to the comments you post?
  • A blog has the potential to be read by thousands of people, including those you are writing about.
  • Do not blog on the job.
  • Use your own equipment, not the school district's equipment.
  • The truth is always better than the opposite, so think before you blog.
  • If your blog is public, do not use personally identifiable information when discussing colleagues, parents, and especially students.

Considerations for District Blog Policies

  • Encourage bloggers to take responsibility for their postings.
  • Prohibit the use of school mascots, symbols, logos, or other district trademarks on employee blogs.
  • Prohibit blogging during the school day.
  • Prohibit the use of school district property for personal blogs.
  • Require the use of a disclaimer regarding the statements posted on blogs.
  • Develop the policy with staff bloggers' input, make sure all staff are aware of the policy, and give notice that administrators may visit the blogs at any time.

You may read the entire article here: http://www.nsba.org/SecondaryMenu/TLN/TLNMembersArea/TechnologyrelatedarticlesfromSchoolBoardNews/SocialNetworkSitesIA08.aspx

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2 comments:

Adam John said...

I totally agree with the NSBA website. Their should be stipulations on what teachers can an cannot put on blogs or other social network sites. Along with the consequences they should recieve. If your a teacher you should keep yourself anonymous. There is no point in giving your name out especially if the people looking at it know you. This could result in a lot of problems. I agree wit the different considerations that should be taken place. I like the ideas your presenting. Hopefully teachers are reading about this more and more.

2/27/2008 5:33 PM
Jim Dornberg said...

I would think these suggestions from NSBA would be "common sense" to most teachers, but in this day and age common sense is becoming an oxymoron. If you're interested, on November 27 I posted links to a couple of other articles in the eSchool News and the Columbus Dispatch: http://edtechupdate.blogspot.com/2007/11/teachers-union-warns-against-using.html

2/28/2008 9:25 AM

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