Students Face(book)ing suspension
Friday, January 11, 2008 at 08:03AM Wizard of Id: The peasants are revolting.
King: They certainly are. - Johnny Hart
Students in the Minneapolis suburban community of Eden Prairie are facing disciplinary actions after their Facebook photos are sent to school officials. The Star-Tribune story is here. AP article here.
Interesting factoid from the AP story:
Eden Prairie High School has about 3,300 students, and Facebook lists about 2,800 members in its network for the school, including more than 500 from the current senior class. A spot check Wednesday showed some have posted dozens and even hundreds of pictures. However, most members use a privacy setting to limit access to their profiles to authorized users.
Johnson's three safety concerns of the social web from Rules for the Social Web, Threshold, Summer 2007:
- Protecting children from predators.
- Protecting children from each other (cyberbulling).
- Protecting children from themselves.
If the figures from the article above are accurate, about 85% of Eden Prairie's students have an online presence. Are educators adequately addressing these concerns? What percentage of educators are aware of these concerns?
BTW, nice to see some school walkouts again. Takes me back to when my classmates and I walked out as high school students. But for us it was protesting a pro-Vietnam war legislator speaking at our high school during the late 60s.
Reader Comments (3)
Thank you for sharing the article with us! This morning I have been thinking about all the possibilities with web 2.0. I am also thinking about the safety of students and children at the same time. I want to teach my students to be responsible with use of technology.
Didn't know about this, but not surprised. I did laugh a bit when I looked at an interview of one of the girls who left school - someone was disrepectful to her as she was leaving.
Although I personally am not sure whether the school should discipline students for off campus actions, I would like the students to think about something...try walking off you first job like you walked off campus.
On a side note - I have added a MySpace type activity to one of my units in my computer class (the students develop a page as if they were a character from one of the Chronicles of Narnia books). This gives the students a chance to do something they cannot do during school (MySpace) but also gives me a chance to talk about social networking sites and what they say about you - TO EVERYONE!
Great article - thanks Doug!
Hi Kenn,
I like your comment about walking off the job. Increasingly I am seeing school's primary function as a place for kids to make "safe mistakes." Getting suspended for a couple games isn't pleasant, but it's a whole lot less painful than being fired or having one's professional reputation damaged. Good lesson to learn - while still in school!
All the best and thanks for the comment,
Doug