Bill Storm on Facebook

A few weeks ago,  Bill Storm in his on Ed Tech blog gave a strong and rational set of concerns about teacher use of Facebook. (Teachers on Facebook: Professional Roulette). In part, he wrote:

The organizational intricacies that contribute to the teacher’s ability to walk into a room, turn on the lights, have minor children walk in and face an expectation imposed on them by parents and wider culture are not random circumstances.  Your ability to teach that class is the outcome of a long and complex political and social process, and imbedded in that process are certain conditional facts driven by law.

Facebook fails you as a teacher because it ignores the following conditions imposed by the structure that provides for public schooling:

• Teachers are responsible for what occurs in their teaching environment.  When teachers set up a space in which to conduct instruction, whether it is their classroom, on the grass under a tree at the park down the street, or a page on Facebook, they assume responsibility for words uttered there.  It is expected that in the course of instruction and interaction that you are present at all times.  Facebook is a public space, and by definition it is free of structural supervision. If a teacher cannot actively supervise student interaction in a space the teacher uses for instruction, the space should not be available to students.  This is a no-brainer when we’re using a brick & mortar classroom; we carry keys.  In our professional role, social media is no different, but Facebook has no keys to distribute.

• Individual interactions between students and teachers must be above suspicion and reproach, with guidelines provided by law and a clear code of professional conduct.  We have all had students with whom we should not meet with alone, with private conversations occurring with a door open to the hallway. We have also all had students who seriously misinterpreted our words leading to uncomfortable confrontations, extending eventually to their parents.  Facebook provides a necessarily private, “windowless” space for such interactions, and it is only a matter of time before things will go wrong and a teacher finds him or herself in desperate defensive mode.

• Teachers need to be able to design the learning environment to optimize learning.  Instruction on a Facebook page is like gathering your class in the middle of Time’s Square before NYC got rid of the strip joints.  While you think you are interacting as teacher, students are chatting, the ads are rolling (marketed specifically to each student’s “Likes”), and they’re checking out your FB profile page.

• Parents have the right to access the learning environment taxpayer-paid teachers provide.  It is the rare adolescent who “Friends” a parent.  Even rarer is the parent who provides a computer conditional on being their child’s Facebook Friend, and even then kids respond by maintaining separate “parent-safe” pages.  Consequently, when teaching happens on Facebook parents are structurally denied access to an environment they are indirectly paying the teacher to provide.

• Teachers need to be able to provide a record of interactions they supervise.  By “supervise” I mean providing any learning environment that is part of a teacher’s professional role.  Once provided, under the law, supervision is assumed.  If students control the permanence of communications by being able to delete their posts, nothing short of a court order (good luck with that) can recover any toxic, threatening, libelous or injurious communication posted by a student.  Also, given the miracle of Photoshop, there isnothing short of a court order that can disprove a created private conversation between student and teacher.

So what’s a teacher to do?

Facebook is gaining in acceptance by educators. Our guidlelines for teachers using Facebook may seem overly cautious now.

But caution isn't the worst thing in the world when kids are involved. Don't jump on the teacher/student Facebook bandwagon just 'cause everyone is doing it.

Thanks, Mr. Storm, for some sobering advice.

Comments

[Bill Storm]

Wow... thanks for the re-blog, Doug.

As often happens, your posts get me to write what I've been thinking... this time about all the upset around the "bullying of teachers on Facebook & Twitter." I was about to post it here as a reply, then it got too long and I realized it had to be it's own post. If you or your readers are interested, see More Facebook: Why are you surprised?

Thanks again...

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Bill,

I enjoyed your peeing in the pool analogy in your follow-up post. To me, the heart of blogging is how one idea spurs the next. Thanks for the comment and your great original post!

Doug

[Paul Barnwell]

Great concerns posted here. I'm a skeptic when it comes to the usefulness of social media and education, because for the majority of people--both young people and adults--Facebook and Twitter has provided more distraction, loneliness, and a breakdown of intimate relationships more than helping to create thoughtful citizens. The power of Facebook and Twitter is apparent, but as a high school teacher who engages students in digital media work, I'm not convinced that we need to stay "online" all the time to create optimal thinking and learning environments.

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Paul,

Moderation in all things - including tech use. I hope none of us forget that.

Thanks for your comments,

Doug