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No friending for teachers on Facebook? No sense
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By Amelia Robinson,
Staff Writer
Updated 2:04 PM Wednesday, September 7, 2011
If you want to avoid absolutely every possible inappropriate relationship between teachers and students, keep ’em in different schools.
You’d then have to put those schools on different planets and limit communication to the emoticon that means indifference.
Teacher “:-|”
Student: “:-|”
Dayton Public Schools and several other districts think that keeping teachers and students unfriendly on Facebook will do the trick as well.
“Friending” a student can get you fired.
DPS teachers aren’t to instant message or text their students either.
This, of course, ignores the fact that many people — teacher and students included — would rather text or tweet than talk.
Despite 1994 predictions, the information superhighways isn’t going away people.
Social media in many of its forms has become a vital component of the interweb we’ve weaved into the Internet.
It’s a valuable tool that, unfortunately, many school districts are too foolish or too shortsighted to utilize.
Beavercreek, Hamilton, Lakota and Middletown are among the districts that prohibit staff members from using social network sites during school hours.
What’s up with that?
To say that teachers should never communicate with students through social media is so 1876.
It’s like saying they should never call them on the phone.
I am no historian, but I am betting Alexander Graham Bell would allow teachers and students to friend each other.
The applications for learning through social media are vast.
Just for starters, teachers can communicate with students about projects, make assignments interactive, and set up various learning groups.
The Internet can be a dangerous place for kids, so there should be rules about how teachers and students interact.
There is, of course, the chance that a harmful relationship could develop online between a student and teacher.
But there is also the chance that an inappropriate relationship could develop in, I don’t know, school. Banning Facebook and other modern digital technologies might reduce a school district’s legal liabilities, but it ignores a future that I am betting has the Internet/social media thing playing an even larger part in our lives.
Communication between teachers and students is even more important in the digital age.
By banning digital communications, school districts put students at a disadvantage.
Facebook is left as only a place to play Farmville and “poke” unexpected classmates.
How can a student learn to use this technology in useful and practical ways if it is on the same school ban list as hot pants and chewing gum?
What do you think?
Do school districts use technologies effectively? What should they do differently?
Contact this columnist at arobinson@
DaytonDailyNews.com or send her a tweet to Twitter.com/ddnsmartmouth.
What do you think about this?
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