Facebook for the classroom

Last week, Norton school district warned its teachers not to friend their current or former students on Facebook or other social networking sites, and not to share their phone numbers with their students.  They feel that students shouldn't know too much about their teachers.  While I agree that there is a need to keep our professional lives and are private lives separate, I feel that this is the wrong direction to take.

In the business world, I feel it is a bad idea for an employer to friend his or her employees.  Knowing too much about the people you work with can cause issues for both sides.  However, I don't think that doing so should be a punishable offense.  It is more a breach of etiquette than a breach of power.  The same is true in the case of classrooms.  Students and teachers should not be forced into the awkward situations that can occur in the social internet.

However, there are some very good reasons to know what students are interested in outside of the classroom environment.  Educators can use social networks to gather information about what their students are interested in learning, and modify their curriculum accordingly.  Information can quickly be disseminated to students if a last minute change is required.  And online bullying can be noticed and proper interventions can be made.

So what should teachers be doing?  First of all, teachers should be educating themselves about the social media that is out there, and they should be learning about internet ethics and standards.  Second, they should be teaching their students these same values.  All civics and ethics classes should have global communication added to their curriculum.  Most importantly, they should be behaving at all times as if they were in public.  Because with the open communication that we have now, they are.  But so should politicians, businessmen, and every other person that knows someone who uses electricity.  We are all in the public eye now.