Education Association warns against social networking

(Cross-posted at RickScheibner.net)

Stephen Rahn recently shared this post by Ben Wildeboer on Google Reader.  Apparently, the Ohio Education Association is advising its members to not join social networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook.  And if members do belong to those sites, they advise removing them as soon as possible.  According to eSchool News, the dangers they cite include the potential for students and teachers to interact inappropriately, and the chance that a student might create an imposter site and post inappropriate material on it. 

Huh?  Is the education association led by people who are so out of touch they don't even know what their newest and youngest members are up to?  Or am I being naive, and this a reasonable attempt for the OEA to protect its members?  Most of the young teachers I've seen hired the last couple of years just use social networking as a way of life.  They've grown up with e-mail and IM, and networking sites are just a natural extension of those tools.  For my way of thinking, teachers who get caught up inappropriately in the lives of their students are going to try to do that, with or without MySpace.  And if privacy is an issue, simply use the internal safety measures that those sites already have in place.  For the record, I have both MySpace (for family and friends) and Facebook (for professional networks and blogging acquaintances). 

Here is the full article from Ben:  » Social networking sites pose “dangers” for educators? Sustainably Digital

Technorati tags: educational technology, teaching, learning, classoom 2.0, social networking, Ohio Education Association

Comments

[Dave Sherman]

Great post. You hit the nail on the head with this one. I feel as if we are fighting an uphill battle.

[jose]

I've gone one step further and made a myspace exclusively for educational reasons. I take tons of precautions to make sure my site is clean and strictly for teaching. It's a great way to interact with the kids and possibly gauge their interests without them even knowing it. Anyways, people are too nervous about new media. If people only stayed with the trends, they wouldn't get lost in them or worse yet let them pass them by.

[Tracy Rosen]

I love the idea, Rick and Jose.
In my school both myspace and facebook are banned, and most of my students only have access to the Internet at school. So there are few worries that we'll become socially enmeshed through myspace or facebook ;)

Then again, you know what happens? The students still access the sites - through proxy servers. So now we will not only be inappropriately enmeshed but criminally (ok, maybe I'm exaggerating) as well.

We're all going to hell in a handcart.