Dear School Board Members and Administrators:
In our omnipresent world of education budget cuts and high-stakes testing, accompanied by chest thumping and speeches about “real world application” of learning, it is alarming that school leaders would elect to ban a pivotal tool for interaction between students and educators: Social Media.
Every single day, individuals from all walks of life (students, teachers, politicians, business people and more) are successfully and unsuccessfully tweeting, pinning, using Facebook and otherwise interacting with the world via smartphones, tablets and computers.
Yet our school, like so many other short-sighted “centers of learning,” has chosen to ignore, block, and even ban these tools and instruments that can be powerfully harnessed and employed in the classroom.
You encourage your faculty to be engaged, to become 21st century educators, and to develop innovative lessons that are applicable both in the classroom and “real life.” You promote professional development about connected learning and sponsor programs that prize global citizenship.
Yet, at the same time, you establish policies that prohibit educators and students from connecting using social media.
Every day while reading blogs (many of which you send to me), I see evidence of educators producing exciting lessons using social media: “live tweeting” historical events, creating a classroom Facebook Page to allow students to collaborate, using Twitter hashtags to further engage students in classroom projects, and teaching students to use Pinterest to amp up team projects, to name only a few.
Yet we are prohibited from using these free and very powerful tools in the classroom and instead directed to inferior and less user-friendly alternatives, some of which are NOT free.
The reality is our students are engaging with social media tools right now, every day, outside our school walls. They know them, they like them, they use them. Every day that I see my students forced to post to their “closed” school blog, I lament the loss of connectivity, authentic audience and collaboration they could be experiencing if they attended a more open and savvy learning institution.
Every time I’m directed to a private social network space in lieu of Facebook or Twitter, I am frustrated by its clunky user interface and the disinterested reaction from my students.
I know that you are fearful
I realize you are concerned about many potential problems: “Stranger Danger,” cyber-bullying and even illegal activity. However, you are missing out on an incredible opportunity – and avoiding your responsibility to address an urgent learning need.
You need to enable your educators to provide guidance to their students and promote positive digital citizenship.
Right now you’ve opted to let students, including impulsive teenagers, “go it alone” in this world without adult guidance and supervision because you fear a screw-up could become a lawsuit. Instead of providing adequate professional development to your faculty so that they can . . .
– work with students to develop and enforce appropriate boundaries,
– sharpen their own media usage skills, and
– serve as role models and mentors
. . .you have hobbled our creative abilities in the classroom and hindered our access to our learners.
On a personal note, I have never known a good teacher to suddenly become a predator because they could send tweets to a student. We need to legislate behavior, not the tools of learning.
Administrators and school board members — it’s time to reexamine your policies and see if you are truly protecting your students and teachers or simply following guidelines based on “worst case scenarios” put forth by lawyers who know little or nothing about the needs of today’s learners.
If we want to prepare students for the “real world,” then we need to operate in it. If we are concerned about educators’ ability to manage social media in the classroom, then we need to provide them with professional learning and support.
Blanket bans are not only counter-intuitive, they are preventing us from becoming the dynamic 21st century learning institution that we could easily become.
Connected Educator
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Here, here! Well said! I feel like you were talking not so much about my own school last year, but about my former district. So many barriers to using technology for the fears you enumerate above. This year, at a different school and in a different position, I haven’t had many opportunities to delve into technology as I’d like. However, I’m finding that using common sense and asking for forgiveness rather than permission is the way many are forced to operate given the current state of affairs.
Where can we co-sign on this?! A superb piece.
Sorry to hear that we still have tech directors living in the last century. Time to educate them and show them the data.
Jack Barshinger
Superintendent
Batavia, IL
I’m a computer technician for a school board and all social media is blocked. I totally agree with this great letter and hope to somehow share it with my administration.
In my experience there seems to be a lack of supervision or monitoring of what the students do while on the computers at our board. There are some teachers who ‘get it’ and continuously monitor what the students are doing. They also use Net Support to monitor their screens. There are those who assign work for the students and not watch what they are doing.
There seems to be a lack of knowledge or experience with digital technology with some teachers. I think there is a lack of 21st learning technology atmosphere and they keep throwing computers and netbooks at the problem.
I’m all for supporting new technologies for students and staff but awareness seems to be the problem. I hope to change that but I’m looking for support on how to change this even though I’m not a teacher.
Jason
AMEN!!!
It’s time for the education policymakers to start connecting with the digital natives they’re trying to ‘protect.’
I got in trouble last year for sending my superintendent a couple of great articles about social media and visions of how schools could be run. They were tweets that I came along throughout the week. He said he did not want unsolicited email sent to him! Ha! That is the world I am living in, just terrible. The whole idea of sharing, collaborating and growing is so lacking. Some folks are living in another world, I call this the digital divide!
Loved this passionate plea. Authorities in education are fighting a losing battle and in many ways don’t trust teachers and especially children. Despite the rhetoric to the contrary, autonomy in areas that matter has never been further away in most schools. We are increasingly micromanaged. Keep up the great work. I am an educator who has just retired after 47 years – the last 15 as a principal in three schools in Australia.