The Springfield News-Leader examines the Facebook bill in today's edition:
"I think that the problem is that the teachers -- which is 99.9 percent of teachers out there -- who use these tools effectively are being impacted by a small group of people who don't," says Zac Rantz, communications coordinator for the Nixa school district and president-elect of the Missouri School Public Relations Association. "Email and everything like that are just normal forms of communication between people."
Rantz goes on to say, "We understand and support the intent of the law, which is to keep sexual predators away from our kids and out of school, but banning them from Facebook, texting and email is not going to prevent that."
Vagueness of the law is the other issue, Rantz says: "Everyone is interpreting the law differently, which is part of the problem."
The law in part reads: "Teachers cannot establish, maintain or use a work-related website unless it is available to school administrators and parents, or have a nonwork-related website that allows exclusive access with a current or former student."
Rantz says schools are waiting on legal counsel to tell them how to respond. Each district is responsible for drafting policy to ensure compliance with the law. But first, Rantz says, they need to know what the law means.
Some implications are fairly obvious: no more private email, instant messages via Facebook or text messaging. In an age when teens are more likely to text than pick up a phone, this could have an impact on the immediacy of communications between educators and students.
3 comments:
"In an age when teens are more likely to text than pick up a phone, this could have an impact on the immediacy of communications between educators and students."
The tax payers grow weary of this specious argument. The 'impact on the immediacy of communications' can readily be surmounted by seeing the student in class everyday.
Adults set the rules, not children.
Seven years ago no one even heard of FaceBook. Please keep this in perspective.
Fifty years ago there was nothing known as a computer in the schools and over a hundred years ago you went to school on horseback. So what is your point? Things should stand still and never progress? Please keep this in perspective.
I normally don't respond to anonymous posters, but for you, I'll make an exception.
I believe the point of my original comment was clear: The 'immediacy of communications between educators and students' is a specious argument.
We're not talking emergency response or medical triage, we're talking about education of students done in a classroom, 5 days a week during a 40 week school year.
Children desire 'immediacy' and 'instant', but adults set the rules, not children.
Education has not changed so radically during the previous seven years that effective teachers cannot instruct tech savvy kids without a digital social network. Especially in private.
On horse back or not.
That is the proper perspective.
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