Teachers are held to a higher standard of behaviour than most other professionals due to the fact that they work closely with a extremely vulnerable group of people….children and adolescents. There are a number of key areas that teachers need to be aware of in relation to The Code and also with respect to the use of social media.
What did you find surprising or challenging in relation to what was presented in this session?
I have alot of friends who are teachers, and know their families and meet with them socially. I am connected with them on social media. I am interested in what changes I will need to make to my platforms regarding contact with students and their families. I am already careful what I say about my own children, and about other people’s children, but I will have to be more mindful of who I ‘fbefriend’.
This presentation raises some really interesting issues around a teacher’s 24/7 professionalism on display and issues of also being a private citizen. I wonder what others think about this? Does this raise any concerns for you? For a lot of my own teaching career I have worked in the field of environmental education, which does not always sit comfortably with governments (depending on their ideology!), I often have to think twice about the nature of my political advocacy when I’m engaging on facebook. Did this session raise any concerns or thoughts you might have in particular about your own rights as a private citizen?
It is clear from this presentation that we must be constantly mindful of our professional role as educators and government employees in the community. Social media presents many challenges in terms of ethical behaviour and having this knowledge is integral to ensuring we are professional both inside and outside of the school environment.
Good presentation and discussions in the Q&A section, but social media could probably warrant a whole session in itself. Some thoughts…. To use social media to mean ‘Facebook’ (as many places do) isn’t comprehensive enough. The ‘perils’ of posting and interacting on Facebook are well known but, realistically, young people are not interested in it – there are so many more options available. Students (including primary age) are more likely have their own YouTube channels that they want you to watch and subscribe to, or try to connect with you via online gaming. And what about the sanctioned use of social media platforms such as via Seesaw or Classdojo and the ethics around sharing children’s images, work and behaviour points? There’s also the question of using social media as a legitimate teaching tool, perhaps to critically analyse content or to set up a class blog? Also, do we have a moral obligation to keep up to date and properly understand emerging social media technology in order to fulfil our duty of care responsibility to our students? I’m probably off topic now, and asking more questions than providing answers, but is an interesting area to think about…
Thanks for the comment Samfya, yes certainly kids are on different platforms than many teachers are that’s for sure, tiktok, snapchat, online gaming, its a growing and ever-evolving world. To what extent is keeping up with this a teacher’s responsibility and to what extent is it a parent’s- these are fine lines. I’m not sure teachers can be on top of everything, but I do think it’s important to teach basic safety and security principles that can be applied across all platform as well as build critical literacy skills around ‘truth’ issues as well. You raise some very interesting questions!!