Teachers Beware

Teachers Beaware

 

Belch, H. E. (2012, October). Teachers Beware. Learning & Leading, 15–19. Retrieved from http://www.learningandleading-digital.com/learning_leading/20111201#pg18

The article is mainly about if a teachether has or would have a social network account of any how kind they should be aware of the dangers and effects that it could have to their teaching career and there teaching methods. The author of this article, Harry Ess Belch, gives many examples across the nation and even international about how many teacher have been disciplined for showing, depicting and writing inappropriate material online. Many of them had nothing to do with the school but according to the article and the laws one has the 1st amendment but you can still get in trouble depending on some other rules in placed for teachers. One is the amount of trouble you can get in depends if you have a continuous contract, if you behavior has a nexus to your effectiveness as a teacher, if the behavior show is or can cause a problem in the educational process of students, and/or if what has been posted is damaging to the school or reputation. So the purpose of the article is to inform teachers that there social network can be damaging to their career because it could have a bearing affect on their job. the author wanted to show how it could do this damage  and what could be done for a teacher to protect themselves on what not to do. So he found out what schools are doing to help teachers not fall into these issues. He explains how schools have placed guidelines and restrictions on how teachers can use social networks, such as they are not allowed to privately contact students over these sites, they are not allowed to accept any invitations from students or invite them to one on one contact, and if they use social network in the school with there equipment then there privacy is under the same rule the school has established. They also urge that teachers should be careful on what they post because it might be offense to others.

They way I would use this information in my class is that I would familiarize myself with the rules and restrictions of social networks because I know that I would be using some for educational reason. They will allow all my students to connect with each other outside of the classroom and give them a chance to get extra help and understand of the material in class. So it would be in my benefit to make sure that I am aware of the does and don't of using the these  types of programs.

In conclusion, the author educate his colleagues in how they should use these websites and how they should protect themselves. He informs them on how they need to know that just because they are out of school and it there own private account they still need to think about what they post could affect there teaching. After his awareness session he told his co workers to write down what new things they have learned and many wrote that they did not know that they could get in trouble for what they posted on their social networks.

Now it was hard to relate this to the NET-S for students but I feel that it looking more into it it connects to Digital Citizenship. Because just as the teachers need to practice safe use of technology so do students so they need the example of a good model of this.