The Lamar County school board in Mississippi has recently decided to limit communication between students and teachers outside the walls of the school, or more specifically restrict their communication online. These new rules do not limit any students (or teachers) from creating online profiles on sites such as Facebook or MySpace, but does limit their interaction on such sites. The board specifically “prohibits teachers from texting or communicating with students through Internet social network sites.”
Although they seem to have only mentioned Facebook and MySpace specifically, I would imagine that it would also apply to other sites such as Twitter, identi.ca or even leaving comments on personal blogs.
According to Superintendent Ben Burnett their “intent is to limit the personal communication between teachers and students” because they are afraid of the line between “professional and personal communication” getting crossed. This sounds logical, after all why would a teacher, someone who is a grown up want to be “friends” with someone who is a teenager, or possibly even younger online when in their real life they are an authority figure to that same person.
However moving into this tech and web centric world that we are now living in the lines are easily crossed, especially with the early adopter social networking crowd.
The subject of grown-ups mixing with young children, or even young adults online is one that often comes with sinister thoughts attached and often brings to mind a deviant adult. Hey, we have all seen, if not at least heard of NBC’s ‘To catch a predator’ which focuses on grown adults preying on young children. Don’t get me wrong that is creepy and wrong, but its not all like that.
Most people would wonder why an adult would want to be “friends” with someone young online, or even why a teenager would want to be friends with someone who is “old.” However, personally I feel it would depend on just how you would define the term friend, and I think more importantly with some recent social networks the word friend is a bit of a stretch and is really no more than a follower, which in my opinion is not that different from someone subscribing to an RSS feed or even visiting my blog.
Overall this is somewhat of a fine line, and something that has to come with a very personal opinion on right and wrong because overall it really seems to be blurry on whether or not its really alright.
Recently blogger Louis Gray also touched on this same subject after finding himself, as he put it, “uneasy when it comes to “friending” young contacts.”
Even myself, I am not old by any means, I am currently 34, but have wondered this myself, after all what would I have in common with someone much young. However in today’s online world, there are some very influential people that making their mark on the blogging world and they happen to be much younger than me.
Lots of these people I would most likely never hang out with in real life, however as a blogger they suddenly become a good contact, almost like a co-worker of sorts. No one would think it strange for an older and younger office worker having a conference room business meeting during office hours. With many working mobile and virtually nowadays our conference rooms are just not quite the same anymore. The world is changing, I also think it may be time to not always assume the worst.
The Lamar County school board in Mississippi has recently decided to limit communication between students and teachers outside the walls of the school, or more specifically restrict their communication online. These new rules do not limit any students (or teachers) from creating online profiles on sites such as Facebook or MySpace, but does limit their interaction on such sites. The board specifically “prohibits teachers from texting or communicating with students through Internet social network sites.”
Although they seem to have only mentioned Facebook and MySpace specifically, I would imagine that it would also apply to other sites such as Twitter, identi.ca or even leaving comments on personal blogs.
According to Superintendent Ben Burnett their “intent is to limit the personal communication between teachers and students” because they are afraid of the line between “professional and personal communication” getting crossed. This sounds logical, after all why would a teacher, someone who is a grown up want to be “friends” with someone who is a teenager, or possibly even younger online when in their real life they are an authority figure to that same person.
However moving into this tech and web centric world that we are now living in the lines are easily crossed, especially with the early adopter social networking crowd.
The subject of grown-ups mixing with young children, or even young adults online is one that often comes with sinister thoughts attached and often brings to mind a deviant adult. Hey, we have all seen, if not at least heard of NBC’s ‘To catch a predator’ which focuses on grown adults preying on young children. Don’t get me wrong that is creepy and wrong, but its not all like that.
Most people would wonder why an adult would want to be “friends” with someone young online, or even why a teenager would want to be friends with someone who is “old.” However, personally I feel it would depend on just how you would define the term friend, and I think more importantly with some recent social networks the word friend is a bit of a stretch and is really no more than a follower, which in my opinion is not that different from someone subscribing to an RSS feed or even visiting my blog.
Overall this is somewhat of a fine line, and something that has to come with a very personal opinion on right and wrong because overall it really seems to be blurry on whether or not its really alright.
Recently blogger Louis Gray also touched on this same subject after finding himself, as he put it, “uneasy when it comes to “friending” young contacts.”
Even myself, I am not old by any means, I am currently 34, but have wondered this myself, after all what would I have in common with someone much young. However in today’s online world, there are some very influential people that making their mark on the blogging world and they happen to be much younger than me.
Lots of these people I would most likely never hang out with in real life, however as a blogger they suddenly become a good contact, almost like a co-worker of sorts. No one would think it strange for an older and younger office worker having a conference room business meeting during office hours. With many working mobile and virtually nowadays our conference rooms are just not quite the same anymore. The world is changing, I also think it may be time to not always assume the worst.
[CBS News]
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