Very recently, Westlake High School in Austin, Texas, made the decision to open Facebook to some of its staff members for instructional use. This is a step that many schools around the country are adopting, so we certainly don’t make any claims to being the first to take the leap. It came as a result of many hours of thought, research, and discussions with the administration of the school and the district.
Once the decision was made to open the site for the high school teachers, the next step was to determine how we would roll out the program. We wanted to give the teachers as much freedom as possible in implementing it, but at the same time, felt that we needed to take some responsibility for how it would be integrated into our instruction. We set up these guidelines to start:
· Teachers would create a professional account that would be separate from their personal account. The professional account would be recognizable by the campus initials as the first name and either the full name or the last name for the user’s last name. Ex. WHS Windsor or WHS DustinWindsor. Since Facebook allows the use of alternate names which appear in the profile, this was simple. It also gave us the ability to search on Facebook to find other staff members easily and quickly.
· All teachers would have to go through a district training session, regardless of their expertise with Facebook. This gave us the opportunity to lay out our guidelines, offer suggestions on how it could be implemented, and give us a signed record of their attendance at the training session.
· The only teachers who would have Facebook unblocked would be those who had completed the staff development session mentioned above. All others would continue to have Facebook blocked.
· This is not a mandatory program. Only teachers who want to use Facebook in their class would have to attend the training. Neither is it mandatory for students to use Facebook in their class, regardless of whether the teacher had an account or not.
· Before using Facebook in a class, the teacher would review Facebook privacy and account settings with the class.
The benefits of using Facebook in the classroom far outweighed our concerns, which is why we chose to open it in the first place. Some of the things we considered in making this decision are listed below:
· We decided we wanted to go to where the students are rather than creating something new and having them come to us. Facebook has millions of members, and some of the brightest educators in the world are a part of that membership. Why shouldn’t we go there to find them rather than hoping they will somehow find us and join our social network?
· A handful of teachers on our campus are already using Facebook to tutor students online. They do so on their own time and use this as an opportunity to pass on last minute information to their student and provide tutoring or homework help. AOL has used volunteer teachers to provide homework help online through chat rooms for over 10 years. Why not allow the students to seek help from their own teacher rather than a stranger?
· As a side benefit, this gives us the opportunity to speak with our students about online safety and privacy. As universities and potential employers check social networks to make admission or hiring decisions, we speak with our students about the dangers of posting pictures of that party on Saturday night or insensitive comments that can be viewed by everyone rather than just the few friends they think are looking. In this way, we offer our students a place to make a mistake without devastating consequences. This is the reason we require the teacher to spend time discussing privacy and account settings in Facebook before the teacher announces their online presence to the class.
This is all pretty dry. It’s my hope that in the future we will be posting specific activities that we have done using Facebook and lessons we’ve learned along the way. The hope is that more schools will make the decision to unblock Facebook and do the same so we can learn from you. I just know that this process requires a lot of consideration, so I wanted the first post to reflect our decision making process and how we came to this conclusion.
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Did any conversation occur with the students during the consideration of using Facebook?
ReplyDeleteAs much as educators recognize that we may need to meet the students where they are, do they want us there?
I believe, like your school, that Facebook has benefits, as I'm a proponent of social-networking as a means to enhance education. However, I often wonder if there are some things we should just leave to the younger generation. I mean, they don't want us at their parties...and we don't go...but we (read: parents, and yes, teachers) do teach them how to conduct/represent themselves.
We can still teach social-networking. We can still teach digital citizenship. We can still teach digital ethics, and the power of one's digital footprint. But there are many other powerful online tools at our disposal to meet these necessary skills.
I look forward to reading more about how this implementation goes, and how students respond.
Ken, admittedly, our first conversations were between teachers and administrators. We felt that if we didn’t have a plan in place for the teachers, they would not be as willing to buy into the new program. However, once we started putting together the plan for implementation, we started speaking with the students. This typically was done by the classroom teacher who was interested in using it in his or her curriculum. The first feedback we had was extremely positive as the teachers first saw the potential for online tutoring. As I mentioned in the post, we had a few teachers who were already using Facebook to provide tutorials and classroom information to their students. The possibility that their teacher was only a click away and could provide individual help with a question was quite appealing. We have others who are getting ready to jump in and create groups for their classes so they can share discussions and bring in resources they might otherwise not have access to. I’ll be posting more on these activities as they begin to take shape.
ReplyDeleteOne of the primary topics of conversation in our first meetings was the precise topic you bring up. Will our students feel we are spying on them and out to get them? It was for this reason primarily that we chose to require our teachers to review account privacy settings with their students before they start working with them online. We want them to know that they can block us from pictures or updates they post. At the same time, we point out that these settings should be applied not just for the teachers, but for others as well.
I agree that we should not impose ourselves on our students outside of the classroom, but Facebook is a forum that is a true mutual acceptance experience. Before we can come in, they must allow us in. It’s not mandatory for teachers or students to use this resource.
Great subject. I have been playing around with the idea of the comment structure recently.
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