The educaTional Promise of social mediaMany see great potential; some restrict student-teacher contact.

September 2011

Nystrom Education

Educators are well aware that the current generation of teenagers and even younger “tweens” are voracious users of social media. That’s led school districts to ban the use of cell phones and other hand-held devices during the school day, lest they become a distraction, and it’s led some districts and at least one state to restrict communication between students and teachers over social media.

But some educators believe there are educational benefits to teacher-student communication over social media, including everything from giving out assignments, to providing instantaneous homework support, to the kinds of informal one-on-one learning that happen all the time without students necessarily noticing.1

The American Library Association believes prohibiting students from using social media “does not teach safe behavior and leaves youth without the necessary knowledge and skills to protect their privacy or engage in responsible speech,” adding in its policy statement that librarians and teachers “should educate minors to participate responsibly, ethically and safely.”2

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sPeaking uP silenTlyEducational speaker, author and blogger Lisa Nielsen lists the top 10 ways in which Facebook strengthens teacher-student connections. These are reaching out to a student in need, getting a peek into students’ lives, making family connections, providing instant learning and homework support, providing instant snow day updates, handing out assignments even on snow days and sick days, creating a no-excuses environment, teaching students to deal with the world, using Facebook as a learning portal, and mobilizing students to action for a good cause.3

Jen Hegna, tech director in the Byron (Minnesota) school system, is among those who see the value of using Facebook in the classroom. Earlier this year, Hegna published a presentation called “Making the Case for Facebook in Public Education” that discussed how distractions can be minimized and educational benefits maximized.4

Eighth-grade teacher Enrique Legaspi already knew his students “live on their phones” and had an “aha moment” when attending the MacWorld convention

in San Francisco in January 2011. He learned how to incorporate Twitter into his history classes at Hollenbeck Middle School in East Los Angeles, and his students have been tapping away during his lectures ever since, sharing what they’re thinking on a screen at the front of the classroom.5

Legaspi says shy students benefit the most. “It’s a great way to get people to notice you,” Oscar Lozoria, a 14-year-old who used to get teased about his long hair, told CNN. “They see me as somebody now — as an equal.”

Erin Olson, an English teacher in Sioux Rapids, Iowa, has noticed the same social media dynamics, beckoning those who find it difficult to raise their hands to join the class discussion through what proponents term a “backchannel” real-time digital stream. This has the added benefit of getting them to text on-task rather than engaging in an electronic version of gossipy note-passing with their peers. “Everybody is heard in our class,” says student Leah Postman.6

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Exira, Iowa, teacher Kate Weber has found that such technology is not as distracting for her fourth-graders as one might imagine. “It’s actually the opposite,” she told The New York Times. “Kids are much quicker at stuff than we are. They can really multitask. They have hypertext minds.” 7

In Van Meter, Iowa, high school students have connected with experts in specific fields like marketing and public relations on Twitter through Personal Learning Networks, which provide “specialized knowledge on subjects ranging from paleontology to bus mechanics,” according to USA Today. Nearly 10,000 teachers nationwide are connected to these networks.8

Shannon Miller, teacher-librarian for the Van Meter Community School District, says that’s one of many ways her district uses social media, including Twitter, Skype, Facebook and personal blogs. Students Skype with well-known authors, post videos to their own YouTube channels, participate in virtual class discussions on Facebook, and undertake long-distance projects with students from other schools, like a play they co-wrote with peers at a school in Detroit using a common Facebook page.

“Social media like Twitter has completely changed my life,” Miller says. “I want my kids to get the benefits from it and to bring the world outside into our school. I want to bring things we can’t bring into our small, rural school here in Van Meter, Iowa. The benefits far outweigh any potential risks.”

Eric Sheninger, the principal of New Milford (New Jersey) High School, and his teachers use Facebook to communicate with students and parents, and he has more than 12,000 followers on Twitter (@NMHS_Principal).9

“Sheninger is one of a growing number of educators who don’t just tolerate social networking in school — he encourages it, often for educational purposes,” according to USA Today. “He says sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube — long banned and roundly derided by many peers — actually push kids to do better work and pay attention to important issues such as audience, quality research and copyright laws.”

how To inTegraTe social media inTo The classroomFormer newspaper reporter Tanveer Ali, a student at Northwestern University, has recommended four tips for integrating social media into the classroom.10

Let Down the Filters, Cautiously: “Schools have been understandably cautious in allowing students access to social media sites. After all, they are required to filter content under U.S. federal law,” he writes. But Ali cites the recommendations of Justin Reich, co-director of EdTechTeacher.org, who says schools should “patrol computer labs, place computers where staff have a presence, and install management software allowing monitoring from one computer.”

Add “Digital Citizenship” to the Curriculum: Dan Weiser of the Pajaro Valley Unified School District in California has said his district “won’t open up social networking sites to students unless a curriculum explaining how to use them is in place,” Ali writes, quoting Weiser as saying, “How do you teach ethical use if you can’t access it?” Susan Brooks Young, a technology consultant to schools, compares this to teaching teenagers to drive, in that neither activity is going away and “You would never just give that child a set of keys.”

Keep an Eye on Student Conduct, the Other on the Law: Off school grounds, the ability to police students “becomes murkier in terms of the law and technological ability,” Ali notes. “Unfortunately, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to this. Different states and counties have different rules.”

Teach with Social Media: “One way to keep social media use from being a distraction in schools is to find ways to use it in existing curricula,” he says.

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Sheninger says Facebook and Twitter provide him the opportunity to communicate with parents and students, tell positive stories about the school that the media might not, provide teachers professional development opportunities through informal networking with others who share their passions, and make connections of all kinds with myriad

“educational stakeholders” that benefit the school.

But he’s perhaps most jazzed about the potential for student engagement. Among the tools they’ve tapped into are Glogster, a social-media application that allows students to create multimedia posters, and Voicethread, where they take on multimedia audio-video-text presentations.

“We are using all these free tools to unleash the creativity in students,” Sheninger says. “Teachers are now using cell phones in class as a mobile learning tool. They’re doing these things outside of school, so why not use them in school?”

concerns abouT connecTiviTyNot everyone is so sure. On August 28, 2011, Missouri began enforcing what might be the most restrictive state law in the nation governing teacher-student communication in cyberspace. The law covers appropriate behavior for public school teachers when text messaging and using social media sites like Facebook, although it’s unclear whether the statute, the Amy Hestir Student Protection Act, also covers email or Twitter.11

Designed to prevent too-close relationships between teachers and students that can lead to sexual abuse — and named after a woman who said she was abused at age 12 — the law could also stop teachers from answering a student’s text message about a homework assignment or stop coaches from texting their teams to let them know about a change in practice time.12

The law prohibits teachers, as well as principals and administrators, from communicating with students using social media accounts or websites that are in any way private. A teacher that “friends” or is friended by a student must communicate completely in public with that student; even private communication about a homework assignment would be illegal.13

School districts have taken similar steps. The Barrington (Illinois) School District 220 board voted unanimously in November 2010 to bar teachers, coaches and other staff from e-mailing students or contacting them through social networking sites. They need parents’ permission to send text messages to students, and they may not communicate online about anything that’s not strictly school-related.14

The Stonington (Connecticut) Public Schools board in April 2011 considered a social media policy for school employees that would prohibit them from friending students on Facebook.15 But the district took a step back to consider a broader policy about student- teacher relationships rather than focusing specifically on cyberspace.

“ We are using all these free tools to unleash

the creativity in students.”

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The Ector County (Texas) School District in Odessa has declared that texting between students and teachers must be limited to school business, part of a series of changes recommended by the Texas Association of School Boards.16

The Weymouth (Massachusetts) School Committee voted to prohibit personal friendships between students and teachers on Facebook and similar sites. “It’s a whole sphere of our society that is difficult to manage and impossible to control,” said Glenn Koocher, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, in an article in The Enterprise newspaper.17

common sense choicesNot everyone agrees that districts or states imposing curtailment of teacher-student contact is the wisest way to handle the issue.

The National Education Association suggests administrators and school boards field opinions from teachers themselves. “The key is finding a way to take advantage of the learning opportunities social media

provides while striking the proper balance between protecting kids and preserving professional boundaries and First Amendment rights,” writes Cindy Long in NEA Today.18

Teachers can be counted on to make their own choices, the NEA says. William Jackson, a Jacksonville, Florida-based teacher and technology consultant, has put forth the common-sense view that one should only post something on Facebook if one would feel comfortable saying it to a student or parent in public.

Minneapolis educator Brock Dubbels deletes students’ friend requests, thanks them in person for the request but says “that is not appropriate for me to be a ‘friend’ when I am their teacher and advocate.” He adds, “When I have fun with friends and family, that’s a different me, and it’s important that I make that distinction.”19

Durham, N.C., educator Gina Moretto Frutig keeps a separate Facebook page for students and their parents, where she posts pictures of field trips and in-class activities. “Many parents have access to it on their phones, so it was a convenient way to update everyone,”

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she says. That approach makes sense to Burnsville, Minnesota, teacher Brian Rappe. “Teachers should have separate sites — one for work and one for personal use and the two should never cross paths.”20

Fairfax, Virginia-based teacher and school technology specialist Patrick Ledesma, a blogger for Education Week, says schools should embrace social media rather than run from it, creating Facebook Groups to share text, photos, videos, audio and links, collaborate on group documents, and poll their friends using the questions feature.

Ledesma suggests that Facebook itself create or expand features to enable teachers to track student comments, students to more explicitly control who views their documents, and both students and teachers to manage homework through the Events feature, which they could access from anywhere via mobile devices.21

Miller of Van Meter, Iowa, connects with students via a public library account on Facebook. “They’re not my

personal friends on Facebook,” she says. “I’ve never had any negative feedback on the library’s Facebook page. The kids don’t write on it.”

Randy Turner, Joplin (Missouri) East Middle School communication arts teacher, keeps all parts of his Facebook page open, accepts all students (and their parents) as friends but never asks them to “friend” him, and reads what his students post in news updates but does not frequent their personal “wall” pages. In all communication Turner maintains a “professional relationship” with students.22

Hegna has noted that the most popular social media sites were not designed for educational use and has suggested that teachers consider online communities like Classroom2.0 Ning or Google Apps for Education. Her district “strongly recommends” that teachers not accept students as friends or initiate friendship, remembering that friends have the ability to see and download personal information.23

educaTion-sPecific social neTworkingSome educators have turned to social networking sites set up specifically for the purpose of promoting positive interactions between students and teachers while ensuring that the downsides of social networking do not come to pass.

One such service, Yoursphere, was set up with the idea of mirroring real-world interactions between students and teachers, which are public and appropriate. “It only made sense to develop functionality that would embody that same philosophy,” writes Mary Kay, an Internet safety entrepreneur and mother of five.24

The School and Class Sphere Program provides educators and students online class groups in which they can interact in a publicly viewable space. Teachers can post homework assignments, announcements, class projects, and pictures; but teachers do not have profiles, cannot “friend” or otherwise visit personally with students, and cannot send private messages to them.

“Past cases have proven that [private messages are] one of the main conduits for inappropriate communication,” Kay writes. “While students have full-site privileges, the teachers’ role is specific to the posting of public content.”25

Paula Naugle, a fourth-grade math and social studies teacher in New Orleans, is using the Edmodo social learning platform for the third school year. Students join a members-only group that does not require an email address to sign up; they can communicate privately with their teacher but not one another.

“They love that they can access their assignments,” Naugle writes. “Some who have access will even extend the school day by working on assignments at home.” And they connect through Skype and another site called Glogster with students across the country.26

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Pushback on missouri Some believe the Missouri law restricting teacher-student contact sends the wrong signal and goes too far. One parent told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he understands the law’s intent but is afraid it will discourage the use of Facebook and other sites and won’t stop the types of abuse it’s intended to stop.

“Maybe we went a little too far? Yes,” said Mark Shevitz, who has two children in Ladue schools.27

Tech blogger Mel Gomez, founder of Tek Lado, suggests the state would have been better off enforcing existing laws about inappropriate contact between teachers and students, and he wonders how the new law will be enforced. “Is the state going to have access to Facebook accounts or ISPs?” he asks. “The bill certainly gives off the message that teachers can’t be trusted.”28

Turner expressed his concern that legislators did not thoroughly research how social media is being used by teachers to improve education. “When I first joined Facebook, mainly due to the opportunity

to reconnect with people from my school and journalism days, I gave considerable thought to whether I should be ‘friends’ with my students. Finally, I set my guidelines.”29

Sheninger points to the value of teaching “digital citizenship” — typically defined as encompassing

“norms of appropriate, responsible, ethical behavior with regards to technology use” — and worries that laws like Missouri’s will lead teachers to shy away entirely.30

“People are not posting inappropriate content on our Facebook page because we consistently model it as a professional hub of information,” he says. “The concerns come from a fear of students posting something derogatory, and also a sense that social media is a useless tool. The fears come from the law in Missouri. …Educators look at this and say, ‘Why would I even bother?’”

Social media has enjoyed a wide variety of uses in the educational setting, including handing out assignments, providing instantaneous homework support, reaching out to a student in need, making family connections, teaching students to deal with the world, and mobilizing them to action for a good cause.

Shy students in particular benefit from features like running feeds on Twitter that are broadcast on a front-of-the-room screen while a teacher walks through a lesson, and the use of social media in the classroom has proved less distracting than one might think, according to educators who have used it regularly.

But the state of Missouri and numerous districts across the country have taken steps to restrict teacher-student interaction over Facebook and other social media, out of fear such contact could lead to the appearance — or reality — of inappropriate and unprofessional exchanges.

One thing is for certain: the debate and discussion around the potential benefits and pitfalls of teacher-student contact over social media, whether inside or outside the classroom, is far from resolved — and it will continue to evolve as new and innovative applications continue to expand the social media universe.

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Citations

1. “Making the Case for Facebook in Education,” Jen Hegna, “Grin and Bear ‘I.T.’ ” Feb. 20, 2011,

http://jenhegna.edublogs.org/2011/02/20/making-the-case-for-facebook-in-education/.

2. “Social media find place in classroom,” Greg Toppo, USA Today, July 25, 2011.

3. “10 Ways Facebook Strengthens the Student-Teacher Connection,” Lisa Nielsen, The Innovative Educator blog, Feb. 3, 2011,

http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2011/02/10-ways-students-feel-facebook.html.

4. “Making the Case for Facebook in Education,” Jen Hegna, “Grin and Bear ‘I.T.’ ” Feb. 20, 2011,

http://jenhegna.edublogs.org/2011/02/20/making-the-case-for-facebook-in-education/.

5. “Twitter finds a place in the classroom,” Dan Simon, CNN.com, June 9, 2011, http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.media/06/08/twitter.school/.

6. “Speaking Up in Class, Silently, Using Social Media,” Trip Gabriel, The New York Times, May 12, 2011.

7. “Speaking Up in Class, Silently, Using Social Media,” Trip Gabriel, The New York Times, May 12, 2011.

8. “Students cast wide net for mentoring with PLNs,” Greg Toppo, USA Today, Aug. 15, 2011.

9. “Social media find place in classroom,” Greg Toppo, USA Today, July 25, 2011.

10. “4 Tips for Integrating Social Media Into the Classroom,” Tanveer Ali, Mashable.com, May 11, 2010, http://mashable.com/2010/05/11/social-media-school/.

11. “New Missouri law limits electronic contact between teachers, students,” Tim Barker, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Aug. 4, 2011.

12. “New Missouri law limits electronic contact between teachers, students,” Tim Barker, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Aug. 4, 2011.

13. “Social Media Between Students and Teachers Restricted in Missouri,” Brian Heaton, Government Technology, Aug. 3, 2011.

14. “Dist. 220 bans social media contact between teachers, students,” Carolyn Rusin, TribLocal, Chicago Tribune, Nov. 23, 2010.

15. “Stonington considers social media policy,” Joe Wotjas, The Day, April 6, 2011.

16. “ECISD making changes to social media policy for teachers,” NewsWest9, www.newswest9.com.

17. “School officials struggle with using Facebook, social networking sites,” Matt Stout, The Enterprise, June 12, 2011.

18. “Why Can’t We Be Friends? Social Media Boundaries Between Teachers and Students,” Cindy Long, NEA Today, April 28, 2011.

19. “Why Can’t We Be Friends? Social Media Boundaries Between Teachers and Students,” Cindy Long, NEA Today, April 28, 2011.

20. “Why Can’t We Be Friends? Social Media Boundaries Between Teachers and Students,” Cindy Long, NEA Today, April 28, 2011.

21. “Should Schools Use Social Networks for Instruction?”, Patrick Ledesma, “Leading from the Classroom” blog, Education Week, July 24, 2011.

22. “Facebook-ing between teachers and students has benefits,” Randy Turner, The Turner Report blog, http://rturner229.blogspot.com/.

23. “Guidelines for Educators Using Social Networking Sites,” The Blue Skunk Blog, Aug. 7, 2009.

24. “Social Networking and Internet Safety Information for Parents,” Mary Kay, Yoursphere, Jan. 19, 2011.

25. “Social Networking and Internet Safety Information for Parents,” Mary Kay, Yoursphere, Jan. 19, 2011.

26. “Edmodo — Our Social Learning Platform,” Paula Naugle, July 21, 2011, Edutopia.org, http://www.edutopia.org/groups/technology-integration-k-5/63829.

27. “New Missouri law limits electronic contact between teachers, students,” Tim Barker, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Aug. 4, 2011.

28. “Senate Bill Forbids Teachers-Student Facebook Relationship,” Mel Gomez, Tek Lado blog,

http://www.tek-lado.com/2011/07/31/senate-bill-forbids-teachers-student-facebook-relationship/.

29. “Facebook-ing between teachers and students has benefits,” Randy Turner, The Turner Report blog, http://rturner229.blogspot.com/.

30. Wikispaces, http://ictpd-digital-citizenship-and-copyright.wikispaces.com/Digital+Citizenship+definition

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