Is Education Starting to "get" Myspace and Facebook

Can this be? Are educators starting to understand social networking a little?

In today's Saint Louis Post-Dispatch they report on a fairly standard summer professional development meeting conducted by the teacher's union in Missouri. But, here is what is different:

Shipma [director of legal services for the Missouri NEA] does not think a ban on teachers using such sites is the answer.

"Especially the younger people coming up, that's how they are used to
communicating," she said. "It's like with everything, you just have to
have common sense."

But the line of appropriateness can get blurry. What if a teacher posts
a picture of himself or herself holding a beer? He or she probably is
of legal age to drink, said Kelli Hopkins, policy director for the
Missouri School Boards' Association, but is that a picture the teacher
really wants to broadcast to students and parents?

In the end, though, it really comes down to whether the questionable
content is tied to the ability of a teacher to perform the job, Hopkins
said. Her organization is still researching the issues of teachers and
Facebook or MySpace profiles, and hopes to craft some guidance to
administrators sometime this fall. The group has received about a dozen
calls from administrators within the past few months, and it's been a
frequent discussion topic of some listservs. There are all kinds of
issues, including First Amendment rights, she said.

Trey Griggs, another Wentzville teacher with a public Facebook profile,
thinks it would be a mistake for educators to be banned from something
that is such a big part of their students' lives.

"That's where students live these days, and the last thing we want to
do is remove ourselves," Griggs said. "I don't worry about my page,
because they wouldn't see anything on there that they wouldn't hear
about from me in class."

So, instead of just a total ban on Myspace and Facebook pages for teachers which has been the standard position for years, the position may be shifting toward helping teachers responsibly use Myspace and Facebook instead. I think that is a healthy development.