News Organizations are Searching Facebook for Teachers

Charlotte is apparently going to be the leading district in the issue of teacher facebook postings and subsequent discipline. Now, in addition to the district search facebook pages of potential and current teachers, the local news entity, WCNC and the Charlotte Observer, are actively searching local teacher facebook pages and reporting their findings in the newspaper - which is leading to teachers being fired.

Rest assured, since the Charlotte Observer managed to generate news with this and get a fair amount of attention, local newspapers and TV affiliates across the country are already scanning through local teacher Facebook pages. Get ready for a lot more of these stories nationally.

Comments

[Kenneth Baren]

Seeing as how both Myspace and Facebook are publicly available, it would only make sense that students, parents, and the press would want to research these sites to determine what sort of teacher is teaching at our schools.

However, there is another side to it. The main purpose, I think of both these networking sites is to allow people to keep in contact with distant friends and family that you may not be able to see or communicate with on a regular basis. I agree that teahers and other professionals like attorneys, doctors, and public officials must regulate the content that is posted on their sites so as to not jeopardize their responsibiltiies in this society.

At the same time though, I believe you are wrong to tell teachers not to maintain a profile on these sites. That is like telling someone that you cannot keep in contact with friends far away or that you cannot maintain contact with family members half way around the world. for some educators, Facebook or Myspace is the only and best way to communicate with everyone you know.

What's to stop these same teachers from sending inappropriate emails to friends and family. It seems to me that if teachers decide not use either of these networking tools, they could just as easily and without detection by the snooping media send inappropriate emails that would cause uproar in the education community.

I think a potential solution to this problem would be to have all teachers (and other professionals) keep their profiles provate allowing only those who are friends to have access to them. That might eliminate some of the problems raised by your postings as well as some of the concerns expressed by both the school district and the community.