Dive Brief:
- Because students look up to educators as role models, it's important to provide teachers with a set of standards to guide how they use social media channels.
- Even when privacy settings are ratcheted up on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, anything posted online or in email runs the risk of eventually being made public.
- Though common sense should drive approaches to social media for educators, districts can and should specifically articulate expectations by having a formal policy or guide.
Dive Insight:
Coming up with social media policies for employees is a challenge across a number of industries, but in education, it has an even greater importance. Since students are increasingly online around the clock thanks to the advent of smartphones, it's likely that many are able to search for and locate teachers and school officials in varying capacities online.
Patrick Larkin, assistant superintendent for Burlington Public Schools in Massachusetts, gave eSchoolNews the following advice: "Just pretend you’re talking in front of a football stadium’s worth of people."
Still, social media can be a powerful learning and outreach tool for schools and districts, so ignoring it outright also isn't an option.