When to ban a good thing before it becomes a problem?

By Andrea Berry, September 3, 2010

 I know someone who works at a preschool for children with autism spectrum disorders.  The school is known for having cutting edge techniques based on research and current theory and is one of the most well respected in the state.  After much discussion, school leadership made a conscious choice to not have a school Facebook page due to privacy concerns.  

As there is no formal way for families and staff to socially interact online, the lines between personal Facebook use and professional parent involvement have become blurred.  Staff throughout the school use their personal Facebook pages to keep up with families of current students and alumni on a social basis.  

This interaction has become the subject of a complicated policy question: things are going well now with the interactions of staff and families via personal Facebook pages, but teachers all across the country are getting in trouble for just this type of interaction.  Should the school avert a potential problem by banning these interactions?  Does the school have the jurisdiction to do that?  Will a ban create more problem than it is preventing?  

When is it appropriate for an organization to regulate the personal interactions of staff and clients?  Is it helpful to implement a social media policy against a process that is working (or even improving relations) at the moment in the hopes of avoiding a conflict later down the road?

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Comments

School Should Set up its own discussion area on its website

by Geek (not verified) - 2010-09-04 08:06

I can see the potential privacy problems you allude to in this post.  The real answer is less about banning facebook via personal connections and more about providing an appropriate, private space for teacher/parent engagement.

Web 2.0 tools make it failry easy for the school to set up a subdomain and create a private (password controlled) space for teachers and parents to connect with each other.  They could have their own discussion area with threaded discussions that would actually be more functional than Facebook and prove more useful in the long run. 

If this school is known for its use of cutting edge techniques, then this should be seen as another technique; one they provide to help parents and teachers engage engage while the school has greater control over access and can protect privacy. 

I completely agree

by Andrea Berry - 2010-09-08 15:27

 I completely agree that setting up a discussion area on their website would be an ideal way for staff and families to engage and would remove the Facebook issue.  The challenge that arises is time.  Staff are interacting with families on Facebook so frequently because they are already there interacting with other friends and family socially.  As in many schools, the staff are so strapped for time that adding another thing to log into is likely to get substantial push back and likely a lack of participation.    

Any experience with setting up something like this that would exist within Facebook?  It would have to be something that shows up in the normal wall feed and not just a group page so it would not be an "extra place to go".

 

A different perspective:

by Jim Ahearne (not verified) - 2010-10-07 13:03

A different perspective:  Facebook is an "extra place to go." I have a facebook page for personal connections, and a work page for work. But when it comes to my kids and their education, there is no more appropriate place to have conversations and discussions than in person. My kids' school has a fb page for promoting events, a website and weekly email newsletter for conveying news and information to parents, and email is used frequently by some teachers to communicate class plans and by class parents to organize events and distribute related information and updates. But all substantive conversations, as a rule, do not happen online or in email. These conversations, interactions and connections happen face to face with teachers, parents and administrators. 

These clear lines enable our school community to utilize various technology platforms as tools that suit the school community's intentions.

Privacy concerns were noted in the original post as a cause for not having a fb page. There are other valid reasons to give any school pause for using fb or discussion boards as a medium for conversation with families. Top in this list may be access. Not all families have access to computers or a high speed internet connection. Or even if they do, they may not be users of facebook. Any effort to develop an online conversation in these contexts will be incomplete.