Teachers use facebook at their own peril. If you use facebook in a non-professional manner, just be prepared to be fired for it. Students, parents and administrators absolutely will check your page and that information absolutely will be used in employment actions against you. I hate discouraging technology usage, but it is clear that this is one particular technology that many teachers simply have not figured out how to use responsibly.
Source: The Edjurist

While I agree wholeheartedly with bold section above, I have some concern about the italicized parts. And the part in green? What’s wrong with that? Thank goodness people are online looking.

Avoid use of social networking sites, specifically Facebook?!

Again and again, we see a message, perhaps unintentional–“Hide who you are as a person, don’t share it on the web because it will be used against you.” Yet, the question I have to ask is, “Should we be encouraging people who act inappropriately to take their inappropriateness off-line so that we never know what is happening?” Isn’t it better to know what’s going on, to encourage transparency of foolish actions rather than to hide it?

Each time the lesson is the same one: that professionals should attend to their professionalism, or else the citizens and consumers who pay their wages will find out and — eventually — hold them accountable.
Source: David Brin, as quoted at Future Salon

The advice we should be giving educators is, be the kind of person that enables you to be transparent and share who you are because, you know what folks? It’s going to happen anyways! There’s just too much technology capturing who we are moment by moment.

“I leave you alone, you leave me alone.” The proliferation of communication technologies, though, makes such an unspoken agreement untenable. If teachers get fired for indiscretions online, inappropriate images of themselves being racist, shouldn’t they be terminated? And, who decides what constitutes indiscretion? Do we want that debate to occur behind closed doors or in the open?

Technology has enabled us to manifest our transparency…is this transparency for the good or the bad? I encourage all teachers who want to make racist remarks to video it and post it on Facebook, to post inappropriate images of themselves…as a community member, I want to know and its my job, your job, all of our jobs to be the kind of people we want to have around our children, not just cover up the privacy, the secret poor behavior with a facade of appropriateness.

Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.
–Justice Louis Brandeis

Think of the blogosphere as millions of intelligent agents, all of whom are busy redirecting sunshine to where its needed most. (Source: Bubble Meter)

Just as our political leaders face increased scrutiny, so should our teachers, and education system, who deal with our most precious resource–our children. And, so, I encourage every educator to get a Facebook account, to live a life worthy of being shared with others, and that when your students look, they will see exactly what manner of person you are.

I also encourage school districts to be more open about what they are doing, to share their thinking about WHY their schools work the way they do.

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