Source: http://www.pamelynferdin.com/essays/circus/circus_elephant_pulling.jpg

I’ve always liked the word “Divest.” It implies shedding, letting go of the millstone around your neck, cutting loose the albatross. What if divesting yourself of fear meant shutting down your Web 2.0 and social networking web sites?

What if embracing job security meant divesting yourself of your Twitter, your Facebook, your blog account? What would be your choice?

Langwitches makes some points and indicates others who’ve written about this issue. My favorite:

Megan Golding wrote a post Facebook Privacy for Teachers, where she explains step by step how to set up your privacy settings, so students to not get her status updates about what she is doing on the weekend, but she also cautions:

Teachers should be incredibly wary about having profiles on social networking sites. And even more wary about befriending students. That’s potentially a glimpse into your personal life you don’t need to share. At best sharing the wrong info is unprofessional.

Silvia (Langwitches) asks a few questions:

• What do you consider being a professional in an online space?
• How comfortable are you with the blur between your private and professional lives?
• Can you “defend” any online interaction with students and back it up with educational value?

In response to the first question, I consider that as an educator, being professional IS about being as transparent and open as possible about my success, failure, attempts at learning and sharing ideas with others. It’s difficult to slip into the habit of silence, a cowl of cowardice, and maintain the austere chastity of “safe learning” approved by the paranoid majority (sorry, couldn’t resist playing with the words…it is my blogground).

Professional means knowing when to speak, and when to remain silent. That tenet of professionalism is challenged in a time of openness and transparency, and more than challenged, slain dead. It is foolish to remain silent to protect the vanity of leader’s self-perception as the authority. Our commitment must be to the betternment of those we serve, the children who toil in our Middle Age dungeons we call classrooms, bereft of modern technologies that unite and liberate…but isn’t that the point of dungeons? Constriction rather than liberation?

Like the baby elephant who learns restraint by being chained with a gigantic change, who fails to realize his dream of freedom, even when his only tether is a cord that recalls of an oppressive past, are people who happen to be teachers failing to seize new technologies? Failing to seize them for use in learning environments, for engaging conversations?

Being professional means divesting yourself of fear, investing yourself in work that transforms you, emboldens others, and, just maybe, reminds the world why the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

Who is the inadequate tether for–the elephant or the fearful watchers who pay to see it perform?
How comfortable are you with the blur between your private and professional lives?
There is no blur. I am who I am. I like my quiet afternoons, I respect solitude, and admit the need to embrace change with no apology, even when it is personally inconvenient. My struggle is to understand how to be a better person who shares what he is learning and also happens to be an educator.

Can you “defend” any online interaction with students and back it up with educational value?
A better question for educators today might be, Can we defend a lack of online interaction with students and defend it?

Be the change you want to see in the world…that advice makes me wonder if we want our children to NOT engage with others online, to NOT collaborate in responsible ways, to fail to learn when learning is available to us. The answer is, we don’t want to do it, but we want our children to.

Is Two-Face an apt analogy for those of us who begin the walk but then hover, indecisive?

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Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure