Why Have A Social Media Policy Anyway?

I have spent a lot of time lately blogging about Social Media. Whether it was trying to provide resources for getting the school year started off right with Social Media or providing you with tips for Social Media Leadership in schools. I really do believe that we are seeing (and some of us a part of) a revolution in education. For too long we have been teaching 21st Century Students with 19th Century methods.

All of this talk about using blogs, wikis, Twitter, Facebook, Nings, and others in the classroom always leads to a discussion on policy. People ask me about examples of good Social Media Policies. What they don't like to hear is that I don't have one. Ok, well, that is not entirely true. I do have examples of school policies that mention Social Media and Social Networking. Here are a few examples:

East Lothian Council Self-publishing and Social Media Guidelines: Pupils
Arapahoe High School Blogging Policy
Laramie County School District 2 - Safe Blogging Policy

Those are some well-crafted policies as it pertains to blogging and Social Media in general. But, when someone asks me about my best example of a Social Media Policy I have to say that, I believe the best policy is probably one you already have in place.

Why is there such a push by school districts to rush and have a policy in place for teachers and students? Look at what the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) did. Over the summer they redrafted their email policy which said, in a nutshell, that all communications with students had to be done through official CPS email accounts. Basically, the policy outlawed blogs, wikis, Twitter, etc, which was odd because a week earlier CPS was all over the media explaining how they were going to leverage the power of Twitter to keep the community updated. They have retracted a bit and are going to examine the policy to make more Social Media sited available.

My point here is that CPS and other districts around the country are knee-jerking and realizing they don't have a blogging policy, or a Twitter policy, so they create the blanket policies that, while hoping to give the appearance of openness in education and progressiveness, actually limit a teachers ability to use New Media in their classroom.

Most schools (because they have to) have an Acceptable Use Policy that covers general computer and Internet use. If schools and teachers are are doing a good job of teaching their students about responsible Internet use why create a whole new policy that just prevents progress?

How do you teach kids responsible Internet use? There are several free curricula available. Here are a few examples:

Digital Citizenship Curriculum
Digital Literacy
A Digital Literacy Curriculum from Microsoft
Technology Literacy Curriculum

I get asked all the time about my districts' Social Media Policy. You will be disappointed to know that we don't have one. Not because we haven't thought about it. We have spent a lot of time discussing what would work best for our kids and our teachers. We decided that what we have in place works. But it works because we spend a lot of time talking about responsible Internet usage.In my mind why limit a teacher use of Social Media or punish a student for an inappropriate comment on a blog (which should be moderated by a teachers anyway). Take the time to educate!

If you are a school leader, principal or administrator in district that is considering a Social Media policy, I encourage you to look at the computer usage policies you have in place and examine how you are teaching your students Digital Responsibility.

What do you think? Does your school or district have a Social Media Policy? Does it limit what you can do? Is your school or district considering a Social Media Policy? I look forward to the discussion!

Image Courtesy Flickr Creative Commons-View The Original Here

Summer Series-Desgined To Forget

In the current issue of Wired Magazine (Aug. 2009) there is an interesting commentary on Forgetting. The author, Clive Thompson, argues that we have forgotten to forget. He says:

"For most of human history, almost everything people did was forgotten, simply because it was so hard to record and retrieve things. But there was a benefit: "Social Forgetting" allowed everyone to move on from embarrassing or ill-conceived moments in their lives. Digital tools have eliminated that amnesty. Google caches copies of our blog postings; social networking sites thrive by archiving our daily dish."

Clive goes on to talk about how services like Drop.io and Flickr allow users to set expiration dates on the data they upload to those sites. He argues that any site, especially social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace need to at least give users the option to set an expiration date for postings.

Then I got to thinking about the kids we teach and work with everyday. Most of the time they have good judgment and are careful about what information they put online. (Or at least we hope so...) But there are those situations that arise where their judgment lapses and they post something they may regret later.

Do we need to be teaching kids and students social networking responsibility? Heck Yeah! But should social networks, photo sharing sites and file sharing sites share some of the burden as well? Should sites like these, by default, have data that expires after a certain period of time. (If you wanted it to stay longer you could change the period.) Or should there just be the option? What do you think?