Okay, I know, that’s a rhetorical question; it died along with personal responsibility, RIP. Now we have a teaching union insisting that teachers need rules on how to use Facebook.
Every school in the UK should have rules about how teachers use Facebook, a teaching union has said.
The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) said new teachers are having problems because of using social networking sites.
The issues include staff being told off for what they have put online or being embarrassed by pupils who discover too much about their private life.
The NAHT wants every school to set out exactly what is and isn’t allowed.
“Schools need to get up there and state things clearly,” said Russell Hobby of the NAHT.
Because, like, yeah, they is too stupid to work it out for themselves. All joshing aside, it seems that some of them are too stupid to work it out for themselves, which bodes well for the state of our education, does it not?
Look, it is really, really simple. Use the privacy settings to lock out people that you don’t want to see private images and comments. If you must put them out there on the web and they are likely to get you into trouble at work – whatever your work – set the privacy accordingly. Only allow carefully invited people to have access and don’t accept pupils as friends.
A pupil tells us why – as if we needed telling:
“I do look up my teachers,” 17-year-old Ellie Steel told Newsbeat. “I like to check out what they are getting up to at the weekend to get some gossip for when I get back to school.”
Of course she does, which is why her teachers need to make sure that she can’t. It isn’t difficult. Not having a Facebook account in the first place is a big help…
Getting rid of a Facebook account is more difficult than it should be. My supposedly ‘deleted’ account has come back at me more times than a bad curry.
I’ve never been tempted by the Facebook thing. A lot of people are still inexplicably naive about it. They don’t realise that it’s the first thing that gets looked at when they’re applying for a job in a lot of places. At my last place there was one youngster phoning in sick, and updating her Facebook saying how wasted she was. She didn’t last long.
I’ve never been tempted. Okay, this place might show up, but people will need to make a bit of an effort.
I’m on Facebook, and use privacy settings to keep the information on there (which is generally rather tedious anyway) restricted to the people I want to see it. And just to make extra sure, I’m not friends with anyone I manage.
It really, really isn’t difficult.
Of course not having a Facebook account is the sensible solution to all of this.
The problem with that is that it seems to me that the majority of our current university generation seem utterly unable to exist without an iPhone and a FB account.
Some of us old’uns may well argue they are socially retarded (and of course we’d be right) but this addiction to pointless social networking and twatter is going to become a major issue for society in the years to come. For most of these kids it will be impossible to hide your life history or clear the slate on the internet, not only from 14 year old pupils, but the media and state too.
I’m guessing that most of these Teachers who’ve got embarrassed are at the younger end of the profession and still a bit wet behind the ears.
Sometimes we make mistakes, sometimes we are bright/lucky enough to learn from others. Facefing is quite new and many are just discovering the things that can go wrong by using it in an unwise manner.
These young Teachers will learn thier own lessons and pass them down to those who enter the profession in the future and we won’t hear so much of this sort of thing in years to come.
I really don’t see the point in Unions (or anyone else) insisting on rules. Far more effective to simply make their members aware of the possible pitfalls and implications of facebookery.
I thought unions set standards for their members? shouldn’t the unions be deciding what teachers should avoid on their Facebook accounts so as not to show the union in a poor light?
You mean people put their REAL names/information on Facefuck?
Excuse me, I need to go off and have an hysterical laugh.
There is a problem with not using it, and it is a similar problem to the days before I got internet. Many of the groups I need to keep contact with, do not use anything else to communicate. Even some work related stuff!
What used to be run, or communicated, over individual group web sites, is now all using FB.