Module 4: Online Professionalism

NOTE: I've changed the deadline for this module to be Sept 29. There is more information in the course announcement in Blackboard. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Learning Target

Create a useful guide that provides smart, safe and practical guidelines for maintaining online professionalism when communicating online.

Introduction

While we are living our personal lives, we commonly run unto students and parents. It can be fun to see students and parents outside of school but it can also be jarring. Students can appear shocked to learn that their teacher doesn't live at their school 24/7 and in fact have a personal life. These impromptu meetings/sightings can be a great way to humanize the teacher and help to form stronger connections with students and parents. However, they can also be harmful if the student or parent catches the teacher acting unprofessionally. As a result, when in public settings teachers are expected to live by a higher ethical and moral standard than many other types of professionals that don't work with children. In fact, teachers can be fired for engaging in legal activities when those activities are determined to be unethical.

The internet and social media has provided seemingly unlimited opportunities for teachers' paths to cross with students and parents. While teachers still have privacy, their private worlds appear to be shrinking. Take Dr. Borup's Facebook chat to the right with a previous coworker who was fired in part for his activities on Facebook and Twitter. He was clearly surprised by the firing because he didn't do anything illegal such as "hit[ting] a kid or start[ing] a relationship with a kid." What he failed to understand was that teachers are held to a higher standard--both in-person and online. After his firing he concluded, "No social media if I am a teacher." However, banning social media use is shortsighted and teachers and students need to be taught how to use social media and other forms of online communication professionally. One concern about my Facebook chat to the right is that he stated that the school district did not have a social media policy. Too frequently teachers are told to use common sense when communicating with students but not given specific guidelines.

The purpose of this project will be to create useful resources that provide smart, safe and practical guidelines for teachers regarding their online professionalism.

Explore, Read, and Watch

To start, please read the chapter "Online Professionalism" in The K-12 Educational Technology Handbook. This will be the primary text for the unit so read it carefully. Once you are finished, please read and watch the material in the following subsections regarding social media and netiquette.

In addition to what is the book chapter, I've curated additional materials below on social media, netiquette, and digital citizenship.

Netiquette

Did you know that George Washington -- yes, that George Washington -- wrote a book? If this is the first you are hearing about this, you may be thinking that it was a book on war, or an autobiography, or maybe a something on farming. Actually it was on etiquette. Specifically, the book contains 110 rules that you should follow when in the company of others or when engaged in communication. The book actually originated as a school assignment around 1744 when Washington was about 12 years old.

Needless to say, etiquette has changed. This is especially true when communicating online. However, these rules or guidelines are too frequently implicit, and not plainly expressed to teachers and students. As a result, too often they go unnoticed. While you don't need to list 110 netiquette rules, in this section you will be exploring some resources to identify several practical netiquette guidelines.

Book cover created by Tony Darnell.

Please watch the video to the right to learn about netiquette in regards to discussion boards. While the video focuses on discussion boards the same guidelines can be applied to other types of communication such as email.

It's also important to know that when you post information online or send emails you are not "talking to the computer." Real people will read your comments, and these comments can uplift or teardown. If you wouldn't say it face-to-face, don't say it online. Although not specifically about online classes, the following video does a good job driving this point home.

While it's fine to critique ideas (and oftentimes necessary/required) you should not criticize the person who shared the idea. Personal attacks have no place in online courses. It is also not helpful to only provide criticism. Rather, critiques should be accompanied with suggestions to improve.

Social Media

Social media is defined as "forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos)." That may be a more inclusive definition than what you would typically use. Essentially you are using social media in the classroom any time that you or your students are posting material or comments online for others to see, like, or comment on. Typically social media also has the ability to extend beyond the classroom even though some groups on social media can be closed to those outside of the class. Social media also implies some degree of control and ownership by the user. In other words students create their own account that they can use well beyond the length and boundaries of the course.

"Smartphone" by TeroVesalainen, Pixabay License.

Social Media Uses

Let's start our conversation around social media with the positives. The following are just a few

1. Forming connections. Watch the video to the right to learn how one school district worked to make connections using Twitter. Most of the video focuses on teachers forming connections with other teachers. However, it does mention how social media helped students to make connections with students at other schools. I've also researched a cyber charter school who used Twitter extensively to help students form a sense of closeness with other students.

2. Publishing to authentic audiences. Social media allows students to publish their work in authentic ways. For instance, we can all view and enjoy the "All About Polar Bears" VoiceThread on the right even through we can't post comments. VoiceThread, like many social media websites, allows creators to set three different levels of commenting permissions: (1) no commenting allowed, (2) allows the creator to review/approve comments before they are posted, or (3) anyone with an account can comment. I just posted a comment on one of my favorite K-12 VoiceThreads. However, you can't see it at the time I'm writing this because the creator still needs to review and approve the comment.

3. Collecting data and opinions. I'm Facebook and Twitter friends with a lot of K-12 teachers and it's not uncommon for me to see them post surveys that they or their students have created. A while back a survey went viral that was created by Kara Porter's second-grade students from North Vermillion Elementary School (see the questions to the right). According to a Buzzfeed News article, it had 230,000 responses in a day.

Social Media Dangers

Because social media can provide students with some control over their activity and access to the "real world," there are inherent dangers for both teachers and students. Students and teachers can overshare inappropriate or embarrassing information. Teachers and students can engage in interactions or relationships that are too casual, or worse inappropriate. Student information or data can also be inadvertently shared. Social media also provides opportunities for cyberbullying. Lastly, social media can prove highly distracting.

Friends on phones by Natureaddict, Pixabay License.

There are fewer resources highlighting social media dangers for teachers than there are for students. Common Sense has created a series of videos for students based on their grade level. While the videos focus on the broader topic of digital citizenship, most of the videos are related to social media use. The following are links to their YouTube playlists for:

I found all of the videos insightful. However, the videos for Grades 6-8 were especially helpful and I would use them with a broader range of students. As a result I recommend reviewing them even if you don't teach those grades.

Common Sense Media Logo in the public domain.

Students aren't the only ones who behave poorly on social media. A faculty member said to me, "For some reason, people forget to bring their social skills when they go online." Please listen to this NPR story that asked, "In An Increasingly Polarized America, Is It Possible To Be Civil On Social Media?"

FERPA

Teachers commonly hear the acronym FERPA but may not know exactly what it stands for or means. It stands for Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. It can also be somewhat confusing to know if you are following FERPA as a teacher. Here's a short video

It's important that teachers only use apps or tools that comply with FERPA. The only way to know is to read the terms and services. Unfortunately, the terms of service are so complicated they hardly get read. Thankfully school districts commonly compile a list of approved technologies. Please check with your district or school to see if there is a list of approved technologies that you should be following.

Exploring and Creating Guidelines

Step 1: Identify and explore existing guidelines at your school district.

In addition to the material on this website, it's especially important that you learn the guidelines/recommendations at your school and district. If you are not currently in a teaching position, research the social media guidelines for the school district where you currently live.

You should be looking for any guides related to online professionalism. Search for any guides related to the topics of social media use, netiquette, digital citizenship, and acceptable use policies. Remember to find policies and guidelines for teachers and students. The policies are likely located in more than one spot and it may take some digging to find them. In fact, I recommend asking a technology specialist at your school for guidance. If official guidelines at your school district are limited you should ask teachers, administrators, and counselors, for recommendations.

I did a quick search for some FCPS resources and found them insightful. Please read them even if you don't teach for FCPS.

Step 2: Understanding larger trends.

The guide you create will not be specifically targeted to teachers at your school district. As a result you should look beyond the guides at your school district. A quick Google Search will identify countless of guidelines and recommendations. I recommend reviewing them until they feel repetitive.

Step 3: Outline Infographic Guides For Teachers or Students.

Using the material on this website as well as the material that you identified, your goal is to great an engaging guide that students or teachers will not only want to read but one that they can quickly refer back to as needed.

Before you create your infographic you will need to consider who your audience will be. Your options are:

teachers only
students only
teachers and students

You will be creating an infographic that demonstrates the following 8 criteria that I will use when assessing your infographics:

Clearly created for the intended audience.
Has a clear and engaging title (avoid boring titles such as Online Professionalism for Teachers).
Highlights both the educational and social benefits and drawbacks of communicating online--including but not exclusively on social media.
Provides specific examples of both beneficial and harmful communications.
Contains specific, clear guidelines and recommendations for benefiting educationally and socially from online communications. This should include recommendations specific to netiquette and social media use.
Includes images and graphics that reinforce the concepts and make the infographic engaging. If the images are not native to the tool you are using, be sure that you cite them correctly and are following copyright and fair use guidelines.
Include a section with at least three additional resources that you found on your own (not included on this module page) for the user to explore if interested.
Makes specific citations to the resources that you are basing your claims on, similar to what you would see in a research paper. You should also include a reference list or works cited section at the end of your infographics OR if your infographic allows for hyperlinks, you can simply link to the resource in the text and no reference list is required.

4. Create the infographic

There are lots of free tools that you can use to create your infographics. You are free to use any infographic that you like but I recommend using one of the following:

Canva, Venngage, and Piktochart are all excellent tools for creating infographics. Canva has become wildly popular and if you are familiar with any of them it would likely be Canva and even if you haven't used it, you've probably heard/seen their advertising. I'm guessing that most of you will use Canva--I would. That said, Venngage is a great tool. One thing I like about Venngage is that you can actually embed YouTube videos and polls. If you use Venngage you may find that you need to create multiple "pages"--that's totally fine.

Submitting

Once you are finished with your infographic you will need to add your infographic URLs to a copy of this Google Document and answer the reflection questions at the bottom of the document. Be sure to also share the document with jeredborup@gmail.com before you submit the document using the following Google Form.

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