Last night I participated in an #edchat on teacher/parent communication practices and I found the topic so interesting I’d like to see if we can keep the discussion going here on ISTE Connects. Click here for a full transcript of the discussion.

One of the most active threads permeating the conversation related to the mediums used to communicate with parents. While the general consensus was that educators need to reach out to parents with a variety of mediums and should cater to parents’ preferences. However, the implementation of this strategy was the subject of much debate.

Cell Phones

While the immediacy and personal nature of phone communication makes it a favorite among educators, the potential for abuse and loss of privacy means that many teachers are unwilling to hand their cell numbers out to parents. Several posters recommended using Google Voice to create a ghost number that would route calls to a private phone. However, this plan doesn’t account for the occasional parent who has little respect for a teacher’s private time.

Facebook and Other Social Networking Sites

Many school districts have jumped on the social networking bandwagon and are using sites like Facebook to communicate with families and community members. It was strongly recommended that teachers who create Facebook  pages maintain a separate personal Facebook presence that is entirely private. Facebook fan pages are a great way to use the site to create a space for collaboration without compromising privacy.

Ning sites are also a convenient way to build a private social network available only to invited participants. However, the downside of creating a private Ning site is that there is no guarantee that parents will login and check out new content. By using Facebook teachers can reach out to parents through a site that many people are already frequenting.

Open-Source Tools for Learning

Although only a fraction of the conversation related to some of the popular open-source tools, a few participants recommended Moodle and Parentella as great (free) ways to communicate with families. Both programs focus on building two-way communication channels. While static Web pages and teacher and classroom blogs are an effective way to provide information to parents, without a function to facilitate communication from parents to teachers it is unlikely that parents will feel a part of the classroom experience.

Opening a Computer Window into the Classroom

Several #edchat Tweeters recommended using video, Skype, and live streaming to virtually expand and open their classroom to interested parents. While privacy issues are certainly a valid concern even with password protected sites, imagine the potential of virtual parent-teacher conferences or live streaming of class projects for parents traveling for work or military families stationed overseas.

Conquering the Digital Divide

One stream of conversation that permeated the entire hour of #edchat related to the challenges of communicating with parents in areas where many parents don’t have access to high-speed Internet or the expertise to easily use Web-based programs. Also, many teachers expressed concern over the possibility that parents could already feel intimidated by teachers and school officials. In these cased, moving toward a tech-heavy method of communication could easily exasperate the parent/teacher divide.

What challenges do you face when communicating with parents and family? Do you use Web-based systems or other communication technology tools to help facilitate parent interactions? What role do students play in the process of building a strong parent/teacher relationship?

I scrapped the lecture idea and instead spent the next five hours developing Twepardy – a Jeopardy-like activity that forced my students to sort through the reams of data populating the Web to find information on microblogging.

Lest my work go to waste, I uploaded Twepardy on to my favorite presentation sharing Web site, SlideShare. Please feel free to download to use and revise for whatever means fit your needs.

I had my students create Twitter accounts as homework, then at the start of class they signed in to a private chat group I created on TweetWorks. The students could then Tweet the answers to Twepardy questions without spamming their followers. One bag of mini-Snickers to pass out for correct answers, plus a ceramic, duck-shaped piggybank for the big winner, and we were off.

While using Jeopardy style games in education is certainly nothing new, I found the format extremely conducive to teaching the ins and outs of new technologies. It’s always difficult to teach new programs. My students have differing skill levels and preexisting knowledge of applications and I spend more time trouble-shooting than I do educating. Using techniques like online scavenger hunts, trivia contests, and research races makes the process of puzzling through new technologies much more enjoyable.

As you can see from the student Tweets below, Twepardy is sure to be the next big thing in EdTech.

I have only 17 students in my class, so the weekend before the first day of class I took a few hours and did a little online research. I spent about 10 minutes per student, digging through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other Web resources to find out what I could about their online identities. I took that information and put together a presentation introducing the class to their fellow students based solely on the facts that I could find online.

When I announced that instead of a typical get-to-know-you activity, I was going to show them what a future employer might find if they were checking them out as part of a hiring decision there were some nervous murmurs. However, as we went through the slides and discussed each student’s personal brand there were lots of good-natured laughs and some rueful grins. Several students learned that photos and comments they had thought were private were actually accessible to the public.

At the close of the exercise I invited the students to take 10 minutes to find out everything they could about me by surfing the Web. To my surprise, several students dug up an old Friendster profile that I had assumed was wiped out. My brilliant lesson turned out to be a true teaching moment. As someone who specializes in social media and reputation management I thought I had a pretty secure handle on my online brand. But even I need to stay on top of my social media presence.

This New Year, I resolve to Google myself regularly, delete  outdated profiles and develop a cohesive online personal brand. I may be the social media professor, but my students taught me a big lesson.

Friend requests from students have caused quite a dilemma for teachers in several school districts in Georgia that have recently proposed policies restricting how teachers and students can interact online.

According to the article “Ga. District Hones Social Media Policy” published Nov. 19 by Teacher Magazine, teachers in Barrow County near Atlanta, Georgia are facing a proposed policy that would prohibit teachers from interacting with students as peers, both online and off, and would ban them from posting “provocative photographs, sexually explicit messages, use of alcohol, drugs or anything students are prohibited from doing,” on their personal social media pages.

Although I maintain a personal Facebook page, I have a policy against Friending students. On occasion I will accept friend requests from students after they graduate, but I’m concerned about blurring the line between social and professional relationships.

I’m sure most middle and high school, and maybe even some elementary school teachers face this kind of dilemma. Do you interact with your students through social media sites? What do you think of administrative oversight of educators’ online activities?

One of the commenters quoted in the Teacher Magazine piece expressed concern about students who see teachers as confidants, particularly young people who have no other close adults they can trust. Could restricting student/teacher relationships be detrimental for students? Or is it a good idea to have clearly defined boundaries supported by official policies?

I also work with undergraduates at the University of Oregon and am constantly looking for ways to engage them in class material. When up against the lure of Facebook, PerezHilton.com, and fantasy football leagues, I often find myself on the losing end of the battle for students’ attention.  However, I don’t think banning the Web from the classroom or forcing students to pocket their mobile devices is the answer. Instead, I do my best to prepare students for the increasingly tech-heavy world they will be entering upon graduation by bringing technology into the classroom and teaching them to use new tools ethically and effectively.

A few months ago I asked a student why he never responded to an email  message sent repeatedly over the course of a week. His response — “no one uses email anymore, they just Facebook.”

Is that true for your experience with students?  What’s the relative proportion of email vs Facebook (or other social network) users in your classrooms?  Is it age-dependent? Dependent on the technologies allowed in and supported by your school?  Is email dead, or maybe becoming less useful due to overuse?  Do important messages get lost in the flood of daily emails? Are private networks the way to go? How do you most effectively communicate with your students outside of class?

Does anyone see a problem with this? Is there something our students can get through face-to-face interaction that they can’t get through MySpace?
We posed the question to our members last month via L&L’s  discussion forum on the ISTE Community Ning.

Ellen Hildenbrand felt that some educators may be a little starstruck by social networking right now, but not all students learn best that way. She writes:

•    Individual needs and characteristics can only be identified through communication—effective communication—and communication itself is not best achieved in a climate which allows for only one medium. Face-to-face is, and will be, an important component of education, at least for as long as it is a human endeavor with humanistic objectives.

Mark Carbone expresses enthusiasm about the new possibilities that social networking is making possible:

•    I do see an exciting future where people will have more and more opportunities to live in a blended world that maximizes one’s experiences that embrace face-to-face interactions and relationships, effectively use Facebook, other social networking tools, and other Web 2.0 tools, as a way to connect with people, learn and work in a rich and collaborative manner. As we continue to develop and refine our notions of the meaning of digital citizenship and learn how to embed these fundamental values in each of us, I believe we will have impacted human communication in a truly positive and global way.

An ardent supporter of using social networking in schools, Larry Anderson, who founded the National Center for Technology Planning and writes the NCTP blog, points out that social networking might also help us get around some of the problematic parts of human nature:

•    Frequently, we make value judgments about people based solely upon their appearance. We don’t take time to really know them. When we allow one’s physical appearance to shape our opinion without building rapport, we often arrive at faulty conclusions. With Facebook, however, we have opportunity to peruse the person’s information, interactions with others; personal, professional, and political tendencies; and the nature of the communities the people are constructing and nurturing.

Now we want to know what the digital natives themselves think. After all, they’re the ones who will shape the future. We thought we’d try something new with L&L’s Point/Counterpoint section by asking middle school and high school students to respond to this question in addition to ISTE members. But we need your help. We know it’s still summer break in some parts of the world, but do any of you have students who might be interested in this topic–and in being published in an international magazine–who would be willing to write a 450- to 500-word essay on either side of this argument? If so, please send them to the discussion forum on the L&L group page on the ISTE Community Ning (they’ll have to sign up for the community, but it’s free) or ask them to send their entries directly to me at abrichacek@iste.org as soon as possible so we can publish the winners in an upcoming issue of L&L.

L&L also needs more educators, administrators, and tech coordinators to weigh in on this topic for our Readers Respond section. Post your comments here and we’ll choose excerpts for our November issue. (Please include your job position and city/state/country.)

(pic from americancorner.hu)

Arik describes himself as a “friendly web-geek and entrepreneur.” His Twitter profile indicates he’s from Israel. That information by itself doesn’t really help answer the security concern at hand, however.

A Technorati search for the website in question currently yields 14 blog results, and none of them appear to be crying “foul” over the site. Perhaps it can be trusted? I’m not sure.

Back in September of 2007, a rash of spam was unleashed when lots of folks clicked email links and provided their email credentials to the site Quechup. The website sent automated emails out to all of the contacts in a person’s webmail account IMMEDIATELY after login credentials were entered, WITHOUT asking permission. That Quechup situation was a heads-up indicating how important it can be to safeguard your login credentials for different websites, and be VERY careful whenever another site asks you to enter them or grant its application ACCESS to your account. Quite often, the fine print is too fine for most people to read so they don’t do it. The results can be dangerous.

Facebook announced last month it has plans to offer “verified applications” which ostensibly would be better security risks for people to use and try. Rogue Facebook applications received a bit of press this past spring.

Is there any harm in following what Doug Symington calls “herd behavior” and changing your Twitter icon green? No. Is there a potential harm if you change your icon color using the web link from helpiranelection.com? I’m not sure. To stay on the safe site, I’m not clicking it and authorizing access to my Twitter account to find out.

Technorati Tags:
twitter, iran, @helpiranelection, #iranelection

In the social networking policy, athletes are warned that their postings must comply with a code of conduct and can be punishable with education, counseling, suspension or expulsion and with the reduction or cancellation of financial aid. It warns athletes not to post pictures that would portray them negatively nor post contact information that agents or their runners could use to put the athletes’ eligibility in jeopardy. “‘Partying,’ ‘drinking,’ and ‘getting wasted’ do not qualify as real hobbies or interests,” the policy warns.

As educators and parents, we might hope ideas like these would be obvious to students in high school as well as college, but sadly they are not. Many students are not thinking about the importance of managing and protecting their own digital footprint.

Karen Montgomery has started a “Social Media Guidelines for Schools” wiki project, working with a St Louis-area school and others to address these issues. It makes sense to be PROACTIVE rather than merely reactive when it comes to social media and the issues it can raise. I’ll be making this case tomorrow for Oklahoma School Public Relations officials at their annual state conference, in a session titled, “Leveraging the Potential of Social Media for School Public Relations.”

Has your school created social media guidelines for teachers as well as students? The article “Testing Horace Mann” from a year ago raised many issues which could and should be addressed in a set of well-crafted social media guidelines. Guidelines and policies cannot stave off all problems and controversies, but they certainly can help raise awareness and encourage social networkers (both young and old) to consider the potential consequences before hitting that enter key on their keyboard.

ISTE members have a growing presence on Facebook, with over 850 members as of this writing. If you have not already started exploring Facebook as an environment for professional learning and networking, it’s time you got started! Anyone can join the ISTE Facebook group, and the discussion forums provide a good venue to solicit feedback on a variety of technology integration and education issues.

I started a new forum topic on the ISTE Facebook page today titled, “ISTEconnects Guest Blog Posts Wanted.”

Please let me know if you have an idea you’d like to guest blog about here on ISTEConnects!