Handling Social Media

John Finch joined us in class yesterday for a face to face (despite some serious jet lag) to discuss the topic of social media. With technology changing and advancing every single day, how are we (or should we…) be handling it? John Finch shared an interesting topic about how we can attempt to handle social media. First of all, John discussed one of the most popular topics in today’s media. Personal and professional profiles: How can we protect ourselves as new teachers?

The key is keeping your identities absolutely separate. A perfect example is, “Meet The Teacher” night at your school. As John said, why not call it, “Meet the Creature” night? We are completely naive if we think we aren’t being “googled” on a regular basis once we are in the world of teaching. The fact that our competency as educators may be compromised by a certain profile picture or status is bizarre, but we are taught that this is absolutely the case today. When blogging, twittering, or networking, use a profile that is strictly professional and keep your personal information (and full name) out of the account. However, as John said, we are still human and are allowed to have a personal life, but keep it just that: personal!

Who reads the fine print? I know for me it usually ends up in the garbage with the rest of the packaging. John stated that when it comes to copyright, if you aren’t paying for it then somebody is. And that somebody is usually making money—off you. Luckily (and I mean luckily) for us, John said there is a new copyright law in Canada that basically states we can do a lot more today than we could 6 months ago. We can now legally distribute material to students that is copyrighted material, without paying. Whew.. because no one has ever done that before..

John left us thinking, if we aren’t reading the fine print, are we ever getting the full story?