Social media has been vilified in schools of late. Reports
of online
bullying, sexual
predators, and students revealing
too much information on the internet circulate widely. While it is true
that children and teens can get into trouble on the internet, it is also true
that social media has become a powerful tool for those students who know how to
wield it. American Libraries Magazine, in August of this year, ran an article
titled: A
Tale of Two Students. This article contrasts two students, and two school
districts, based on their use of social media to enhance the school experience.
The first student, Michael, has used social media constructively on school time
to create blogs, do collaborative projects, and try to “look good” online to
prospective colleges. The second student, Jessica, would like to do some of
these things, but is limited by the school district’s “no device” policy and
firewall. This situation begs the question, what is the role of school libraries in promoting (or not promoting) student use of social media? How can librarians take an active role in acceptable use policies? And is social media in schools worth the aforementioned risks?
In the county where I live and work, the sea-change in electronic device-use policies has been relatively new, and the changes in policy came from parents and their lawyers rather than from school personnel. Kids are required to register their internet-capable devices with our technology people, who record serial numbers (in the event that somebody's iPad, for example, got stolen and was used on the school's network it could be traced). The reality is that while the official policy is in place--No unregistered device can be used on the school's network--that is not stopping anybody.
ReplyDeleteStudents with 3G access can get to anything on the internet with their own internet-capable devices although the filtering software is in place for any school-owned and networked internet-capable computers. The only social networking site the filtering software has NOT blocked yet is too new to have gotten snagged yet, and while I don't want to put in writing what that is, it's not Facebook. I personally have come across and reported two(2) Facebook pages targeting individual students at my school who were being bullied. Legally, the school cannot discipline the offenders for refusing to take those pages down. In each case, pressure was put on the moderators of the sites by their guidance counselors. They call it the "Mama Bear" approach and say something along the lines of "What can I say about your character on your college apps if this is how you treat your classmates?" Thankfully, that works.
I guess what I'm getting at is that this can get really complicated really quickly. If social sites are actively being used to bully/intimidate students, the school does not want school technology used to access those sites at all.
Rebecca Walker