In my role as an Instructional Technology Coach, I use Twitter to communicate some of the great lessons I see happening in our middle school and sharing ideas and articles that I think may be useful to my staff. The district has had a focus on a Twitter campaign this year and introduced our three district hashtags: D124Achieve, D124Inspire, and D124Empower. I think this has been a great way to communicate more with parents and the community so they can get a window into the middle school where we don’t have as many parents involved. I love how easy it is to share through Twitter the innovative ideas, the passion, and enthusiasm of other educators which has been lacking in our middle school. I really haven’t received any feedback besides from the teachers a little bit. Most of the teachers who say anything to me about Twitter always start with, I should post more on Twitter but… Since we don’t really have guidelines of the purpose or vision we are trying to build with Twitter, it’s hard for teachers to feel like they have a handle on how they are supposed to use Twitter.
Our school’s policy on inappropriate technology use is very vague. “Misuse of District accounts whether on or off-campus, during or outside of the school day, may result in the loss of technology privileges, disciplinary action and/or legal action in the event of intentional damage and/or violation of policies or law.” Right now we are currently focused on updating the policy related to sharing information with parents about being COPPA and FERPA compliant rather than putting procedures in place for how inappropriate usage will be addressed. I love the idea of having students take a look at our technology policy and think about what specific changes they would make. I feel like giving the students this opportunity would put a very specific focus on ideas like cyberbullying since so many students have been affected by cyberbullying. I’m working on the curricula for our 21st Century Skills Classes and would like to add this opportunity so they can become familiar with our current expectations and come up with their own ideas of what should be included in this policy.
In the six years I’ve been working in this district, the teachers have never been trained at all about cyberbullying which is a shame in this day and age. This is an area that training would certainly benefit our staff particularly at the middle school. The Cyberbullying article by Education Partnerships, Inc. included a lot of valuable information and advice about cyberbullying. I think it is important that our district look at cyberbullying and set-up a protocol with how to respond. We do have a link on our website where bullying, in person or cyberbullying, can be reported anonymously to give students and parents a safe space to report any issues. I think it’s very important that teachers understand what cyberbullying is and how students may respond so they can make their students feel safe in confiding to the teacher about any issues going on. I also think that training the students on how to respond if they are cyberbullied is important since their response is what can most easily either encourage the bully to continue or the bully give up if his/her efforts are not being reacted to in the way they are hoping.
References
Williamson, R. (2010, May 18). Cyberbullying. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED538551.pdf