e-Safety for Teachers - Why teachers need to protect themselves on Social Media and some tips on how to do it.

Beware: Parents Troll Teachers

Last year, a parent, who was upset that her daughter had not been selected for a school sports team, took it upon herself to go onto the Facebook pages of the teacher concerned looking for some angle in order to get back at her. The mother contacted me complaining that the teacher was a "disgrace and shouldn't be working with children". She reported that there inappropriate pictures of the teacher at a party. Subsequent investigation revealed nothing more than a picture of the staff member at a party holding a cocktail obviously having a good time. I was shocked that a vengeful parent should 'troll' a teacher in this way. My response was to take no action in relation to the teacher and to run an INSET on e-Safety for the teaching staff. With full a Governor support, as a senior team, we also drafted a policy and procedure to deal with any future malicious or vengeful acts by parents: a formal warning would be given and any repetition would lead to the 'required removal' of the child because of a break down of trust between the school and the parent. The episode was a timely reminder of the vulnerable position that we find ourselves as teachers and of the importance of teachers doing all that they can to protect themselves. We spend a lot of time in schools exhorting and training pupils to take measures to be safe online, but many of the same principles equally apply to the staff room. 

Because teachers work in positions of influence with children and young people, society dictates that they conduct themselves as role models. There are expectations of higher standards of teachers' behaviour in their private lives that do not apply to other professions. Young bankers or solicitors whose wild Friday night out is documented in graphic detail on Facebook are not likely to have a problem at work so long as what they were doing was not illegal. Furthermore, child protection legislation and procedures dictate that there are circumstances when a teacher is treated as 'guilty until proven innocent'. A teacher who is subject to a malicious online anonymous accusation potentially could face suspension, pending a full investigation - with all the personal reputational damage that that entails. In this context, it is all the more important that teachers do all they can to take steps to prevent themselves from being open to accusation by ensuring that their personal life on social media remains private. 

Protecting your Digital Tattoo Teachers would be well advised to take the time to protect their online presence. Most obviously this entails a good understanding of the privacy settings on individual social media sites. However, teachers should bear in mind that, whilst, it is possible to prevent members of the public (including parents and pupils) from having access to personal pictures and posts, it is perhaps safest to assume that, in practice, everything that is posted online is in the public domain. Once it is out there, rather like a tattoo, it is very difficult to get it removed. The rule of thumb is 'don't post anything online that you wouldn't want to see in the Daily Mail.'
However, we are not totally responsible for our digital tattoo for others can post pictures and write things about us online. This is more difficult to monitor and control. Two useful steps are to Google yourself and to see what is out there about you; and to set up a Google Alerts which will inform you when your name appears on a website.

One of the greatest areas of concern for teachers comes in the form of the RateMyTeacher website. The site purports to provide "user generated feedback on teachers' and professors' teaching methods and their respective courses." In practice it provides an unaccountable platform for malicious comments, unbalanced judgements and the cyber-bullying of teachers. Because comments are posted anonymously and the site is now hosted in the US, there is in practice no legal redress for any slanderous accusations posted on the site (because US law protects the site from prosecution, and it is almost impossible to trace any individual who made the original post). The consequence is that teachers are vulnerable to potentially career damaging false accusations. 

Taking steps to have unwanted posts on the Internet is quite difficult - it is a combination of 'blocking' people and 'reporting abuse' to websites - but this doesn't always work. The most effective way to have a positive Digital Tattoo is be active on the web by blogging, tweeting and being referenced in good articles.

Keeping Professional Distance.  It is universally accepted within schools that there needs to be a 'professional distance' between teachers and pupils. This is necessary in the classroom, but it is all the more important in teachers' private lives. Part of this 'distance' is that teachers don't socialise with pupils: a young teacher who goes clubbing with the sixth form crosses a line which, at best, lays himself open not only to the charge of unprofessionalism, and, at worst, could lead to allegations of serious misconduct. In the same vein, teachers are well advised to ensure that all lines of communication with pupils are through official channels. It is generally accepted that teachers should not be emailing pupils from their personal accounts, or texting or phoning pupils from their personal mobile phones. Indeed, almost all schools provide an official school email for this purpose and some schools, recognising the necessity and ubiquity of mobile communication, provide teachers in pastoral roles with mobile phones which are paid for by the school on the understanding the communication may be monitored.

Teachers, Pupils and Social Media.  

The traditionally clear distinction between the professional and the personal is blurred by social media. 

Facebook 'friends' range from close family to passing acquaintances: it is a melting-pot of all whom we know and meet. One of the problematic features of Facebook is that it forces us to interact with all our 'friends' in the same way, which is not how we interact in the real world. The language we use when speaking to our oldest friends is often markedly different to the language we use in the workplace. How we talk to our mates when out on a Saturday night is far from the language and tone that we employ when teaching Year 12.
So should teachers be 'friends' with pupils on Facebook?  Some may argue that the privacy settings enable teachers to separate professional and personal relationships on Facebook. To some extent this is true - it is possible for teachers to prevent pupils from having access to personal posts and photographs. However, my greatest concern about social media is that they open up a private channel of communication between teachers and pupils, which can put teachers unwittingly into a situation where they are open to accusations of misconduct. How would a teacher who was a 'friend' with a Year 13 girl defend a claim that s/he had been conducting an online relationship? We can also turn the question around, can there ever be a good reason for teacher to be 'friends' with a pupil on Facebook? 

Facebook Friends with parents. The example above illustrates the dangers of being friends with parents on Facebook, but maintaining this distance is not always as easy as it may seem. Separating the personal and the professional is particularly difficult for those who have children in the school in which they work - for they are both teacher and parent at the same time. The prevalence of Form Facebook groups can put colleagues into a difficult position, particularly when the group gets up a head of steam on a particular issue. Teachers are best advised in these circumstances to maintain a discrete silence, lest their unique position be (mis)quoted to give extra weight to the argument. 

Twitter.  The way in which many people use Twitter confuses the professional and the personal: one minute the teacher is sharing a teaching idea picked up at an excellent INSET, the next s/he is posting pictures of the family reunion. My advice here is simple: if you want to post about professional and personal matters, run two twitter accounts; and if pupils are following you on Twitter, use the 'mute' function (from the settings menu) to disable their ability to tweet on your timeline or to message you directly.

LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a professional networking site - linking up is the social media equivalent of exchanging a business card. As such, LinkedIn is a useful vehicle for connecting with colleagues, parents and former pupils as 'professional distance' is built it. Users have full control of their own profile and it is not possible for others to post pictures or comments on the site that are publicly visible. Teachers would be well advised not to link with current pupils because LinkedIn does have a messaging feature and thus opens up the possibility of a private communication channel.  

Conclusion: There is little doubt that many teachers need to take much greater care when navigating the world of social media. Forewarned is forearmed.

Related Posts

• My interview with Nicola Woolcock of The Times published on Monday 20th October:
• The INSET presentation that I gave to Berkhamsted School Staff

Protecting your Privacy on Facebook

Two really useful articles with detailed instructions on how to protect your privacy on Facebook in light of the recent changes in privacy settings:

• The 3 Facebook Settings Every User Should Check Now New York Times 20/01/10
  

• How to Protect Your Privacy with Facebook’s New Privacy Settings in 17 Easy Steps Inside Facebook Blog 19/01/10
  

Facebook Privacy Announcment

Beware Facebook have changed the privacy settings for your account. Today I received this message:

Do NOT ignore it.

In their helpfulness, ostensibly so that everyone can find each other more easily when searching FB, the powers that be at Facebook have changed to default settings so that it will make your Birthday [=Date of Birth] publicly available to everyone - not only to your friends. Given that this is a classic security question used by banks and the like, you may like to consider whether you want everyone in the world to have access to it. I would recommend hiding the year of your birth on your FB account, not only because it makes those us who are older feel less depressed, but to protect this key piece of personal data.

Facebook Privacy Policy

The revised Facebook Privacy Policy went live today.

Bebo introduce CEOP reporting button to protect children from Internet abuse.

Bebo, the social networking site which has a strong following among children and the younger teens, have introduced button which appears automatically under users' profile pictures, for users to log abuse directly to CEOP [the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre]. Clicking on the tool, opens a window inviting victims to log "violations of Bebo's terms of service" – including bullying, hate speech and sexually explicit content.

This is quite a radical step for a social networking site to take as it marks a move away from self-regulation, to reliance on the Government multi-agency system run by CEOP.

Facebook adopts a different approach, as outlined in their safety section, which is to investigate any complaints themselves. Their site maintains that "Facebook is solely responsible for complaint handling" although they do provide a link for users to contact the Independent Safety and Security Examiner (ISSE) regarding Facebook's complaint handling procedures.

There is pressure on Facebook and MySpace to follow Bebo's lead, but there are inevitably multi-jurisdictional issues here, which make this a much more complicated question than it first appears.

For further information see:

• More than 8 million young users get added safeupport as Bebo adopts ‘CEOP Report’ button. CEOP Press Release 18/11/09
• Facebook 'fails to protect children' Daily Telegraph 18/11/09
  
• Social networking sites criticised for failing to protect children Guardian 18/11/09
  

Understanding Facebook

For many parents and teachers the world of Facebook is an alien place: it certainly operates under a different set of rules. This article is an attempt to unpack two of the dynamics of social networking sites:

Making Friends

When we [parents and teachers] meet someone new, say at a drinks or dinner party, we trade snippets of personal information about ourselves as part of the "friends-making process". Where we work, where we went on holiday, our favourite film and what music we listen to - such is the stuff of social small-talk. As we get to know someone better, we share more personal information about ourselves and, over time, the transition is made from casual acquaintance to friendship.

Friend-making is at the heart of sites like Facebook. When young people “make friends” on social networking sites they operate in a totally different way - cocktail party conventions do not apply here. The whole process is truncated into a millisecond as they disclose their life story in a single mouse click, disgorging enormous amounts of personal information to relative strangers.

The dynamic in the world of social networking seems to be that the more information that you give out the more “friends” you will have. Openness here is virtue, a lack of disclosure is met with suspicion. Thus there is a contractual basis to the way in which young people use social networking sites they trade personal information for popularity – this is a key driver behind these sites.


“Famous for …….”

Social networking sites enable young people to emulate their role models. We live in the Age of the Celebrity. The famous live their lives in the eye of the media – the gossip pages of glossy magazines and fan websites share minute details of teenagers’ role models. Reality TV progammes such as Big Brother have fuelled this craze with celebrities’ most intimate moments being broadcast to the world for public scrutiny.

So why should we surprised that young people want to be any different? Unprepared to wait for Warhol’s “fifteen minutes of fame”, Facebook enables anyone to behave like celebrities and to put themselves permanently in the public eye. Young people are able to share their thoughts with their friends and to update the world on even the most banal aspects of their daily lives. For some, Facebook is their diary, for others is a vehicle for a “second life”: an opportunity to present themselves to world as they would like to be seen.

Ultimately Facebook harnesses the timeless need of young people to spend time together [our generation did it on the phone] and satisfies a basic twenty-first century need to receive public recognition from ones peers.

This blogpost was based on an article written for the GSA MyDaughter website

Facebook - Proposed Updated Privacy Policy

Congratulations to Mark Zuckerberg and his team at Facebook, who seem to have learned the lessons of last year and have now published their proposed changes to the Privacy Policy as a consultation in advance of those changes going live.

Because Facebook can change their Privacy Policy at any time, if you are a Facebook user I would recommend that you go to the Facebook Site Governance pages and "become a fan". If you do this, you will get regular updates on any changes as to how Facbook is operating. This will enable you to retain a greater control over the data that you are posting on Facebook and you will be advised if Facebook move the goalposts and change how they are looking after your data.

Click here for the proposed Facebook Privacy policy


A few highlights of the proposed Facebook Privacy Policy

The key area for me is how Facebook protect my data, especially when I choose to amend or close my account. These are the relevant passages from the proposed new policy:

• Deactivating or deleting your account. When you delete an account, it is permanently deleted.
  
• Limitations on removal. Even after you remove information from your profile or delete your account, copies of that information may remain viewable elsewhere to the extent it has been shared with others, it was otherwise distributed pursuant to your privacy settings, or it was copied or stored by other users. However, your name will no longer be associated with that information on Facebook. (For example, if you post something to another user’s profile, and then you delete your account, that post may remain, but be attributed to an “Anonymous Facebook User.”) Additionally, we may retain certain information to prevent identity theft and other misconduct even if deletion has been requested.
• Backup copies. Removed and deleted information may persist in backup copies for up to 90 days, but will not be available to others.

This all seems very positive, although I would like to know under what circumstances Facebook "may retain certain information to prevent identity theft and other misconduct even if deletion has been requested."

Social Networking Sites

Unpublished letter to the Sunday Telegraph

Sir

The Archbishop of Westminster’s comments [Sunday Telegraph – 02/08/2009] on the perils of social networking sites are misdirected.

Most young people are highly skilled communicators who have a sophisticated network of friends and acquaintances. Many, however, are naïve about the dangers of the adult world. Young people have a totally different attitude to privacy from all previous generations. When they meet new people on social networking sites, for example, they routinely disclose their life story in a single mouse click, disgorging enormous amounts of personal information and photographs to relative strangers. What is more, they do it in a digital format that is easy to store, share and publish.

Rather than despairing of the youth of today, parents, schools and even clergy have a responsibility to ensure that young people have the requisite skills to navigate the digital landscape safely and to protect their personal information.


Mark S. Steed
Principal, Berkhamsted School, Herts
Chairman, Independent Schools Council ICT Strategy Group.

Digital Natives, Social Networking and Privacy

With the way that the Internet is set up today, we routinely trade personal information for services or products. We provide name, address, telephone numbers, date of birth and email addresses and in return we receive a free Facebook or Amazon account or free OpenOffice or whatever. Firms then can use this information for various purposes, most commonly to target advertisements at us.

There is a contractual basis to the way in which young people use social networking sites too - only that here they are trading personal information for popularity. The dynamic seems to be that the more information that you give out the more friends you will have. To some extent this is what we all do in the offline world. When we meet someone new, say at a drinks or dinner party, we trade snippets of personal information about ourselves as part of the "friends-making process". Where we work, where we went on holiday, our favourite film and what music we listen to - such is the stuff of social small-talk.

But when digital natives meet new people on social networking sites they operate in a totally different way - cocktail party conventions do not apply here. They disclose their life story in a single mouse click, disgorging enormous amounts of personal information to relative strangers. What is more, they do it in a digital format that is easy to store, share and publish. This is a real concern.

"Young people who are living their lives mediated by digital technologies will pay a high price...... Most young people are extremely likely to leave something behind in cyberspace which will become a lot like a tattoo - something connected with them that they cannot get rid of later in life, even if they want to, without a great deal of difficulty"

Pafrey and Gasser Born Digital p.53

Those of us of an older generation, whether parents or teachers, have a responsibility to protect young people from themselves. I am staggered by how naive young people can be at times. Let me give you an example.

This week I discovered that there is a Facebook group for students from my school that consists simply of their mobile telephone numbers. For them this is an easy and effective way of getting in touch with their friends. But it is an "open" group: anyone in the world has access to that group. Teenagers cannot see that the juxtaposition of an attractive sixteen year old girl's profile picture and her mobile phone number might attract unwanted attention from a total stranger.

The same principle applies to photographs. Facebook is an outstanding facility for sharing photographs with family and friends - it is easy to upload pictures for all to see. However there are three aspects to this that concern me.

First, the facility to "tag" people in photographs means that your friends can post photographs onto your site. These might not be photographs that you would want there. There are mechanisms both to prevent others from seeing these pictures and to remove unwanted ones from appearing on your site, but often young people, either through ignorance or choice, do not activate these controls.

Secondly, young people do not distinguish between real friends and casual, passing acquaintances. Thus they give instant access to all of their photo album - whether that be holiday snaps or behaving badly at last night's party.

Thirdly, young people do not consider the long term consequences of posting embarrassing photographs. It is clear that employers are using social networking sites to vet employees [see New York Times]. Before posting a picture, young people need to think, "Would I want this picture on the front page of a national paper?" or "Would I be happy for this picture to be attached to my job application?" Lord help the next generation of politicians and celebrities - the gutter press are going to have a field day!

So, how can we as parents and teachers help the next generation?

When our children were young we taught about the dangers of the world around them: they learned from our actions that the cooker was hot and we showed them how to cross the road safely. In the same way, we need to educate young people about the dangers of publishing too much personal information on the Internet. Above all, we need to give them the skills to navigate the digital landscape and to protect their personal information. In this, I believe that we must lead by example. If we are going to have any credibility, teachers and parents need to have a presence in cyberspace and to have mastered these skills ourselves. There is a huge opportunity here for digital natives and their digital immigrant teachers and parents to open up an effective dialogue to share their collective expertise and experience.

For more information see

• Four tips on protecting your personal information on Facebook
• John Pafrey and Urs Gasser Born Digital 2008
• Facebook Safety Pages

Afternote

• Teenager is fired for Facebook remark [27/02/2009]
  

Four tips on protecting your personal information on Facebook

TIP ONE - How to prevent strangers from seeing your Friend list when they search Facebook or when they click on your profile.

1. Go to MY PROFILE
2. Click on SETTINGS - link on the top right hand corner (next to the “Search” facility).
3. Drop down box, click on PRIVACY
4. Then click on SEARCH (2nd in list)
5. You should see a check-box list. UNCHECK the MY FRIEND LIST box (and any others, you might want to do)
6. Click on SAVE CHANGES

Beware that, if you reply to an email in Facebook, that your correspondent will be able to see your Friends for one month.

TIP TWO - How to change your general privacy settings so that only your friends (approved only by you) can see your profile [personal information about you, personal pictures etc.].

1. Go to MY PROFILE
2. Click on SETTINGS - link on the top right hand corner (next to the “Search” facility).
3. Drop down box, click on PRIVACY
4. Click on PROFILE (1st in list)
5. I suggest you change all the drop-down box options to “Only Friends”
6. Click SAVE CHANGES.

Your new settings are operational with immediate effect – you don’t have to sign off and then sign on again.

TIP THREE - How to set up a Limited Profile group of Friends
[A limited profile allows you to distinguish between acquaintances whom you might only like to see certain parts of that profile and real friends whom you might want to see all that you post on your site]

1. Go to FRIENDS
2. Click on the Make a New List button
3. Choose a name, say “Acquaintances”
4. Select your friends whom you want to be part of the “Acquaintances” group
5. Save the List
6. Click on SETTINGS - link on the top right hand corner (next to the “Search” facility).
7. Drop down box, click on PRIVACY
8. Click on PROFILE
9. Click on the drop down menu next to Basic Information
10. Select CUSTOMISE
11. Select the ONLY FRIENDS radio button and type in “Acquaintances” in the EXCEPT box
12. Click Okay
13. Repeat steps 10 to 12 for each of the profile drop down menus.
14. You may like to consider setting up a number of these groups, say for "Family" or "Colleagues" and customise the settings to each of these
15. You will need to allocate your Facebook Friends to these groups
    

TIP FOUR- How to limited who sees your photo albums
[This assumes that you have set up a number of photo albums]

1. Go to the PHOTOS part of your PROFILE
2. Click on ALBUMS
3. Click the ALBUM PRIVACY button
4. Using the drop down menus select who you will allow to see each album

For example, if you want one album just to be seen by your family

1. First set up a group for your "Family" [see Tip 3 above]
2. On the drop down menu for the photograph album, select CUSTOMISE
3. Select the SOME FRIENDS radio button
4. Type in "Family" in the box that appears
   
5. Click OKAY
   

[Thanks to Steph Kirton with her help on Tips One and Two]

Facebook provides an emergency solution

It has been one of those weeks! It's never fun being between a rock and hard place - but I guess that, at times, it goes with the territory. Having made the relatively straight-forward decision to close the school on Monday and Tuesday, I was faced with an overnight 3" snowfall and a dilemma whether or not to close our doors again this morning. Having been told that the buses would run, encouraged by an improving weather forecast and empowered by a blitz spirit to make the best of the day, I decided that we should open - only to discover that the School Website had crashed.

One of the problems of technology is that one comes to rely on it. So we resorted to "old technology": the jungle drums beat, the phones rang and we did our best to let everyone know that we were open. However, the website remained down [a technical fault beyond our control!] and it was clear that we needed an effective way of communicating with pupils and parents.

That solution was to create a Facebook group for the school. Staff were informed of its existence by email, a handful of pupils were told over lunch.

It has been a fascinating study in viral behaviour. It began with a trickle of staff joining the group; but the exponential power of Facebook took off from about 5:00pm when the first pupils made it home. Friends, inviting friends, inviting friends: ten pupils have joined the group in the past minute. 150 pupils have joined the group in the time that it has taken to write this blog post.

We are on course for over half of our school community to have joined the group by 6:00 a.m. when I have to make a call about whether or not school will be open tomorrow.


Update the next morning:

The school is closed - Facebook provided an excellent emergency communication network.
The growth of the group was as follows:

1545 38 members
1645 80
1745 170
1815 262
1845 337
1945 444
2030 501
2115 531
0630 600
0815 683
0945 722
1045 760

Today we are closed, so the teachers are using Facebook 'Discussion Posts' to set work for pupils. Not a perfect system, but an effective solution to an emergency situation.

Should teachers and pupils be ‘Friends’ on Social Networking Sites?

Traditional, established and agreed boundaries between staff and pupils are being blurred by the way in which Social Networking Sites operate. Many teachers, particularly younger members of staff - who have grown up with social networking being an everyday part of their lives, have Facebook profiles and are accustomed to interacting with the people they meet "offline" through the "online" medium of a social networking site. So should teachers and pupils be ‘Friends’ on Social networking sites?

On the one hand, we might take the view that all contact between staff and pupils in this forum is inappropriate.

• Teachers are expected to keep a professional distance from the pupils whom they teach.
• There should be a clear separation of the private social lives of teachers and that of pupils.
• It would not be appropriate for a teacher to go clubbing with sixth formers, and it is wrong for teachers to reveal too many details of their private life with them.
  
• There is no need for "social networking" to go on between staff and pupils.
  
• With few exceptions, there is little educational benefit from teachers being friends with pupils.

On the other hand, we might take the view that having contact with pupils on a Social Networking site should be encouraged under certain circumstances:

• It is important that teachers are seen to have a presence on Social networking sites - this gives them greater credibility when discussing Internet-related issues.
  
• In some subjects, such as Media Studies and PSHE, it might be wholly appropriate to engage with young people online in this way, as part of the course, or to help them better understand issues of internet safety.
  
• Teachers should be allowed to exercise their professional judgment as to what personal information they choose to share with pupils, afterall they do this in the classroom daily.
  

Certainly it would be unwise for staff to allow pupils access to any information which would compromise their position and authority as a teacher in the school. However, this is sometimes more difficult than one might first expect.

There are basic Internet privacy and safety issues when using social networking sites that apply to both pupils and to staff alike. However careful a teacher is about the material he posts on his site, the problem with Facebook is that it is very easy for other "friends" to post pictures on a teacher's Facebook page through the "tagging" feature. Take the following scenario.

A teacher [let's call him, "John"] goes to a University reunion party. During the party a friend, "Peter", takes a number of photos of the John - dancing with girl friends, having a beer with former drinking mates, or worse. Peter posts them on his own Facebook site and "tags" John in the pictures. These pictures now appear on John's Facebook site. One of John's Facebook "friends", who happens to be one of John's pupils, downloads the pictures from the site before John has even had a chance to view/edit/ remove them. The pupil then emails the picture to other school friends and prints the pictures and pins them up around school.

Clearly there are "limited profile" features within Facebook, which would prevent this happening. It is possible to run a Facebook account on two levels: with wide access to true friends and a much more restricted access to "acquaintances", but it does require a sophisticated and disciplined approach to the management of a social-networking site to achieve this.


So should Schools get involved in this issue? If so, how?

There is nothing inherently wrong, immoral or unprofessional about teachers communicating with pupils through social networking sites, thus it is inappropriate for schools to attempt to restrict the use of these sites. There is also a pragmatic argument that, since it impossible for Schools to police how their staff interact with pupils in cyberspace, they should not get involved in this area.

However, I do believe that Schools do have a responsibility to protect the pupils and staff in its care, but this should not be done through Draconian and unenforceable policies. Rather they have an important educational role to play. Schools must ensure that both pupils and staff have the knowledge and skills to protect their privacy and to remain safe when on social networking sites. Thus both teachers and pupils will be able to maintain appropriate professional relationships and distance whether online or in the classroom.

For more on staying safe on a social networking site, see the

• Facebook Safety pages
• Tips on Protecting your Personal Information on Facebook