Good news everyone! NSW public school teachers can now get their social networking skills on, with the NSW government lifting a ban on teachers using sites like Twitter and Facebook at work.
The move is meant to give teachers a greater understanding of the technologies used by the kids of today so they can educate students properly about the perils of social media. Well, that and the fact that things like sharing a video on YouTube to a class could actually be useful in an educational context.
But the fact teachers now can use the technology in the classroom doesn’t mean they can spend their days playing Farmville instead of teaching kids – a new social media policy document tells teachers not to let personal use of the Internet interfere with their work performance.
[ABC]
Virus__
Friday, April 29, 2011 at 10:12 AMThis explains why I was told this week by a TAFE teacher that social networking was going to be unblocked here next semester.
Corteks
Friday, April 29, 2011 at 12:14 PMSo they’ll just have to discreetly play Farmville while posting Youtube links to their class! :P
Tommy_TSW
Friday, April 29, 2011 at 12:21 PMSounds great. Teacher could write their @twitter_name on the blackboard and welcome students to follow them for assignment reminders, study reccomendations, etc.
olearymo
Friday, April 29, 2011 at 1:58 PM+1 I really like the idea of being able to send a tweet to a teacher for advice, clarification, etc. Add in hashtags, and we’ve got something pretty cool here…
Mitch
Friday, April 29, 2011 at 2:00 PMI work at a NSW school and am on Facebook right now, would love to let you guys know how it’s going although I don’t teach, I’m just one of the computer guys.
I have spoken to my principal about possibly creating a Facebook page for students to join, which will give little statuses teaching good care of their computers (nobody here uses Twitter).
Nomet
Saturday, April 30, 2011 at 10:25 AMThe IT nerds in the Dept. of Education Queensland are a bunch of uptight control freaks. I tried to set up a password protected chat room for my students to use outside of school hours so they could chat to each other about school work (which was based on Education Queensland servers) and they stopped it cause I couldn’t moderate it 24/7. I wanna teach in NSW, they sound much progressive and open to the future.
Rory Lynch
Thursday, June 9, 2011 at 12:34 PMI think this is a step in the right direction, technology in being integrated into our lives more and more every day and trying to hold it back is like trying to hold back the tide. Teachers, principles and even students do need training on how to interact and what’s ok and not ok to do as well as how to get the most out of social media.