I had two administrators approach me yesterday and start a conversation.
One told me about how their IT department had closed all social media in their school and about how their fear that if they were to open it. The fear shared was that their would be so many more issues of cyberbullying, inappropriate content shared, amongst other things.
The other told me about how their school district has all social media sites open to their students and have very few issues. In fact, he had shared that since the network was opened, the issues lessened because of their focus on teaching digital citizenship.
Huh.
The question that came to my mind was, are these districts talking to one another? My other thought was, do the districts that have things opened even try to talk to the ones that are open? Seriously, people have open networks and have very few issues yet so many others with closed networks talk about the fear of what could be if schools decided to open their network.
Does looking only within our own organizations and focusing on the “fear factor” really help our students? I am guessing you can figure out what I think.
If you are interested, here is a simple rubrics to start a conversation on this topic: Is Your School’s DIgital Citizenship Practice a Pass or Fail?
