As teachers increasingly connect with their students online, school districts are working to define appropriate ways for teachers and students to communicate outside the classroom, reports the Chicago Tribune. It’s a murky area with a variety of questions: Should teachers use a Facebook fan page to contact students? Should they allow students to “friend” them on their personal profiles or post pictures on their walls? Should they notify parents that they are using social networking sites to communicate? The Illinois school code requires that districts develop polices for social networking and teach students how to safely use chat rooms, eMail, and instant messaging. Some districts have responded with vague policies open for interpretation, while others have banned all use of social media between teachers and students. In Community High School District 128 in Libertyville, the school board approved a set of “expectations” for social networking between teachers, coaches, and students, which are now incorporated into employee policies. It deems district-provided eMail and school-based web sites acceptable forms of communication. However, it warns that text messages are highly personal, can quickly get “off topic,” and be easily misinterpreted by a parent. “What you want to avoid is a parent seeing a coach’s cell-phone number on their daughter’s phone and being surprised,” said Mick Torres, the district’s technology director…
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Grades don’t drop for college Facebook fiends
According to new research out of Northwestern University, students who use social networking sites don’t seem to suffer academically, Ars Technica reports. In a recent paper titled “Predictors and consequences of differentiated practices on social network sites,” researchers found that heavy use of sites like Facebook and MySpace doesn’t affect college students’ grade point averages. In fact, it’s the usual suspects such as gender, ethnic background, and parental education that appear to have more of a determining factor in GPA than any kind of Facebook addiction. According to the researchers’ data, female students tend to have higher grades than male ones, and white students have higher grades than non-Hispanic African-American students. Students whose parents have college degrees have higher GPAs than those whose parents only have a high school diploma or lower. The researchers then added in data about overall internet use and social networking use, and found that there were no significant differences. “The most prevalent findings… are the persisting differences between respondents with different demographic backgrounds,” reads the paper. Indeed, internet and social network use didn’t affect the difference in GPAs between male and female or white and African American students. However, social network use did eliminate the difference in GPAs between students whose parents had differing levels of higher education. In fact, when controlling for certain demographics, the researchers found a positive relationship between internet use and GPA…
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