the entire scene just reeks of regression. That’s why the future of education will take a brand of forward-thinking educator (teachers / principals etc.) with enough deft and savvy to advocate for technology use in the classroom and enough courage (for lack of a more appropriate word) to wrinkle [districts’] social media guidelines and them...
Category: law
My thoughts on a proposed social media policy for school employees (Part 2)
[In Part 1 of this conversation, I asked for others’ input and received numerous online comments plus some additional emails. In this post I offer my own thoughts. Warning: Long post ahead.] Dear Iowa superintendent and school board members, As founding director of the nation’s only university center focused on P-12 technology leadership issues, I...
I think I’m going to be on NPR’s All Things Considered today
May 14, 2012 by Scott McLeod 0 Comments I think I’m going to be on NPR’s All Things Considered today as part of its All Tech Considered segment. I was interviewed last week about the New York City Schools’ new social media policy for employees. Regular readers know that I’ve written about this in the...
26 Internet safety talking points
[UPDATE: A PDF version of these talking points is now available.] For Leadership Day 2012, I thought I would gather in one place many of the talking points that I use with principals and superintendents about Internet safety… Even though they may use fancy terms and know more than you do about their domain, you never would...
Internet safety talking points: IT pushback
A lot of people found value in my Internet safety talking points for school leaders, including Cory Doctorow, Bruce Schneier, and Tim Cushing. The post now has been tweeted, liked, pinned, and shared over 1,000 times. I shared a PDF version with superintendents earlier this week. But a school IT employee in Eastern Iowa thought...
Are these Illinois students getting the wrong lesson about Twitter and free speech?
[UPDATE: The high school principal is now threatening to suspend students who protest this situation. Never mind that the administrators’ decisions are arguably illegal for many of the suspended students. And apparently also never mind the First Amendment and students’ Constitutionally-protected speech rights. The quote from the Supreme Court at the bottom of this post?...
Suspended for a tweet?
In Michigan, a student was suspended for using ‘profanity’ in a tweet that encouraged his district superintendent to clear the snow in the school parking lot. In Maine, a high schooler was suspended for tweeting that poor student treatment by administrators meant that “they’re asking to be the next Columbine.” And in Florida, a student...