When And Where Am I NOT A Teacher?

Recent events have me wondering about the line between my public life and private life, my personal life and my professional life. They also have me thinking about a post over at Students 2.o by Sean the Bass Player back in February. Sean's post, Where Do We Draw The Line?, discusses whether teachers would want to have students joining their on-line networks. It's a good post with lots of interesting comments. When I first read it I thought about commenting, but I just couldn't articulate how I felt about the issue. Here are some of the events that made me look back at Sean's post.

Event #1: earlier in the month Al Upton closed his Al Upton and the miniLegends blog, as requested by the South Australia Department of Education and Children’s Services, due to concerns over his student blogging project.

Event #2: around the same time, but for very different reasons, Jabiz Raisdana agreed to resign from his school in Quatar due to objections raised over an art project he posted on his personal blog.

Lots to think about in those two situations, and many people have been blogging about them (see these posts at Remote Access and Cool Cat Teacher for a start as well as the above links to Al Upton and Jabiz Raisdana).

Event #3: then yesterday, in a totally different situation, Dean Shareski posted about a disagreement that he had with blogger Matthew Tabor. I had heard Dean tweet about the argument on Twitter and I had read the comments on Matthew's blog. In Dean's post he says "It’s not that I regret posting the item to twitter it’s calling him obnoxious that was wrong." He goes on to say "I’ve gotten so comfortable using Twitter that I’ve forgotten, it’s not private."

These events are mixing in my head; I'm thinking about:

• - how to teach my students to interact with 21st century tools while keeping them safe


• - how to let the students' parents and community see that they are safe


• - how to maintain a personal blog that is public and still maintain my professionalism


• - how it is possible, as Dean says, to become so comfortable with web 2.0 tools, such as Twitter that we forget that it is not private.

And lastly, I am wondering, is a teacher a teacher 24 hours a day?

Anyhow, back to Sean's post, Where Do We Draw The Line?, regarding whether teachers would want to have students joining their on-line networks. After what I've written about above, I guess it comes down to this; there is no hard and fast line.



It can be very rewarding interacting and corresponding with creative and thoughtful students, but for a teacher there is also an inherent risk. As a teacher I have to be concerned about my perceived conduct, especially when young people are involved. Am I a teacher 24 hours a day? No, but it is certainly not just during the hours when I'm at school or prepping. The line is blurry, it wiggles a bit, it is not hard and fast. We don't draw the line, others later retrace our steps and sketch in the line where they think it should be.

Images: Lines and Ceiling Light 1 by tanakawho (creative commons attribution licence)

Making Twitter Work For Me

Back in January I wrote about Tools and Sites I Use, and I mentioned that I would like to try Twitter, but I had my concerns (intimidated, worried I'd get sucked into the abyss, etc) After that post Sarah Stewart and I decided to take the plunge. It took me awhile to feel confident enough to tweet, but I did start to get into the groove. Then I just stopped. The problem was I was using Twitter by logging on to the Twitter site. This was cumbersome so I just stopped.

After reading various posts on Twitter (eg here) I realized that I needed a browser extension for Twitter. I knew that Sue Waters uses Snitter, and Clay Burell was a TwitBin guy. I checked both extensions out and decided to go with Twitbin.

I'm now back in my Twitter groove! Twitbin is great! I downloaded the Twitbin extension for Firefox and I now have a cute little Twitbin bookmarklet and it is so easy to get my "live" Twitter window up (see image below). Now I just need to work on building up my network. If your interested in following me on Twitter I'm clthompson; I'd be happy to reciprocate :-)

Finding my voice on Twitter

I've been on Twitter for a couple of weeks now, and I am pleased to see that my network is growing--a big thank you to Sue Waters for asking the folks in her network to follow me! I've been enjoying reading the tweets and finding out quickly what people are up to and following the links they provide. My challenge right now is finding my voice. So far I feel like I've been lurking. I feel like I need to have something really important say, which is silly since there's some pretty everyday things that people comment on. Perhaps it is just that I don't know the people in my network very well yet, but I know that will change :-)

Image: gag by G. Rohs

I'm on Twitter

After my last post I got a bit of ribbing from Sue Waters, and encouragement from Sarah Stewart re: Twitter. Sue, a confessed Twitter addict, thought it was funny that Sarah and I were scared of Twitter. Not ones to be laughed at, Sarah and I decided to take the plunge together. Feel free to check out Sarah and my Twitter profiles.

So, after a few days of Twittering, I have to say I can really see the power of the site. Post a question, and within a very short time someone's gotten back to you with some good information. You read a great new blog post, Twitter it, and now your 'followers' are onto it too. Cool! It is not as intensive as I thought it would be, mind you I have a teensy network. You really can just be a fly on the wall and participate when and if you fell like it.

My challenge right now is to build up my network. If you (or someone you know) are new to Twitter and trying to build up a network, let's reciprocate--you follow me and I'll follow you ;-)

Image: Free Bird by Southern Pixel