Should we just have one account? Or two accounts one for personal aspects and the other for professional side?

The GTCS states that you shouldn’t share any information with a student unless it would be shared in a school setting. This therefore makes you consider who you accept to be friends with online and what information you let everyone see. This might make you contemplate having an account for professional use and one for personal use however if you don’t have the correct privacy settings on,  if a student just typed your name in a search engine they would probably be able to find your personal one too. If you left your privacy settings so that everyone could see what you put on then everyone anywhere can see what you have put on. If there was things that you wouldn’t wish your students or colleagues to see that may call your professionalism into question. Therefore you want to make sure the correct procedures are in place.

When online you could appear to be vulnerable. One reason this could be is because if parents have a complaint and they message you on a social networking site then they could get aggressive and you would have to be careful when replying to the parent so that you reply remembering that you are a professional. If this doesn’t happen then your fitness to teach may come into question. When replying to a parent or anyone related within teaching you should reply with a formal and professional tone as this way the boundaries are maintained and therefore you can’t be accused of anything. Another way could be to make sure you are using an official channel of communication such as work email address, this way it seems more formal and you are more likely to keep the formal, professional tone when speaking to them. To stop parents sending you messages via social messaging you may consider not to add them as friends on your social networking sites. This way if they have to contact you in a professional manner then they may keep to the professional tone that you start contacting them with.

I think that depending on what is on your personal account may depend on whether you want two accounts or just one. If your personal account has lots of pictures of things you do outside of school, which may make your professionalism be questioned, then I would consider either turning off the tags in the photos so that if someone does find you they won’t find the inappropriate pictures or you could also make sure your privacy settings are on so that only some people can find you rather than everyone. However if you kept the one account you would have to be careful with what you put on the site.

Is using social media in the classroom a positive or negative idea?

Using social media in classroom can be very useful as this is what children are used to in day to day life. Therefore I think that it could be seen as a powerful thing to use as technology is likely to keep developing throughout their lifetime so making them literate in the technology they will be using, will be a beneficial for them to possibly to succeed in life.

However there may be problems such as it may become a distraction if they started using the social media for something else than the work. Therefore they may have to have a school account as then there isn’t a distraction between their social life and actual work. Some people may argue that less human interaction occurs however I think that pupils are more likely to interact with each other and ask whether they have seen something on the social media as they could be excited over the process.

Overall I think that using social media in the classroom is a good idea as students are used to using technology outside of school so we should not go back in time when they enter school life. I also think that because it seems exciting as they aren’t just sat writing they are more likely to be enthusiastic and be more involved in the subject.