Social media plays a huge role in our day to day life’s with most people using sites such as ‘Twitter’, ‘Facebook’ and ‘Tumblr’ on a daily basis, but what challenges and opportunities do we face when it comes to our personal versus our professional presence on social media.

There are many positive aspects to using social media for professional purposes. For example it allows you to interact with others within the same profession and share your thoughts and ideas with a wider audience, however there are many challenges that teachers face when it comes to the use of social media. To ensure that the communications made online are done so in a professional manner it is important to keep your personal and professional life’s separate on social media, whether that be having separate accounts with the personal one being private or having one account for both with the personal aspects being private. Regularly checking your account settings and what others are posting about you is also necessary to ensure that your personal details are kept confidential.

It is easy for students and parents to search for you on various social media sites and it is crucial that if we as teachers receive friends requests from either students or parents that we do not accept them as this could be considered as inappropriate and unprofessional.

I believe that the use of social media should be encouraged in classes in a way that will allow children to develop their learning in a safe and appropriate manner.