Teachers and Social Media: Join in or Defriend

Author: Michael Cullinane

Date: February 22, 2018

Link: https://www.digitalethics.org/essays/teachers-and-social-media-join-or-defriend

First Impression: By looking at the title, my first impressions to this essay is that it tackles the positive and negative effects of how teachers utilize social media and with the word 'Defriend' in the title, probably means that there are issues about teachers being friends with their students on social media.

Quote: “A teacher’s social media content can impact a school’s reputation.”

Reflection: 

    The essay is about how a teacher’s social media content can impact a school’s reputation, and many cases exist of a teacher being fired for posting content that may cause one to have a strong reaction toward that content. People these days should think twice before sharing or posting something on social media since there is a possibility that they have no idea that there are people seeing their posts and getting offended. People who are part of top organizations should be the ones who are really careful of different things they share online since they influence people the most, I have experienced it by just reading someone’s opinion on something which then affects my thoughts, not knowing that the information contained things that have negative impact to one’s thoughts. Famous organizations may face severe backlash if they do not think twice before posting information, I have seen online organizations go down just because they did not think twice, or think what the people would think about their post, before sharing causing heated debate and misinterpretation from social media and having many gray areas about the topic, losing the main idea which is to promote good. There are times where posting something without thinking twice is good, an instance would be when one of your friends shares an image containing violence, if one knows the right thing to do, and that’s to post a message telling this person that what he just shared should be deleted or taken down due to the promotion of violence.

5 Things That I’ve Learned

1. Be careful of what to share on social media.

2. Not all people have the same take on what is posted on social media.

3. One of the best places to practice free speech nowadays is on social media.

4. A teacher can build a relationship with his students with social media.

5. Schools should have a social media training for teachers since this would benefit them in terms of building relationships with students.

5 Integrative Questions

1. Why do people have different take on things?

2. In what other ways can we use social media to promote good?

3. Is having a social media connection with students the right thing to do?

4. Do teachers and students have better communication on social media than in school?

5. What are the positive and negative effects of having a teacher as a friend on facebook?