Thursday, March 22, 2012
Interesting Thoughts
I was reading a blog by a peer who was discussing the use of cell phone text messages to students... The program Remind101 lets teachers remind students of assignments etc via cell phones.This issue caught my attention... Rubi's Blog made good points when questioning this program that I agree with. She questions whether parents would be on board, I'm sure some would be fine with this, but I don't think 100% of parents would be on board. I also don't think that ALL students have cell phones, and it is hard to implement a new program without a technology being fully accessible. Of course this is hard to believe since my k-5 students have better phones that I do.. My main concern is if we as teachers are giving our phone numbers to students. We can have seperate social networking sites for work and friends but we don't usually have seperate phone numbers. Since this technology, at least in my mind is more geared for middle to high school students, my concern is about protecting the teacher. If students have a phone number, who is to say they won't begin texting to ask what you are doing over the summer, what movie you are seeing...why you are out sick and they have a sub (I have seen this text sent in the middle of a school day to a teacher...why they are on the phone I do not know). With so many teacher-student stories in the news, I don't think this move would be appropriate UNLESS the program hid your number. Even though, I don't particularly care for this idea, I am sure teachers are doing this and it is working, and that this is the direction education and technology are going.
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Yikes! I think, like anything else (especially tech-related), teachers have to educate their students on appropriateness. It is NOT appropriate to text your teacher personal questions. It IS appropriate to ask quick questions. I was reminded of one of my professors, who has given us her cell, yet we use it professionally. Children need to learn those boundaries - for future teachers/professors as well as for future employers.
ReplyDeleteIt is so ironic that you brought up this point. Today as part of our faculty meeting, we had a group discussion to help us going through the state of connecticut's TEAM program learn about ow important the professional code of conduct is, for the completion of module 5. During our discussion one scenario that came up was about cell phone texting and calling between teachers and students. Although we all agreed that it would to be very appropriate for a teacher and student to call/ text/ Facebook one another we did come across the importance of being professional about it and talking about the specific boundaries that should be considered before implementation. Now, in a matter of speaking we were talking about students in grades through middle school......
ReplyDeleteAs far as the university level goes, I think that it is totally acceptable for professors and their students to handle a professional relationship via texting and phone calls. This is especially helpful for those students who have trouble meeting up with their professors to discuss concerns or any questions they may have about what is going on in the course. There is definitely a time and place for these types of methods of communication to be doomed acceptable.....