Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Teachers Texting Students: Should Schools Ban Or Encourage?
Teachers Texting Students: Should Schools Ban Or Encourage?
If you're here because you saw the story in Education News or Huffington Post about my views on teachers and students texting, welcome!
You can read the article at either of the links below.
I hope after you read the articles you'll realize that we should encourage teachers to interact with students in their worlds and that educators need to update outdated practices. If you haven't seen it, the article is called, "Teachers Texting Students: Should Schools Ban Or Encourage?"
I've written dozens of articles on how to harness the power of cell phones for learning. If this is of interest to you, please read them here.
For more ideas about how teachers and students can effectively use cell phones for learning check out Teaching Generation Text.
Want to share your thoughts on this topic? Please, go ahead and comment.
Funnily enough, just as I started to read this post, my phone beeped to let me know I had a couple of new messages. One was from a student asking a question about the homework that's due tomorrow, another was from a different student thanking me for a photo I took of them today and asking if I would be able to upload it to Facebook for them so they could show their Mum how well they'd done at the school sports!
Needless to say, I think mobile phones are just one of the powerful tools we have for communicating with our kids these days.
I am just not sure I am there yet. I am enjoying learning and implementing technology in education. I am genuinely excited by what tools we have at our fingertips and how they can be used but i am just not sure about taking to such a personal step as messaging on our phones. I am a Food technology teacher and I constantly get emails from my students about work assignments or tips with their cooking that they are trialing at home or if i can share the photos taken from class. I check these emails on my Samsung smartphone. My partner finds it amazing that I will sit and reply to an email at 9.30pm at night on my laptop just before i go to bed. It just shows how our worlds have changed. We are in reach at anytime anywhere. But to have students having my phonenumber so that they can text me, I just know it would feel like my school and private life just became to close. At least I can check the Google Doc or blog or email to see if my students have contacted me but for them to message me directly to what i see as my private line of friends and family, no. I need to learn to switch off as it is occasionallty and this would not help.
I think this is a slippery slope. I think having a class website or using Edmodo is acceptable. However, I'm just not there with texting. It's too personal and I just think there are too many teachers who cross the line.