The School and Princiapl should have stood behind their teacher. And the teacher should sue the parent who brought the false charges. Since the teacher lost so much, the parent who made the baseless charges should also accept resposibility for her actions and be made to pay the teachers legal fees.

That gap is closing as digital natives grow up and become teachers. Even still, it seems like students are like virus writers- just one step ahead of the good guys. I am not an educator, but I have been involved in education as an interpreter (so I’ve seen a lot of what goes on when a teacher is not looking) and I’m not far away enough from high school to forget what even the ‘good’ kids would do behind parents’ and teachers’ backs. Seemingly harmless online environments have the potential (but not the 100% guarantee, of course) of becoming dangerous.
I knew students who WANTED to get teachers in trouble. The implications there are horrific, as it persecutes good teachers and lets poor ones get away with murder. I want to give that word of caution and say that I agree with your new perspective, Ben.
I also believe in goodness in our world, but leaving students to their own devices and potentially promoting temptation probably isn’t the best way to go. It’s like the saying, “Trust God, but lock your car.”
My point is that if a teacher doesn’t really truly know what he/she is doing with a particular technology, either get educated, bring someone in who is educated, or stay away from it. It might be doing more harm than good if anything otherwise is done.
That didn’t really answer your question, but it’s something to consider when formulating a conclusion.

I’m not sure having a board make some rules will fix it, because it may cripple our ability to help (like the cop and old lady)… Maybe there’s some way we can reach out to our students and communities to have an effect on how we view responsibility. I know it’s whimsically optimistic, but it’s the only way to truly make a difference.

The idea of who is going to be blamed if something goes wrong (or if a parent doesn’t like the idea of what you are doing) is a fair question for teachers to ask. I applaud you teachers who say you will move forward regardless of what happens. For me, and many teachers, I need to consider all aspects of a lesson or tool before I implement it…and part of that is who is at fault if it goes wrong. What will happen if a parent complains about what they see. For me, I have strong admin support in my school and district, but if I worked for my old district, I would shy away from things like this. I know I would be hung out to dry if something like this should happen.

WM- Sorry for making you angry so much lately. I promise to try and make my next post entirely anger-free. Your point is very well taken. We can’t let the fear paralyze us. That’s imperative. We do, however, need to come up with a rational, logical response. Many of us report to a Board of Education or upper administration that do not want this sort of issue to happen in their district. If we don’t have a response beyond, “We can’t be scared of accusations,” I’m afraid we’ll continue to have many districts simply refuse to allow teachers to engage the opportunities we know are so important for students. It’s a sad reality, and it happens in far too many places.

Andy- I like your approach of developing both guidelines and educating the staff, students, and parents. You are correct that if we can revisit our policy with our administration and continue to educate those within our district, accusations will be met head on.

DR- My dad is a plumber. Seriously.

This doesn’t worry me about what I do. For every million teachers that do something great, there’s a horror story of the one who was taken down by a system that had no precedents. Once again, the stories of the good teachers don’t get spread around.

These are the kinds of stories that make parents afraid and distrusting of the institutions that they send their kids too, even though 99.9 % (okay 90%) of them have their student’s best interests at heart and do a decent job. This story is the equivalent of a Dateline NBC segment. Soccer moms quiver in their heels because of these stories.

To quote Anne Frank: “I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.” If you can’t believe that, if you have to teach in fear, then go be a plumber.

DR

But that’s too simple a viewpoint, isn’t it?

First, as the technology which we employ in education changes, our districts need to make sure that our board policies and the guidance we give our students are constantly updated to reflect these changes. Most of these policy documents are very “boilerplate” and do not attempt to expand their scope to include online collaboration and learning. Our districts’ is probably in need of review.

Second, related to this, districts need to really meditate on the value in technology in instruction — really learn about it. It needs to become a part of the instructional vision and the message which is sent to parents. Our school communities need to know that we value everything that our students can learn from technology, and that it is a part of our curriculum. I think that the framework you are building in your district is a good step in this direction.

In my role in my school district, I would much rather meet skeptical parents and colleagues head on about these things. Otherwise, the conversations don’t occur until something unfortunate happens. Being proactive will get the message out to people, and will break the misconception that using technology in the classroom is a somewhat dangerous thing that some solitary teacher is doing – that notion could not be further from the truth.