5 reasons teachers should avoid Facebook

Teachers like Facebook. Jeff Utecht, a self-described "educator, presenter, consultant" recently evangelized about Facebook:

• It is the future
• It is the now

It's not fair to pick on Jeff--he's one of an army of teachers leading the charge to a world of awesome goodness if only those other teachers educators would get it....

I'm one of those old farts resisting Facebook in the classroom. I have my reasons, and I think they're good ones. Here are just a few:

Mark Zuckerberg

Mark is Facebook's CEO.

Here's his T-shirt:

Here's a business card:

"I'm CEO....Bitch"

I don't trust him. I don't deliver my children to someone I do not trust. Nor should you.

Advertisements

Facebook exists to sell your soul, or at least your "lifestyle." It is a commercial site that makes big bucks on directed advertisements. Kids don't get this.

Apparently, adults don't either.

We have no business promoting any activity that exposes children to targeted ads. None.

I once helped keep Channel One out of my school for the same reason. I was quoted in the New York Times back when I was a pediatrician and folks cared what I said.

Teachers want the same kind of respect, we need to start acting in the best interests of the kids.

Too close

Remember when you were in high school? Remember the teacher (or two) who seemed a little too chummy with the lambs?

Don't be that guy. It's creepy. The kids know this even if you don't.

Facebook is primarily a social tool, designed to deliver ads designed for you. It is not, and was never intended to be, an educational tool.

The kids don't want you hanging around with them after school. Really.

Privacy

Mark "I'm CEO....Bitch" Zuckerberg keeps changing the rules on Facebook.

I'm one of the few folks on the planet that reads EUA's. They can be pretty scary. Read Facebook's for comprehension, then tell me straight-faced that you're comfortable with it.

Professional laziness

I used to be a professional. Now I am a teacher.

I love teaching, and I'm getting pretty good at it, but it takes an ungodly amount of hours to get there.

Facebook is a shortcut. You're using a third party with its own agenda to create something useful for your classroom.

You want to model good practice? Develop your own class website on a private domain. You can do it for less than the Coffee Club dues.

Yes, there's a learning curve. No, it's not free, but it's still less than a cup of coffee a day.

You have control over privacy.
Your site has no ads.
You're no one's bitch.

We have a choice. We can act like professionals, or we can continue to take the easier paths. The two are not compatible.

Our primary duty is to the children. If you use a third party to do your work, follow the money.

It's not enough to adopt a technology because everybody else is doing it. We got mobs for that.

Twitter is creepy

I'm on my second go-round with Twitter¹. It's a marvelous place to share resources, and an even more marvelous place to waste time while pretending to share resources.

It's (again) failing my death bed conversion question--were your hours being a Twit worth the time?

***

An interesting "chat" developed last night. (Not sure anything limited to 140 character strings counts as a chat...)

A couple of online bright online folks who also teach science both challenged my belief that we need to draw strict boundaries between teachers and students online. I respect them; their opinions matter.

Here's the gist²:

Follow your students. Follow your parents. Twitter is useful. "But don't follow leaders and watch your parking meters."

I would never follow students here (creepy) and my parents are dead (creepier)

not creepy to "follow" students. more teachers need to follow their students intellectually here and there and everywhere.

It's creepy. I see them in town. I live here. They drop by when I'm on the stoop. But online is creepy.

/We need borders, strong borders, outside the classroom.

we are the same person "online" as "offline." not sure of the distinction you need to make.

Yep, we are, BUT I fart in the bathroom, use the vernacular at the bar, scream at the stadium, and pray in church.

/ When I'm on my stoop, the whole neighborhood sees me--online, mostly strangers.

/ I realize that in the tweetworld I sound like an anomaly--but that's the way most of human society works.

/ The online world is a phenomenally difficult place to draw social distinctions, a plus at times, but a huge negative if naive.

***

• You're an adult, your student a child.
• You're paid to be in school, the student is coerced.
• You hold the child's esteem in your classroom demeanor, and her future in your grade book.
• You are presumably wiser, the student more naive.

We wield phenomenal power over students. We forget this at our (and our students') peril.

***

Twitter is a public space, I get that. So is the Bloomfield Green. I occasionally bump into students there.

Teachers have a responsibility to model reasonable behavior in a public space, I get that, too. You won't see me cavorting through the Green wearing a clown suit. OK, not more than once....

Teachers are models. Part of being an adult is recognizing social boundaries and knowing what behavior is appropriate when.

Children need to learn this. Apparently, some of us, do, too.

¹Twitter is an archived chat service that let's you yammer at others in 140 or less character bursts. You can choose which groups to join on the fly, and you can link to online resources. It can be a wonderful resource, just like alcohol can be a wonderful relaxant.

²I edited out a lot of extraneous nonsense, and the "/" represents breaks in the messages. The italicized print represents one of the two teachers, the plain text is me.

The Creeping Terror may be on my top 10 favorite movie theme songs list--image lifted from Apocalypse Later.

And the answer to the first question? No, not for me....I'm done with Twitter.

Bill Gates's view of Heaven

Please tell me this is a spoof, that the oligarchs infecting Arne's brain like earwigs* do not believe that this is what it's all about:

Bill Gates wants to dictate education in your town.
Bill Gates envisions the world above.

Why not just turn us all into hamsters?

*Yes, I know, earwigs do not really eat into your brain through your ears. What you might not know is that they don't really pinch much, and that they care for their young. Really....Which is more than I can say for Bill Gates, at least judging by the way he cares for my students.

The Habitrail photo is by JediLofty under Gnu license

Cult of personality

We're testing this week, and I'm cranky. Correlation?

We also believe that if we want to improve student outcomes, especially in high-poverty schools, nothing is more important than ensuring that there are effective teachers in every classroom and effective leaders in every school.

Arne the Scarecrow, March 3, 2010
House Committee on Education and Labor

I used to work in the projects--Stella Wright Homes, Mravalag Manor, Hayes Homes, Bradley Court, Pennington Court--an America we keep hidden in polite company.

Teachers matter, and they matter a lot. But they do not matter as much as food, as heat in February, as albuterol for wheezing. They do not matter as much as coats and underwear. They do not matter as much as a quiet bed, a caring guardian. Abraham Maslow mentioned this way back before Arne was born with the silver spoon up the wrong side of his alimentary canal

Just when I thought his crüe was creepingly complete, with Al Sharpton and Newt Gingrich serving as Arne's Dementors, he has now recruited General Powell.




Under the leadership of our Founding Chairman, General Colin Powell, and our current Board Chair, Alma Powell, the Alliance has become the nation’s largest partnership focused on the well-being of our young people.

America's Promise Alliance blurb

Ah, the well-being of our young people--the same man whose false words ("Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a post-September 11th world") helped lead our young people into a disastrous unwinnable war now has joined the crüe.

Powell's little white lie was driven by data, no?

***

It's testing week. I see my kids working hard on tests that have little value.

I can save a few bucks by pointing out the obvious--there will be a strong correlation between my students' socioeconomic status (a fancy way of separating the full and empty bellies) and their scores.

Yep, teachers matter. Yep, we cannot lower expectations because a child was foolish enough to pick a poor placenta. But until someone shows me a definitive study showing that poor districts are going out of their way to hire incompetent teachers, I'm going to continue to point out the obvious.

I've pulled live cockroaches out of children's ears. I've begged for asthma medicine (and may have borrowed some, too). I've stolen antibiotics. I've treated toddlers for gonorrhea and tuberculosis.

Want to guess how they fared later in life on these tests?

Arne, do you really believe the nonsense you spout? Really?

Five inventions that have doomed humanity

I just read a fun post tweeted by dtitle, "Five amazing inventions that will doom us all!"

Why wait for the future, though? We already have all kinds of technological doo-dads that have doomed humanity (if not humans):

(Runners-up: Automobiles, telephones, and the incandescent lamp. And record players (recommended by John Spencer).)


Number Five: Television (and other forms of e-media)

Very few folks control television, and very few appreciate how this medium has altered our minds. Democracy depends on discourse, and folks who spend hours a day "consuming" visions produced by very wealthy people with very narrow objectives effectively remove themselves as true citizens (though they can, alas, still vote).

Democracy is essentially dead in the States, and hasn't flourished in most parts of the world anyway, so as influential as televison is, I relegated it to fifth place here.




Number Four: The Haber Process

Prometheus gave us fire, Fritz Haber gave us nitrogen fixation. We were now one with the gods.

Before the Haber process, only bacteria and bolts of lightning made nitrogen available for life. Without nitrogen, we have no proteins, no nucleic acids. Haber gave humans control of the nitrogen cycle. We are gods now, able to make ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen.

We no longer had to rely on poop for fertilizer. Our huge human population depends on fertilizer made possible by the Haber process. Ammonia can also be used to make lots of explosives.

Why is this on the list (aside from my innnate hatred of golf courses)? Haber's process created industrialized agriculture. We disconnected ourselves from the mystery (or so we think), and now believe we can continue to grow food relentlessly, without thought.

Haber helped trigger the Green Revolution. In the end, it will only mean that many more carcasses to burn when our fossil fuels are depleted, and artificial fertilizers become too expensive for all but the elite.

Fritz Haber also developed chlorine gas for use in warfare, and personally oversaw its use in France.




Number Three: The written word

Yep, I use them. I read, I write, I even (*gasp*) blog. I'm a hypocrite.

Words are abstract. They freeze moments. Our collective oral memory evolves through generations, tailoring the needs of the clan with the needs of the community. The written word changes all this.

NONE of any of the rest of this list happens with oral tradition alone. The written Bible does not happen, nor the written Koran. Old conflicts dissolve with time in the oral tradition. The written word keeps grudges alive forever.

In my best moments, words disappear.

I'm OK with burning books, as long as we burn all of them.




Number Two: Computers

We can now process thought faster than we can think. Every one of you reading this post can be traced. Databases record your keystrokes. There is no longer privacy for anyone committed to living the 21st century life.

I'd like to pick my nose and maybe even savor the results without anyone knowing. (That was allegorical, folks.)

Computers allow telecommunications, allow nuclear weaponry, allow large hadron colliders, allow genomic typing, allow pretty much every foray into risky high tech hi-jinks without an iota of thought.

OK, they allow Zelda, too, so it's almost a wash.





And number one:
Nuclear weapons

We got 'em, lots of them. So does Russia, and China. The Brits. The cozy buddies India and Pakistan. Did I mention France? France!?

Well that's OK, no rogues states, eh. (Ooops...almost forgot. NORTH KOREA!)

Maybe Israel. And soon, perhaps, Iran.

But it's OK, we all love each other, and would never use them, right?







Yoshihiro, the baby died 11 days later.
Tanaka Kio, the mother, lived until December 9, 2006.

Their story, our story, is here.

Television pic from https://ishcmcwiki.wikispaces.com, via CC 3.0
Fritz is from wikipedia
The open Bible is from wikipedia, too
Univac via Georgia Gwinnett College
Yoshihiro and Tanaka's photo was taken by Yamahata Yosuke.

Am I serious about this list?
Yes.

I'd love to hear your opinions....