Page 7 - Professsional Advisory: Maintaining Professionalism - Use of Electronic Communication and Social Media

Minimizing the Risks: Advice to Members
Interact with students appropriately
• As a digital citizen, model the behaviour you expect to see online from your students.
• Teach students appropriate online behaviour and the proper use of comments and images.
• Maintain professional boundaries by communicating with students and others electronically at appropriate times of the day and through established education platforms (for example, an authorized school web page rather than a personal account).
• Maintain your professionalism by using
a formal, courteous and professional tone in all communications with students
and parents.
• Avoid exchanging private texts, phone numbers, personal email addresses, videos or photos of a personal nature with students.
• Do not issue, and decline, “friend” or “follow” requests from students. Consider the privacy implications of accepting these requests from parents.
• Notify parents and your school admin- istrator before using social networks for classroom activities. Check your employment policies to see if you are required to provide an administrator or parents with access passwords.
Understand privacy concerns
• Respect the privacy and confidentiality of student information and others in your school community.
• Obtain consent forms before tweeting or posting any student work, digital pictures or other identifying information on social media or websites.
• Check frequently the privacy and security settings of photos and other content on social media accounts as they may change without your notice. Remember, your privacy is never guaranteed.
• Set appropriate restrictions to maximize your privacy on social media accounts, ensuring that students cannot view or post content.
• Assume that your emails and the content you post can be accessed or altered.
• Review and understand all user agree- ments before providing consent,
• Monitor regularly all content you
or others post to your social media accounts and remove anything that is inappropriate.
• Ask others not to tag you on any photo- graphs without your permission.
• Ask others to remove any undesirable content related to you and keep record of your request.
PROFESSIONAL ADVISORY: USE OF ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION AND SOCIAL MEDIA 5