Last Friday, as the snow cancelled school for the fourth day in a week, and our website hosts went down, our Principal, Mark Steed, set up a school Facebook group.
Within a day it had over 900 members and what started was a quite polarised debate, initiated by students, regarding the degree to which teachers were invading their privacy. They also found it hard to conceptualise the fact we were using Facebook to communicate with them in a formal capacity - leaving messages about cancelled sports fixtures, and more controversially for the students, setting work to make up for the four days lost.
This debate, which we have embraced, was timely. The Principal and I had been talking for some weeks about ways to cover European Internet Safety Week, which began on February 9th. Now we had our opportunity.
Interestingly, many students couldn't get their heads round the fact we ought not to be on first name terms, that TXT SPK isn't student-teacher speak, or that it's wrong to post inappropriate language on an official school group.
And so it came to pass that on Sunday I put together a presentation, ready to deliver this week to the various sections of our school. So far, we've spoken to the Sixth form and the girls' senior school. On Thursday we'll be chatting to the boys.
I've turned the presentation I made into an online booklet, courtesy of issuu.com. It can be read either like a digital book, with animated turning pages (my favourite option), or as full screen slides. I've left out the opening animation for reasons of privacy, but let me tell you about it.
Since so many students had made me a friend, I had access to much of their personal information. The idea of using privacy settings seemed alien to them. So, I helped myself to dozens of mobile phone numbers, and turned them into an animated opening sequence. As you can imagine, a fair few sixth formers were perturbed to see their phone numbers flashing up on the big screen. It certainly drove the message home.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the presentation and do let me know your thoughts.
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