Musings on the Missouri Facebook Law

On July 14, 2011, Missouri passed into law The Amy Hestir Student Protection Act.

According to the HuffingtonPost, this law's being nicknamed the Facebook Law because of two key sentences:

No teacher shall establish, maintain, or use a work-related internet site unless such site is available to school administrators and the child's legal custodian, physical custodian, or legal guardian. 

and

No teacher shall establish, maintain, or use a nonwork-related internet site which allows exclusive access with a current or former student.

 The bulk of the law may be beneficial, but these two inclusions are TERRIBLE.  It shouldn't take a state or federal law to lay out what professional ethics and common sense should cover.  Putting it into law allows Missouri to arrest teachers who violate it, which might sound good.  Prosecuting teachers who have sex with their students is a good thing, yeah?  But we already have laws against that sort of thing.  And adding this law wouldn't prevent student/teacher sex.  It would only restrict the freedoms of other teachers, who are only trying to reach the kids where they live -- in cyberspace.

From my 40-something perspective, kids already have trouble with appropriate language in adult situations, bad spelling from texting, an inconceivably naive notion of privacy online, and very little respect for professions (like teaching) that used to command it.  (And I lay some blame on parents who eschew their responsibility for disciplining their children and demonstrate disrespect for educational professionals in front of their kids.)  The teachers who take on the next generation of children need new tools, new approaches, and all the support they can get.

I would much rather see Missouri issue a requirement that schools receiving public funds must have and enforce a code of ethics that includes appropriate online behavior between teachers and students and administration/parental access to cyber conversations as requested.  And leave it at that.  If you're in violation of your workplace's code of ethics, it could be a firing offense. 

It's more important to nurture self policing via a commitment to ethics than add more laws to the books.  Teachers should not be treated as criminals before they even meet your kids.

Google+ and social media overload

I check Facebook news feed daily now.  Yes, it's a security pitfall (even if you lock it down), yes, they don't appear to care about MY content or MY privacy, but it's a calculated risk on my part -- I get a lot from it, so it's worth it.  It is there that I've found long lost friends, remembered how funny and interesting they are, and would miss not hearing about their daily travails.  So OK, I drank the Kool-aid.

Now comes Google+, appealing to all of us geeks, telling us they'll protect our privacy, that they respect our content, that they'll give us all the things we lamented about Facebook, if only we'll shift over. I'm curious, so I signed up.  Only they're not really ready yet -- they're not letting me in -- their pilot is oversubscribed or some such annoyance. A friend of mine (who made it in early) claims it's great, that he's already got 70+ connections on it in less than 3 days, which represents roughly 33% of his Facebook Friend entourage.  He feels that 33% in 3 days is a pretty good indicator that eventually he'll get most of the folks he's interested in.  I don't know. . .

It's taken some folks a long time just to make it to Facebook for a once-a-month check-in.  I don't see those folks being persuaded to check something ELSE.  For the folks who do check in more regularly, they've already done the work of finding and connecting with friends--why should they do it all twice?  For the folks who have exercised every security option Facebook offers, why would they want to get in on the ground floor of something likely to have just as many growing-pains security concerns as any other online community?  For the folks who simply like Google and their innocent, childlike primary colors, are you SURE?  I applaud their standing up to China in the face of its obvious state-sponsored hacking activities, but Google will not save us if it's not profitable. This is not Mr. Rogers' Google.

So yeah, I'll try it out and I'll keep an open mind.  I am a geek after all.  But I will also be looking for a lot of answers.  I'm not investing in "+" if it doesn't deliver.