Today I have got myself sorted and written a guide on Facebook security for our school website. It’s one of those jobs I’ve been putting off but today I bit the bullet and went for it.
I’m in a primary school and the Facebook age limit is 13, so I could bury my head in the sand and pretend that none of our children are on Facebook and ignore it. As far as I’m aware there has never been a problem with Facebook in school so I could just let it be, but I’d rather be pro-active. But where to start?
The worry for me is that I don’t want to promote Facebook but I do want to ensure children know about their privacy settings and how to stay safe. The upshot is that by reading the guide hopefully parents will also have a bit more of an idea. Like many others, I liken it to crossing a busy road. I don’t really want them doing it, but if they’re going to then they should know enough to do it safely. There is a 3-step plan with step 1 being to identify how many have accounts and put up some guidance on our website (done), step 2 being to start introducing new e-safety planning in all year groups and then the final step will be to run events for parents to ensure that they are aware too. This will be a continual process as the boundaries are constantly changing, especially where Facebook and privacy are concerned! For example, how many of you heard about Facebook places? Or know how to turn it off? (it’s in my guide, below)
I know there are other social media out there, and I will tackle those later, but Facebook is numero uno.
Our school’s new guidance is here. I’d love to hear what you do in your school/local authority or if you have any ideas of how I can improve my guidance for pupils and parents.
Edit – If you wish to use/adapt these guidelines for your school you are more than welcome. Please just link back to here or add my name. Thanks 🙂
Well done Ian for ‘biting the bullet’. It is a tricky one but I think it is better to give the children the skills they need. I would be very interested to know what , if any feed back you get from parents!
I was talking about Facebook Places with my girlfriend today and she didn’t know about it or that it is enabled by default and that she would have to go through settings to turn it off. Needless to say many more people, including primary aged children, will have no idea about this ‘feature’ nor how to switch it off.
In my previous school I did a quick ‘hands up who has a Facebook account’ in 3 classes. Half of those in each class had one and some had accounts set up by parents. Parents need to be educated as much as the children in how to use social media tools safely and those that I spoke about it had no idea about privacy settings when using these tools.
If they don’t how are we to expect children to? I have maintained a belief that it is better to educate children and their parents about this rather than turning a blind eye. Your three step plan and tips to help create a safer social media experience for users is something that I too will endeavor to put in place at my current school.
I have read about the views of a few educators about Facebook and I have to say that giving children and parents advice IS the right thing to do.
This is a brilliant page.
Would it be possible to borrow it for our school website (with acknowledgement, of course)?