Employers in many professions pay close attention to staffers’ digital footprints, but teachers can fall into a special category. Educators are often held to a higher community standard than the average working stiff, and need to take extra care to make sure their social networking activities are up to snuff.
Here are some tips to creating a positive online presence:
1. Check the policies for your school or district. Before you do anything, make sure it falls within the rules.
2. Know your privacy settings. Most websites offer varying levels of privacy for users. Facebook, for example, allows users several levels of privacy for each photo, status update or other posting, from “everyone,” to “friends only.” Users can even customize postings to be visible only to certain people on their friends list.
3. Be careful about what you post. Even at the strongest privacy settings, your postings could still become visible to others. Someone could see your posting via a friend’s account if that friend uses her laptop or phone in a public place. If you want to complain about your coworkers or brag about how many tequila shots you did last night, don’t do it on any online network.
4. Know your friends. Some websites, like LinkedIn, are geared for purely professional networking, while others, like Facebook, are designed more for personal use but can have professional applications. Consider why you have joined a certain site and manage your contacts and activities accordingly.
5. Don’t “friend” your students. There are ways to involve your students in social networking, such as setting up a classroom blog or wiki that is visible to everyone. Some teachers have set up a Facebook fan page for their classroom that allows them to communicate with students and parents. But again, make sure you check your local board policy before creating anything on social networks that includes your student.
6. Once you set your privacy filters, log out of your account and search for yourself. Make sure that what you see is what you want to be visible. Also you should regularly search for yourself on Google or other search engines.
7. Practice good social-networking hygiene. Revisit your account settings periodically. Check what you’ve posted. Are you still happy with it? If not, remove photos or videos that do not represent how you want to be seen. Remember: If you wouldn’t want your boss or your grandmother to see it, take it down.