From the “Circling the Wagons Department” it seems the New York City Department of Education has laid down the law about employees referencing their blogs in their e-mail signatures. For some reason, letting others know that your are a blogger is highly problematic, and the city is providing disclaimer language for anyone in the department who blogs and who comments on other’s blogs. (Hadn’t heard that one before.) As Lisa Nielsen, the manager of professional development for the Department of Instructional Technology writes on her blog, it’s not a direction that serves the DOE.
I find this particularly upsetting because…having a blog is a great way to get the digital footprint conversation going as well as model best practices for using 21st Century tools to build professional learning communities and personal learning networks that support the work we do. In fact, I think it would be terrific if all educators with professional blogs celebrated and shared their work in their email signatures.
No doubt, employee blogs can be problematic and are not always to be celebrated. And I do recognize the need to monitor what people in your organization are doing. But the reality here is this: educators in New York City who want to connect and share with other educators around the world are going to do that. Some of them will do it well, others, notsomuch. Celebrate the former, educate the latter. Learn from the experience and from the sharing that takes place. In the end, this is once again just lazy policy in action.
At the beginning of this school year we received a directive from the superintendent forbidding anything in an email signature line other than name, address, and phone number.
Quite a few people blamed me for triggering the memo, not for my blog address that’s always there, but because of the quotation I’ve used for many years, the opening line from Paul Simon’s Kodachrome: “When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all.”
It turns out he (and the district lawyers) didn’t like the biblical lines some were including, probably because a parent complained. I asked specifically about including the address of a personal web site and they rejected the idea since “we have no means of monitoring and verifying the content being linked to”.
That’s slightly off topic but it is an example of how sensitive people get when it comes to the ways we choose to identify ourselves in the age of mass personal communications.
Thanks for this post which gave me a great, new blogger to follow (Lisa). Now I’m off to change the signature message in my email to include my blog, wiki and del.icio.us addresses.
It is far easier to make a blanket ban with teachers (because we are used to it) than it is to deal with irate parents. The admins have to answer to them, not us. (Is that really true? Who let that happen???)
[…] Will Richardson posted today about a similar topic. According to Will, “…the New York City Department of Education […]
This policy doesn’t make sense if you extent it to a greater degree.
Tim Stahmer mentions the following quote that sounds right on to me as a typical policy statement - “we have no means of monitoring and verifying the content being linked to”.
While this statement is certainly true, it would also be true that content is content. Technically, the district has no way to verify or monitor what I could say over the telephone to someone, either, so we better not put a phone number in that e-mail!
For that matter, we better not allow mail addresses, either, because there is no way to verify or monitor what someone might decide to write in a letter and mail to someone.
Tim is being pretty provocative with his footer - as a principal I would be having a word with someone who had that on a school email address too.
As to banning the lot …. babies and bath water spring to mind. I have my blog, school website, skype, iChat, landline and cell ph, and address in mine. I have been pretty critical of government policy at times and have been tackled by MoE people about things I have said. However, my blog is openly in my own name and my school board of trustees certainly are overtly aware I am a blogger. What I say is my opinion, not school or MoE policy. Lets stop being so precious!
Of course the lyric wasn’t chosen casually. But the line always stuck in my head because of the groups of Paul Simon-type students in my classes, the kids who were far more interested in the arts or writing or car repair or something other than the algebra/geometry I was trying to get them to learn.
In the current high stakes testing atmosphere found in most schools, we are squeezing out those students whose talents lie in areas other the narrow academic topics chosen to test even more. Blogs, cell phones, social networking, and the rest of the ways kids learn outside of school are also not relevant because they don’t fit into that prep-for-the-test structure (or at least most educators don’t see how they could).
Greg, I’m glad you are able to be so open with your blogging. Like Will, I wish everyone could, including teachers in New York City.
Thank you for bringing attention to this matter as well as being a person who inspired me to begin creating my professional digital footprint. With your prodding I now have a platform to focus attention on issues of great relevance and value to educators in NYC and beyond.
My hope and belief is that bringing attention to issues such as this will ultimately be for the collective good. I plan to keep interested parties updated on this and other issues of importance at my blog.
Lisa Nielsen
The Innovative Educator
http://TheInnovativeEducator.blogspot.com
My upper school principal just asked me to help “seed a conversation” about this in an upper school faculty meeting.
Despite my best efforts (see http://butwait.pbwiki.com/Digital-Citizenship-for-Educators), I’m not sure it went all that well.
I look forward to following this conversation as it develops… it can get a little rocky out here on the early adopter end of the spectrum.
(FWIW, I have about 32 .sigs that I use, mostly quotes, some from religious traditions, and I sign all my emails with “In peace,” as the closing. No trouble there, at least not so far. Despite being a huge Paul Simon fan, I’m not using the word “crap” in communication to parents anytime soon. Everyone’s idea of “appropriate” is a little different, and therein lies the rub. One of them, anyway.)
Tim - with the things happening in the ‘Sates (NYC) and in Australia (Allan Upton) recently to shut down blogs etc because of political correctness and mind control gone mad I am certainly very grateful to be teaching in far away old NZ. We have some very exciting things happening in this country with Web2.0 tools and the Ministry of Education is actively encouraging them with our ICT PD Programme.
It is sad for your system that you have administrators who have such a narrow, and controlling world view.
Check out Lisa Nielsons blog (link above) for her entry on ethical digital footprints. Nicely put Lisa!
A big thanks to everyone here and especially Will for your attention to this subject. For those following the conversation I wanted to share my new post called “The Creative Workaround and A Great Idea for Professional Email Signatures,” where I share a great idea for my new blog url-less email signature. I suggest including “Google Me at…” in your signature. What a great way to get the conversation started about creating an active digital footprint and holding innovative educators accountable for doing so. Read the full post at http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com (tags/labels: freedom of speech).
Lisa Nielsen
The Innovative Educator
Google me at “Educating Innovatively.”
Hey Lisa,
I really like this twist and will be interested to see if you get any pushback. And I think this is one way to think about preparing our kids for this. They will be Googled…what will those Googlers find? Fight on.
Thanks for the support. I’m happy to hear you like the workaround. I’ll be sure to update everyone here and on my blog about how things progress. Wouldn’t it be great if the attention to the issue resulted in them reconsidering the mandate? Whether or not it does, I’m happy to that many edubloggers around the globe have shared that they now have a new professional email signature and are encouraging others to follow suit.
Lisa Nielsen, The Innovative Educator
http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com
All writing requires risks, some more than others. “Free speech” doesn’t protect us from consequences nor would we want it to since we write to create consequences/effects. However, if we discourage our teachers from writing and taking intellectual risks then what example does that send to our students? Not writing and not being intellectual are also significant risks for teachers to take with potentially terrible consequences.
In short, there’s no escaping risk. The trick is to be skillful while avoiding cynicism and principled while remaining rhetorically effective.
Thanks for the comment, Alex. I think too often we don’t provide opportunities or support for teachers to be intellectuals, to expect it of them in fact. And I don’t mean asking them to all be bloggers as much as expecting them to be participants in conversations larger than their classroom practice. To model engagement and passion on some level other than what the curriculum directs.
Yes Will, I couldn’t agree more. As we often say, it’s not about the technology; it’s about thoughtful participation in a kind of public space–the web and blogs being one such space. I’m not one to equate being intellectual with having degrees. However that said, less than 10% of the US population over 25 have Masters degrees, like many teachers do. Teachers have spent an extraordinary amount of time dedicated to developing certain kinds of intellectual practices.
We should expect that practice from them, and I say that imagining that the majority will express values that I disagree with. However I’d rather see those values out in the open where I can engage them.
The teacher doesn’t have to “be lazy.” She could defy her employer, be terminated and fight the issue on the grounds of her first amendment rights.
As I’ve explained to my children when a publication censors my articles, freedom of the press extends to the owner of the press.
Sure, we can self-publish now due to advances in technology, but should not have an expectation that some other entity will subsidize that speech.
The issue of whether blogging is automatically intellectual can be left for another time.
Thanks for the comment Gary. Once again, I find the response interesting in the way you interpret the conversation. Where do you read that blogging “automatically” equals intellectual practice?
Having been an ICT PD facilitator I couldn’t have done the job (well) without my blog. Lisa it would be interesting to provide ‘robust feedback’ to the District as part of your appraisal process about how the lack of overt link to it has limited your ability to fulfill your job description??
Will,
Alex spoke of teachers “being intellectual” in the context of writing and taking “intellectual risks” while blogging.
You then replied by saying, “Alex. I think too often we don’t provide opportunities or support for teachers to be intellectuals, to expect it of them in fact.”
You did not equate blogging with intellectual activity explicitly, but Alex then responds to you by speaking of teachers engaged in “intellectual practices” two sentences after suggesting that blogs might be a space for such expressions of intellectualism.
Gary,
While we may not be able to explicitly equate blogging, social networks, and the like with intellectual activity, they have tremendous potential to do so and provide an opportunity for teachers to engage in intellectual practices. While this isn’t automatic, the tools make it possible and that is fantastic. In my blog post today I share an example of how my social network has promoted intellectual activity with it’s newest member who shared that she was bursting with answers and shaking with excitement that she will finally be heard. She thanked me for creating an outlet that is so needed because teachers don’t always have a chance to exchange ideas.
I did have the expectation that the NYC DOE would support me in sharing a professional blogs, social network etc. I couldn’t imagine that they would not celebrate quality publishing and stimulation of pedagogical connections and conversations. Heck they paid 80 million dollars to create a system to do just that and I’m doing it for free in my spare time. I’m disappointed that they have enacted this mandate and I’m hoping they will reconsider. I’m not sure why it is you believe educators should not have such an expectation. I believe they should. Since this story has come to light many educators have shared they also have this as an expectation so much so that innovative educators around the globe now have new professional email signatures.
Lisa Nielsen - The Innovative Educator
http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com