Kathleen Johnson: EDTECH: Social Networking: My Classroom Social Media Policy

Below, you will find the social media policy that I made for my classroom. I decided to make one specifically for my classroom with the help of my school's Bring Your Own Device Policy and other resources referenced as well that can be found below. When searching my school district's policy, I could never find a clear-cut social media policy and therefore decided to make my own for my individual classes. Before ever using this, I would definitely want to get feedback from my coworkers, administration, parents, and students. I also believe that my fellow peers in this class could provide great feedback as well considering we are all researching the same material right now. I feel that this type of policy is a very serious yet needed one so I would want to make sure it covers everything that it would need to. I could easily share this in person with others to get feedback or even make a Google Form that could allow people to leave feedback with their name or anonymously even if they prefer.

When it came to making the actual policy, I decided to pick a theme as I feel students relate better to themes that may be easy to remember. Through knowing I needed to include at least ten policies, I played with words that I could make an acronym out of that would relate to the overall idea of the policy. Through that idea, I came up with "But first, let me 'take a selfie'." I thought this theme could be funny for students and therefore encourage them to actually pay attention to the policy and read it. It also explores taking a selfie in a different way by having the student make sure they appear well online and have their own positive digital footprint. I feel being safe and smart online is a lot about looking at one's surroundings and one's self so this theme seemed to fit that idea well. I also decided to keep my 11 policies short and to the point. If there is anything I've taken away from teaching high schoolers so far is that they hate when the directions are long. Therefore, I knew they probably wouldn't read a policy either the longer it became.