Twitter in Education

[Homeland]

As a school we have decided to implement twitter as a means of passing information about the school and future events to parents.

 

As some of the teachers are following the school as well I would like to know if there is a way of stopping people from seeing the schools followers as of course teachers do not want parents harassing them outside school via twitter.

[IrritableTech]

I'm afraid not. You could protect your tweets, but as soon as you approve a new follower, they can see all your other followers.

 

The best option is to recommend that staff add the school twitter account to a private list. That way they can 'follow' fairly easily, but real followers can not see their accounts.

 

I've not heard of many parent contacting teacher issues, sadly it's often parents finding out too much about teacher issues. Teachers need to ensure their accounts are open to scrutiny.

[CAM]

Twitter is a public medium and should be treated as such. If something is private, it shouldn't even go into a protected account or DM. It is very easy to make one slip-up by doing a mention instead of a DM or lapse in account security and you have a crisis on your hands.

[Homeland]

The best option is to recommend that staff add the school twitter account to a private list. That way they can 'follow' fairly easily, but real followers can not see their accounts.

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I have tried creating a private list in my account and adding school into it and also from the schools account but each time you can still see al the followers

.

[IrritableTech]

I think if the staff themselves create a private list and add the school to it, they can see the account more easily (switching to the list) but won't show up as following.

 

Or, they could just view the account every so often.

[Trapper]

No, and you need to have a chat with all your staff.

 

During the snow one of our NQTs who follows the school decided to stick up a photo of the snow and basically moan about the HTs decision to open. Now if I found it I'm sure others would have.

 

Frankly I'd tell staff NOT to follow the school on any social networks to cover themselves.

[timbo343]

Have a read of this.. @IrritableTech gave me the link and the staff at our place thought it was very good guide lines. Twitter for Twitchy Teachers

[nyiss]

We try to avoid having staff follow our twitter for that reason. But we show twitter updates on our website so staff just check it there if they wish to.