Thursday, April 26, 2007

Internet Boundaries

This is a good article, check out the whole thing:

Web sites cross teacher-student lines

A handful of teens posted messages about grades, extracurricular activities and substitute teachers on an embattled Jackson Middle School teacher's personal Web site in the months before she was accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a student.

The teens, who identified themselves from Titusville or anonymous Florida locations like "SomeWhere," freely commented on Janet Lea Hughes' MySpace.com page. Several more were listed as "friends" on the page.

Internet experts say social networking sites like MySpace.com and Facebook.com ease conversations between students and teachers. But the technology usually does not push adults over the student-teacher line.

"A professional educator does not cross those boundaries in physical space and they do not cross them in virtual space," said Dianne Lynch, dean of Park School of Communications at Ithaca College in Ithaca, N.Y. "When you are a professional, you are a professional. Sometimes we overestimate the power of technology."

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