It's bad enough that Al Upton got his class blog yanked, but now a teacher has lost his job over his online presence.
FWIW, this was the fellow from Doha, Qatar, who joined me and Clay Burell on an amazing Skype chat a few weeks ago.
It's not as if he posted pr0n or hatespeech, or that he posted anything offensive at all - according to his account, the problem was the fact that he linked his personal life to his professional life.
It's horribly ironic that recently a number of us were talking about the very same thing, and I concluded that I've pretty much given up trying to separate my "public and professional" online identity from my "private" online self. I think I even left a comment on the post that Jabiz felt obliged to take down.
How can we teach our students to be transparent, integrated, whole human beings if we are forced to compartmentalize ourselves?
Friday, March 14, 2008
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2 comments:
This is awful... Nobody should lose their job over this...
A blog post is what it is: an opening to further discussion. It is not a peer-review truth that is meant to be carved in stone...
I guess the best we can do is make sure that people know a little bit more about netiquette and online identity, since anything that goes online is in your permanent record forever (much more permanent that any record in our school system anyway).
Obviously I don't know what he posted on his personal blog however it's a shame the school didn't take into account how much he inspired the students. And if what was posted wasn't appropriate surely the school should have remembered that we all make mistakes?
Sue Waters
Mobile Technology in TAFE
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