It all started with an accident of a teacher sending his genitals to his students in a group chat on Whatsapp. Afterwards, numerous different cases of teachers being to intimate with their students were discovered. According to a Dutch labour union for teachers, there are annually 25 teacher fired, because they are to intimate with their students. This stirred up a lot of attention to the topic of where the line is between teachers and students, considering that social media makes it much easier to have contact outside class (Van Der Wal 2015).

Nowadays, a lot of teachers communicate with their students through social media. They might be friends on Facebook, they might follow each other on Twitter and there is even a possibility to contact each other through Whatsapp. Some teachers also use social media as teaching tools, as they give assignments that can be made via social media in order to engage the students (Grisham 2014).

There are different opinions on this matter. Some say that there is nothing wrong with communicating with students through social media. They belief that it is a convenient way to contact students, for example reminding them for deadlines. Also social media is something that interests students and therefore, it makes students more willing to interact. Teachers also belief that students should learn how to communicate differently when talking professionally or personally (Fleming 2014).

On the other side, some people think it is not appropriate to communicate in such a way. They do not see the reason why teacher would want to connect on such level with their students. Furthermore, this way of communicating has led to blurred boundaries and sexual impropriety (which could be seen in the example given above), as teachers dare to say more online than face-to-face (Fleming 2014).

However, as it is impossible to exclude or prohibit this from their lives, it is important to know how teachers and students should handle and behave. Therefore, a few recommendations were given. First of all, the school should have a policy outlining what teacher are and are not allowed to do on social media (Fleming 2014). Secondly, it is advisable for the teacher to think about creating a separate account for personal use and professional use. This could make drawing a line easier for the teacher. Furthermore, teachers should also be transparent about how social media is used in class. Parents, for example, can then see how the communication happens between teachers and students (Pannoni 2015).

What do you guys think? Should teachers use social media to contact with their students or not? Should teachers friend and/or follow students? What about if the student is already graduated? Is it then more appropriate?

Van der Wal, C. (2015). Docenten worstelen met leerlingcontact social media Available at http://www.ad.nl/ad/nl/1012/Nederland/article/detail/4167769/2015/10/21/Docenten-worstelen-met-leerlingcontact-social-media.dhtml [Accessed on 23 Oct. 2015]

Grisham, L. (2014) Teachers, students and social media: where is the line? Available at http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/04/09/facebook-teachers-twitter-students-schools/7472051/ [Accessed on 23 Oct. 2015]

Pannoni, A. (2015) 3 tips for high school teachers to use social media responsibly in class. Available at http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/high-school-notes/2015/09/14/3-tips-for-high-school-teachers-to-use-social-media-responsibly-in-class [Accessed on 23 Oct. 2015]

Fleming, A.R. (2014). Social media boundaries: Should teachers and students be friends? Available at http://www.today.com/parents/social-media-boundaries-should-teachers-students-be-friends-1D80156546 [Accessed on 23 Oct. 2015]

The oh-so-practical magic of open-source innovation: This article is an interview with Marten Mickos, the chief of MySQL. The article shows a new kind of perspective why higher management use open source and what they think about it. However, I also think that the answers where biased, as he is the chief. Therefore, his own opinion and experience could differ from what he said in the interview.

Group size and incentives to contribute: a natural experiment at Chinese Wikipedia: This article discusses the positive relationship between group size and individual’s contribution level. Thus, if the group size increases, the level of contribution will also increase. Overall, I thought that this article was well written and easy to understand with good insights.

Open source software and the ”private-collective” innovation model: Issues for organization science: This article discusses the different models of innovation, private investment model and collective action model, and also discusses the reasons why people  participate in open source software projects. This article explained the concepts well, which made it easier for people who are not knowledgeable in this topic.

The two articles that I found related to this topics discusses the disadvantages of using open source, as there was a lack of discussion for this part. The first articles was written by Kramer, L. (2006) and he talks about the disadvantages of having costs for maintenance services and the possibility of misusing intellectual property. The second article was written by Quittner, J. (2012) and he talks about disadvantages, such as accountability (which was mostly a big issue in the past) and licensing problems.

The two mini-cases examples that I used are Mozilla Firefox and Pale Moon. Both of them are open source web browsers and Pale Moon, which was created by a Dutch developer, is a fork of Mozilla Firefox. I chose these two examples in order to compare them to each other. In conclusion, Pale Moon is a faster web browser, as it removed a lot of features of Mozilla Firefox and Pale Moon uses another search engine by default (DuckDuckGo). This search engines allows people to search without it being saved. Mozilla Firefox is more known amongst people and therefore, they perceive Firefox as more trustworthy.

• Hyatt, J. (2008). The oh-so-practical magic of open-source innovation. MIT Sloan Management Review 50(1) 15-19.
• Von Hippel, E., and von Krogh, G. 2003. Open source software and the “private-collective” innovation model: Issues for organization science. Organization Science 14(2) 209-223.
• Zhang, M. and Zhu, F. (2011). Group size and incentives to contribute: A natural experiment at Chinese Wikipedia. American Economic Review 101(4) 1601-1615.
• Kramer, L. (2006). The Dark side of open source. Wall Street & Technology, 43-44. Available at http://search.proquest.com/docview/206606829?accountid=13598 [Accessed on 14 Oct. 2015]
• Quittner, J. (2012). The risks & rewards of open source software. Credit Union Journal, 16(28), 14. Available at http://search.proquest.com/docview/1025741471?accountid=13598 [Accessed on 15 Oct. 2015]

I decided to write this blog post after watching a documentary on TV with broadcaster Richard Bacon about cyberbullies. The documentary discussed the fact of the increasing use of social network to bully, troll and harass people. In the infograpic below, it can be seen that most of the cyberbullying happens through Facebook. Furthermore, 25% claimed to be a victim of cyberbullying and 2/3 witnessed it. In addition, only 10% of the parents are aware of their children are being bullied online.

Cyberbullying has been increasing the last few years, especially under teenagers. They sit behind their computer and show inappropriate behaviour through social media, like posting negative comments on pictures or post pictures that makes fun of someone else.

There was especially one type of trolling, which astonished me completely: R.I.P trolling. With R.I.P trolling, people are trolling memorial pages, which are set up to honour deceased people. The R.I.P trollers will post pictures and caption the pictures with distasteful messages, such as ‘’LOL you’re dead’’ or ‘’Help me mommy, it’s hot in hell’’.

The documentary that I watched gave the example of Tom Mullaney, a boy who commits suicide because of cyberbullying, but is also a victim of R.I.P trolling. The trollers posted edited pictures of Tom with inappropriate captions. Some of the posts can be seen in the image below.

On the other hand, some people belief that one should just not open a memorial page, as it will lead to these events. They belief that the people should grieve offline and not share it with everybody. However, what I am really wondering about is why people would even think about trolling on memorial pages. What benefits do they receive of doing this and do they not have any morals?

References:

Nobullying.com (2014), Social media bullying has become a serious matter, available at http://nobullying.com/social-media-bullying-has-become-a-serious-problem/ [Accessed on 11 Oct. 2015]

Chen, A. (2011), Why people troll dead kids on Facebook, Available at http://gawker.com/5868503/why-people-troll-dead-kids-on-facebook [Accessed on 11 Oct. 2015]

The anti-social network (2012), available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTfV22Glb6Q [Accessed on 11 Oct. 2015]

Social network sites are used for various things. For example, it is used to connect and communicate with people, gather information and market products and services. Apart from this, they also play an important role in the process of applying for a job. Recruiters screen prospective employees on their personal profiles, which could influence their decision whether to hire or reject the candidate.

Reppler, a social network monitor service, conducted a survey among 300 recruiters about their use of social networks to scan candidates. Their findings were summarized in the following infographic.

As can been seen in the infographic, more than 90% of the employers screen their candidates on social network sites. In addition, 47% of recruiters indicated that they screen job applicants right after they receive the application. This shows how important it is to create a professional image on your social networking sites.

The reason why most recruiters screen their candidates on social media is, due to that most résumés are not revised more than once a year. Therefore, résumés are not up to date, whereas social media profiles provides a more updated version about your expertise and personality. Employers are trying to find evidence that the candidate qualifies for the job and if they are professional. Furthermore, research shows that job applicants, who are not using social media, are less likely to be interviewed by employers.

However, there are disagreements about whether employers should use social media to screen job applicants. Employers discover certain information that are protected by the law, e.g. age, gender, race. In addition, some recruiters consider screening candidates through social networking sites unethical and are concerned about the accuracy of the founded information.

Thus, beware of what you post on social networking websites, as it influences the decision of the recruiters. Also, do you guys think that employers should use social networking sites to screen candidates or do you belief that recruiters should not be allowed to use it?

Sources:

http://www.shrm.org/publications/hrmagazine/editorialcontent/2014/1114/pages/1114-social-media-screening.aspx

http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/5738-social-media-new-resume.html

http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2015/05/more_than_half_of_employers_no_1.html

http://theundercoverrecruiter.com/infographic-how-recruiters-use-social-media-screen-applicants/