Blog #10- Exploratory writing for web assignment

I just want to start this blog by saying that I'm not quite sure what exactly we are supposed to post, but I'm just going to write what's on my mind.

For my web assignment, I want to do something that relates to teachers having social networking profiles such as Myspace and facebook. I am an aspiring teacher and will have my degree by the end of December 2009. I also have profiles on a few different social networking websites: Myspace, Facebook, and Orkut. Although I have these pages, I do not post anything that is too informative of my social life (i.e. what I do outside the classroom). I feel as though everyone, including teachers should be able to have these personal profiles, but to limit the material in which they post.

While looking at other sources to gather information about this topic, there have been a few cases where teachers got into trouble. It is their own stupidity. They were the ones who posted pictures that revealed too much of what they do in their personal lives, and ultimately, their jobs were at risk.

The focus that I want to take for this hypertext essay assignment is as follows.
1. Teachers are role models and have many students who look up to them for advice and guidance. Having said that, there shouldn't be any objections to teachers having these pages as long as their content is PG rated and stuff that is okay if students happen to stumble across it.
2. What about teachers who teach at the high school level. How is the student- teacher relationship affected if teachers befriend students? (this issue doesn't apply to elementary teachers as most children at that age, do not have social networking profiles).
3. Do the risque pages matter if teacher performance is not threatened and if students and parents (and school officials) don't see them?
4. If school districts put a ban against teachers having these social networking profiles, isn't that taking away their first amendment?

My personal opinion, as mentioned above, I don't see why there is an issue if teachers have these profiles, as long as certain rules are followed. Those are that they should set their profiles to private, so that students can't have access to their pages. They should not post any picture which are too revealing or explicit of how they live their lives outside of school. And most importantly, they should make sure their information is not R rated (i.e. "young, single teacher, looking for lover"---> stuff along those lines). Thus concludes what I intend my focus of the web assignment to be on.