Getting ‘YouTubed’ big issue facing teachers, professors
August 16, 2011
Comments on this story
(9)
Kristin Rushowy
EDUCATION REPORTER
It’s called getting “YouTubed” — and it’s not something Ontario’s elementary teachers want to happen to them.
In a unanimous vote Tuesday afternoon, the 800 delegates to the annual meeting of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario voted to push schools and school boards to have clear policies — and punishments — around the unauthorized use of video and audio recordings, as well as photos, taken by students using personal electronic devices.
“A lot of times, the teacher is unaware this is going on,” said Oakville teacher Dave Buddell. “You go to YouTube and you see teachers, completely unaware they are being (videotaped), and I’ve seen teachers being baited into reacting.”
Because technology is changing at such a rapid pace, Halton union local president Marg Macfarlane said boards will have to continually update policies.
“There are benefits to keeping up-to-date and using technology,” she said, but personal electronic devices “need to be used appropriately.”
She said many board policies refer to school technology only, not students’ personal devices.
“We’ve had to deal with an increasing number of concerns related to members being subject to the abuse of technology,” she said, such as students creating Facebook pages in their teacher’s name and posting inappropriate content, or sending out friend requests to students (which the Ontario College of Teachers recently advised teachers not to do.)
Other teachers have been the subject of Facebook pages created as a place for students to post insults, or even been taped during private conversations with students.
This is a huge issue for educators, added Macfarlane, and she was not surprised it passed overwhelmingly.
The York Region District School Board “shares teachers’ concerns about potential abuses” of technology, said spokesperson Ross Virgo, and at the start of the year students and their parents are asked to sign a form that clearly states appropriate uses.
In the U.S., schools and universities have grappled with videotaping, where students provoke the teacher and post the response online.
“With the ubiquity of recording devices, it’s not like you have to haul out a big camera . . . almost everyone in the classroom has a smartphone and can record what goes on,” said Jim Turk of the Canadian Association of University Teachers.
But while “malicious entrapment” is easy to punish, there are other issues surrounding recordings that aren’t as clear-cut.
If a university student records and publishes a professor’s lecture, “it raises intellectual property concerns,” he said, adding it could also hamper students or faculty from speaking freely.
“I think it could really create a chilling effect on the kind of open and experimental kind of discussion that is characteristic of the teaching environment.”