Port School Board Adds Social Media to To-Do List

It seems the Port Washington-Saukville School District is ready to follow social media trends as officials are exploring ways to use the online tools in the classroom.

"I think the time has come for us as a school district to decide if, how and when we are going to utilize social media," Superintendent Michael Weber said. "I know there’s a way for us to do this, we just need to make sure we’re paying attention to what we’re doing and don’t get enamored by the technology itself and get carried away."

Weber has been researching social media for the past few months and will give a presentation on using social media in the classroom to the district's administrative council as part of the beginning of the school year training.

Facebook, Twitter, GoogleDocs and more were all discussed during Monday's School Board meeting as a possible extra educational tool within the Port-Saukville School District.

Weber's major concern was that the board roll out the use of social media in a professional and responsible manner so that employees are not utilizing the online sites without "proper boundaries or parameters," which could set the district up for legal problems.

"You are an educator whether you’re in the classroom or you’re at home, and if you’re interacting with students in any medium you have a responsibility (to act as an educator)," he said.

Currently, the school system blocks access to Facebook districtwide, because, Weber said, "that was the easiest way to protect students.

communications teacher Megan Jacoby also suggested the board consider GooglePlus, a new social media that, she said, offers more privacy features.

GooglePlus creates "circles," so that users can group other users into different categories making it easy to share only certain content with specific circles, "so not everybody can see your daily doings," Jacoby said. GooglePlus is also currently an invite-only social media platform.

The School Board will continue researching and learning about social media before making any decisions regarding its use. But both Weber and School Board President Patty Ruth agreed that creating a policy regarding social media is something that is now a priority of the board.