Oh, FFS. Seriously.
Amanda Ober reports:
Controversy surrounds the school district’s decision to monitor students’ and teachers’ social media posts.
Orange County Public Schools has started monitoring students’ and teachers’ social media posts with a new software program called “Snaptrends.” It allows the school district to search thousands of posts on sites like Twitter and Instagram to hunt for keywords that might indicate trouble. School officials said the goal is to flag potential dangers, including cyberbullying, suicide and crime.
“If they are sitting in a classroom and they are tweeting because they are mad at their teacher or their girlfriend for whatever reason, and there are some threatening words there, we need to be able to know if it is credible,” said Joie Cadle of the Orange County School Board.
Why are they even tweeting in school? And what rights do they have in the privacy of their own home if they want to vent about a teacher? I hope the kids are smart enough to mark their posts private and not public or protect their Twitter accounts and only allow people they know to follow them.
And how do the employees feel about having their social media posts made from home monitored by their employee?