Review of the work „Teacher-Student Online Relationship “

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Source: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B1-0pZFgjFnQaGc2bUNPcFdFd2c

In the article has been given an overview about teacher-student interacting online. First point, that came out – think before accept student invitation in social media. Teachers and also students have different roles to carry – this has to be remembered all the time.

There is also suggested to use some kind of different, academical environments for interacting – Edmodo (http://www.edmodo.com/), Kidblog (http://kidblog.org/) - sounds promising. It seems agreed upon the web space – it would be an interesting experiment: if to declare in one day, that newly created safeeducation.org or something like that - this is the safest place for kids - whether it will be embraced or not?

At the same time there are several references, which claim for better and more open community for learning. I agree with that and would also say, that utilizing nowadays ICT advantages makes more efficient community, which inspires more students.

As well as in the article has been said – teachers have to keep distance and not be too familiar. Otherwise teachers will lose their respect, credibility.Therefore I guess those very popular social networks like Facebook, Twitter – are not suitable for academical work. This would be like to make school at student's home – usually students spend their leisure time there and suddenly they have to work at the same place. Habits are a major force in – therefore in Facebook or similar are more temptations than needed. I would even suggest to use e.g. Mendeley (http://www.mendeley.com/) for such purposes but this has not been mentioned in this article. One suggestion was also to use protected website at school server.

Several moments has been pointed out:

• watch, what and to whom reveal
• unethical risk
• amount of disclosed information affects students perception of the teacher
• better self-disclosure of students
• better teacher credibility
• better social preparation
• enchanced academic perfomance
• social media isn't initially evil
• social networking can easily lose control
• misunderstanding by parents

Well – I would say, that interacting online isn't different than in real life – same courtesy should be used. Better disclosure – I would say, that this is the worst thing I've seen. Due to fact, that students will type fast, there are several typos and often words are shortened and a bit different language is used. This is actually dangerous against officially written language. So – requiring consistent language would be one of the key point using electronical channels interacting between teacher-student.

There are also spoken, that special methodology for teachers is needed. From article it is not clear whether such already exist or not. Due to fact, that actually there should be no difference between real and virtual relationship – I guess such special methodology would not be needed. It's true, that in real life there are some physical risks more but I would say, that words can hurt more than anything else.

There is also written, that psychologist, educational and ICT expert has been used for ideas – it would be interesting – who they are and which ideas they gave.

From results comes out, that foreign people feel more experts than estonians. Does spending more time at computer make better expert? The quality of time spent at computer is second key question.

Well – some ideas and suggestions have been pointed out – these should be mandatory lecture before interacting online.

I agree with claim, that when teacher is seeing students personal life – it can affect assessment. Also in other way – some students may ask more attention in classroom when having teacher as a friend and knowing something more than other students. This is not good for academical relationships. As it seems – old-fashion writing would be also one way. This can be nowadays e-mail but still writing a letter.

So – for conclusion: both teachers and students should pay attention about information they reveal online. Also keep some distance but use all benefits, what online interaction offers. Then everything would be fine.