A high-level technology official at the Department of Education is publicly criticizing the city’s upcoming bid to limit teacher-student interactions online.
In response to a story in The Post about the city’s planned release of a first-ever social-media policy, the official questioned the chancellor’s conservative stance against students and teachers interacting on Facebook.
“REALLY? We prefer teachers and students don’t interact? That is not why I got into the teaching profession,” Lisa Nielsen, director of technology innovation for Manhattan schools, commented on The Post’s Web site.
“Not only is it important that we stand up to these attempts to criminalize teachers, but it is also important that educators are interacting with young people using the tools of their world,” she later added.
On Wednesday, Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said that when it comes to communication between students and teachers on social-media sites like Facebook, “We prefer they not interact.”
Department of Education officials say they’re mulling restricting such contact when the social- media policy is released this spring.
But Nielsen argues that it’s the wrong approach.
“One of the most important things educators can do is to ‘interact with students.’ The chancellor should be praising educators who do this,” she wrote.
The teachers’ union says it has yet to be notified about the DOE’s pending policy.