Are blogs the new wild west??

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Title:
Using Blogs to Humanize Our School Leaders By: Carr, Nora, Education Digest: Essential Readings Condensed for Quick Review, 20070301, Vol. 72, Issue 7
Database:
ERIC
Using Blogs to Humanize Our School Leaders
WHEN Pinellas County Schools Superintendent Clayton Wilcox launched his blog on the St. Petersburg Times website in November 2004, even the publication BusinessWeek took notice.
"Florida superintendent blogs and gets hundreds of comments," read one online story's headline, hailing Wilcox's innovative approach to getting the word out and gaining feedback.
Now, after, two years of often-bitter clashes with aggressive responders, including district teachers, Wilcox has shut down his much-publicized blog.
Battered by acrimonious exchanges, he wrote in his final posting that "the lies, distortions, and mean spiritedness of some were not worth my time or worthy of this district." No wonder that superintendents--already stretched impossibly thin by 24-7 job demands and raucous politics--are slow to embrace the web's hottest and fastest-growing trend.
Blogs are here to stay, however. Readership--already pegged at 57 million Americans in 2006 by the Pew Internet and American Life project study--is growing exponentially. More newsy than news oriented, blogs--web logs or inter active, online diaries for the uninitiated-represent a potent form of consumer-generated media.
Unfiltered--and some would say inaccurate--blogs are the Wild West of the Internet, where mostly young citizen journalists (more than half of all bloggers are under age 30) routinely ignore mainstream media niceties like fact checking, multiple sourcing, and balance. Conversational in tone, blogs represent a new and powerful form of personal communication.
By humanizing school leaders, blogs offer parents, teachers, and other key community leaders a glimpse into how superintendents' minds work and what their values are. It's hard to view school leaders as bureaucratic, out of touch, and aloof when they show their humanity week after week online by sharing their fears, dreams, hopes, frustrations, and plans.
The EdSuccess blog written by Joni Samples, superintendent of the Glenn County Office of Education in Willows, California, for example, covers a wide array of topics, from charter schools and reading to terrorism and her struggle to learn Spanish.
Wisely following the advice of her son, Christopher, who told her to "interact with your readers; don't try to teach them stuff," Samples' poignant and well-crafted prose is a joy to read. She invites readers in, while gently imparting wisdom and challenging them to think about things just a little bit more.
"It's a little unnerving to realize you are a possible innocent target of an individual or group of people who want to do you harm including kill you for no reason other than their own ends," writes Samples', caught at the Heathrow Airport after the failed terrorism plot in England.
Already Decided
"Being targeted by any fanatic is a strange feeling," she continues. "You can't control them. They are out of control. You can't reason. There is no reason. You can't show facts and make them evaluate their thinking. They have already decided and you are in the way."
While most superintendents aren't facing down terrorists, they do wrangle regularly with ideologues, sensation-seeking news reporters, angry parents, disgruntled employees, talk radio hosts, and other Citizens Against Virtually Everything (CAVES, in school public relations parlance).
As an instantaneous, transparent, and credible way to publish news and information, blogs also may be used to set the record straight--quickly and authoritatively.
The key to effective blogging is to create a dialogue with readers, and to write simply, candidly, and concisely without using "educationese" or Dilbert-like corporate speak. Humor and wit, used wisely, add another human dimension to blogs, the best of which create a conversation with readers.
Given Pinellas County's dismal experience with rabid responders, however, school leaders may want to simply offer an e-mail link for feedback rather than posting comments online. Just make sure someone has time to respond within 24 hours or less time.
Unlike online postings, an e-mail link offers responsiveness and interactivity without risk of embarrassment or derailment. Insightful comments and tough questions from readers can still be posted, just not instantaneously.
While blog purists may abhor this approach as the antithesis of transparency--87% of all blogs have a "post comment" section--it may be the most practical solution for school officials. If the blog turns into a forum for attacks, controversy, or sensationalism, as it did in Pinellas County, there's not much point in continuing it. The return on investment just won't be there.
Superintendents also are using blogs and other online tools to rebuild trust by making district issues and decision making more transparent. When a student brought a loaded gun to school just eight days into the new school year, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) Superintendent Peter Gorman broke the news at a morning media briefing and posted a blog entry about the incident later that evening.
Following the superintendent's lead, the principal used a voice and e-mail broadcast system to send a message to the parents of the high school's 2,600 students and nearly 300 staff members.
"On Wednesday, a student brought a loaded gun to one of our schools--Independence High," wrote Gorman. "I don't like to talk about things like this, but I think it's important to review what happened. We learned about the loaded gun because another student saw it and told us about it. In my view, the student who told us about it is a hero."
Ensuring Safety
Gorman also commended the student for acting responsibly and for preventing "what could have been a very dangerous Situation," noting that, "No one should ever feel unsafe in a CMS school."
Such candid, plain-talking communication is helping restore credibility in a community that has been fractured in recent years by bruising court battles, student assignment wars, rapid growth, rising poverty, immigration, and a deconsolidation movement.
Launched in July on his first day of work, Gorman's blog already has generated loyal readers and hundreds of e-mail responses. Blogging takes just a few minutes a day, says Gorman, who shares his thoughts with a public information staffer, who then writes the blog and posts it. As part of his push for transparency, Gorman also has posted his formidable meeting calendar online, along with his e-mail address, speeches, commentaries, resume, and other news items.
His responsiveness to community and employee concerns--returning all e-mails and phone calls within 24 hours and asking all staff to do the same--has won front-page accolades in the daily newspaper and created a more positive buzz in town about the public schools.
Not Easy to Do
Responding to 200 to 300 e-mails a day isn't easy, Gorman acknowledges: "All this transparency and responsiveness are tough to maintain. But I want staff to know that if I can do it, they can do it. We have to be as transparent to the public as we possibly can."
In the meanwhile, blogs are still so new that few corporations--or school districts--have developed policies governing their use.
Since employee blogs tend to be the most credible--and the most potentially damaging--the 30% of companies with blogging policies typically focus on employee use. If an employee maintains a company-sponsored blog, a disclaimer stating that the view which is being expressed belongs to the writer and not to the organization may be in order to limit legal liability.
Schools also should draft policies and discipline codes that govern student use of blogs. With the advent of MySpace.com, cyberbullying is an increasing--and insidious--problem among American "tweens" and teens.
Generally developed as part of an organization's online communication and acceptable use policies, employee and student guidelines for blogging should make it clear that some practices are NOT OK.
Policies which are NOT OK include: blogging on school or district time; revealing confidential information; bullying or attacking another student online, or disrupting school climate, whether using school or home computers; inappropriate contact with students via personal blogs; violating student privacy or any local, state, or federal laws; writing defamatory comments about colleagues, students, parents, school, or school district; posting obscene, abusive, harassing, threatening, intimidating, hateful, or embarrassing information about another person or organization.
While blogging is still uncharted territory legally in many ways, it's vitally important that students and staff understand the applicable media laws, including copyright and fair use. For more, see the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Legal Guide for Bloggers (www.eff.org) or the Media Law Resource Center (www.medialaw.org).
~~~~~~~~
By Nora Carr
Nora Carr (ncarr@carolina.rr.com) is Chief Communications Officer for North Carolina's Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and a Contributing Editor to American School Board Journal. Condensed, with permission, from American School Board Journal, 193 (November 2006), 46-47. © 2006, the National School Boards Association, Alexandria, Virginia. All rights reserved.
Copyright of Education Digest is the property of Prakken Publications and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
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