Could the recent uproar about Facebook use in schools end up being good for both schools and social media? A spate of restrictive policies and laws dealing with social media use in public schools made national headlines. The regulations were spurred by fears, some more rational than others, of public officials over the appropriate use of technology that put students and teachers in direct online contact. While many of the various laws hastily passed in the wake of the media attention have since been repealed, modified or overturned by court rulings, the focus of the controversy may have produced some unexpected benefits. 

It’s Not Either/Or 

While the initial controversy over a parent concern raised a legitimate issue of appropriate teacher-student contact, the question soon became lost in ancillary agendas. In the resulting protests over various policies and laws, initial reactions eventually turned the conversation to whether or not these laws, however intended, might do more harm than good. From what began as more heat than light, awareness that social media actually has an important role in effective teaching. Protecting students, it seems, isn’t inconsistent with using social media in the classroom. 

Separating the issues 

One topic that came to light was how policy had not kept up with technology, historically a pretty common occurrence. While Facebook conjured up the darkest fears among those least familiar with the tool, level heads soon realized that Facebook, or any other online tool, was not the problem; the trouble stemmed largely from a lack of comprehensive policies. School districts that had updated their policies as they updated their technology were fairly successful in protecting student privacy and establishing reasonable boundaries for appropriate contact between faculty and pupil. Many of these schools made great strides in the incorporation of technology for students soon to graduate with some online school experience just over the horizon. Serendipitous in its effect, the original uproar caused more than a few districts to move beyond their suspicions about students and teachers interacting online to the potential already embraced long ago by post-secondary institutions. 

Rediscovering Social Media’s Impact on Learning 

For most, if not all, of the past decade, colleges have excelled at using social media to improve learning. No longer striving to simply be a creative alternative to classroom instruction, research commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education indicated that students using online education, either some or all of the time, actually performed better than peers receiving traditional instruction. 

Playing catch up 

With school districts just now moving beyond heated arguments about Facebook, 1st Amendment rights and presumptions of predatory behaviors, including bullying and illicit contact already prohibited by laws, the challenge facing some are still tall. In an age where budget cuts are simultaneously popular with efforts to improve educational performance in a global economy, outdated equipment, bandwidth and connectivity obviate the prioritizing of using social media to improve teaching. Still, the spotlight shown on a scandal of dubious motivations may have proven fortuitous for the future of learning and social media.

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Lindsey Paho is a professional writer who covers education and technology. She lives in the Indianapolis area and is completing her graduate studies.