Are employees allowed to blog about their job from home?

Would blogging from home put his job on the line?

Actually, home is where I find the calm and quiet to write. Just an idea.

He was writing about the frustration of public/academic librarians who want to roll out new software or web 2.0 tools but meet obstacles from library administrators or technology administrators.

I don’t know if it helps to know that education isn’t alone in this dilemma.

It’s topsy turvey–these are curriculum decisions and should be determined by the curriculum department.

One thing we did in our district that I might recommend to this principal–we settled on one “blog” domain site to start with(Edublogs), and it was unfiltered just to staff. That way we could begin using it as a professional tool.

That opened the door to more uses as people saw the value and it was a way to ease into it and give it a try.

As one staff member in our district put it–you trust us in a room with a closed door with small children, but you don’t trust us on the internet?

This is an issue of professional judgment. Curriculum superintendents and assistant superintendents and principals are paid the big bucks to be professional, write professionally in many venues, make the difficult decisions and to stand by them. Blogging depends on many of those skills and professional trust is an important element of allowing them.

And this is also an area where a lack of technological knowledge hurts educators, because network staff or tech staff can say things aren’t workable and if we don’t know enough about the ins-and-outs of it, it’s hard for us to quibble. So it is important for leaders to do their homework, and ask the tough questions about what’s possible, and ask what is best for kids and our communities.

Can’t tell I have an opinion on this, can you?

— The school district is legally obligated to protect our students from the outside. It is not legally obligated to prepare them for the outside. —

As Dylan wrote so long ago:

Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’.
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin’.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.

mark

http://tinyurl.com/2yvgz8

Great article about principals who blog in EdWeek! It did a good job of pointing out positives and concerns.

And you’re mentioned as is Leader Talk!

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/05/02/35blogs.h26.html?

I do wish they had clarified in the section on negative comment sections of some principals’ blogs. They didn’t really make it clear that the principal could moderate the comments prior to posting, which would probably make some principals more comfortable with the idea.

Anyway, kudos to you!

What kind of district has a technology person with that kind of decision making power? Principals should have the ultimate say in what goes on in their school?

I am dumbfounded that we have tech people making these kinds of decisions for the head of schools! I can’t imagine being an administrator in a school district like this… wow…

And, if THAT person says, “Well, that’s up to the tech director, then you ask the very important question, “Who is making the curriculum calls here? YOU, the trained person in curriculum and training, or HIM, a network and wires person?”

And if that doesn’t get you what you want you go to the top. But, you DO NOT let the conversation stop with the tech person. That should NEVER be his/her call.

But, don’t get me started.

So you want to blog?