Using social media to connect with your community

Set up safe and secure systems

• Use generic school-based email accounts, such as [email protected] to log in. This allows access rights to be passed to other staff should people leave or responsibilities change. Access to social media sites should not be managed via staff personal accounts.

• Create passwords that are unique and memorable, and not easily attacked or connected to other sites or online tools. Use, for example, PassCreator  to generate a strong (long and complex) password.

• Set up multiple administrator access. The multiple administrator approach (such as that supported in Google Apps) involves more than one user having full administrator rights (including being able to add or remove other administrators). This means that use can be tracked.

• Set up two-factor authentication on your account or domain to increase security. This means that anyone logging into the account needs to use information (such as a mobile number or code) as well as an email and password.

The rapid increase in HTTPS (secure) technology means end-to-end encryption for most social media sites. End-to-end encryption is a method of secure communication that prevents third parties from accessing data while it's transferred from one end system or device to another. 

More information »

• How are you keeping your students safe online?
• Password managers

Access to platform(s)

Consider how your school’s Internet filtering system configuration helps manage access to your chosen social media tool or platform.

• Ensure your selected administrators can access and manage your social media platforms from school.
• If your students are at an appropriate age, and you would like them to use selected social media tools, ensure they are not blocked.

Administrator rights and responsibilities

Decide who is the main administrator of your social media accounts. Ensure that at least two staff have responsibility for management and updates to your accounts. This allows for access if a staff member is absent or leaves the school.

Privacy

Rock climbing at school

Image source: USAG- Humphreys

• Investigate how to adjust the privacy settings to control who can post, respond, and remove content. Often the default setting is to broadcast and distribute to the widest audience possible, when it may be more appropriate to only communicate to a smaller select group.

• Discuss privacy expectations with all staff to ensure everyone has a shared understanding of what is appropriate.

• Tagging – it is advisable not to tag images of students. It is safer to use captions or write a short description of an image – for example, “Rock climbing at school camp”.

Decide who can add content

It may be easier to manage the page/tool if only one or two staff members are adding content. Consider assigning a communications manager and growing capability across the school, staff, and students as part of a focus on digital citizenship.

Ensure that everyone adding content is aware of the technical and social considerations. These might include:

• who owns the content
• who is featured in the content
• for whom the content is intended
• parental permission to share images, work, or other activities
• capability to upload and share in ways that support appropriate purpose and audience.

Agree on the kind of content to share

Devote a staff meeting to look at how other schools have used social media and share different ideas of what kind of content has been shared. Consider how you can keep the focus on learning.

Will there be images of students included in the content? If so, have parents given their consent? Many schools have policies about how images are used on the school website and in other publications, but make sure you also address how a student’s image might be used in social media.

Branding

Include a high-quality image of your school or school logo.

You need to be aware of the age requirement policy for the platform you choose. Thirteen years is often considered to be the appropriate age for individuals to use most forms of social media, although it is more of a guide for individuals outside of the US.

Many platforms are owned by US-based organisations. While their legislation relating to how services are accessed by children does not apply in New Zealand law, the terms of service do. Schools must be aware of their responsibilities in relation to the Education Act  (2020) and the Privacy Act  (1993).

Based on your own context, you may wish to seek explicit permission from parents/whānau so that they are informed and understand what sites the students are using. This is a key for managing any risk that might arise as a result of the use of those sites.

Boards of Trustees have statutory responsibilities that apply to the use of social media both in and out of school in relation to section 127 (1)(b) of the Education and Training Act (2020) and the Privacy Act .

Ensure your Board understands which policies and procedures need to be added or updated to include the use of social media. The Board will include some parents from the community who can also advocate for appropriate use, especially in situations where teachers may not always be present.

You may wish to create a social media/networking policy for your school. Ideally, this will be part of your existing policies regarding appropriate behaviours in school.

Consider:

• adding specific policy statements related to social media and social network use into other policies, rather than having a separate policy just for this type of technology
• reviewing existing agreements because social media may offer new functions or characteristics not yet included.

A social media policy, responsible use agreement, or digital citizenship agreement should be written in plain language, allowing all members of the school to access and understand it. This document will reflect your school values and be linked with specific behaviours related to social media.

Work with your students, parents, and the Board of Trustees to construct your agreements. 

Students, teachers, and the BoT describe their pedagogy and process for collaborating to create, understand, and implement their digital citizenship policy and student agreement.

Image, video, and music use

Creative Commons

How do staff and students use, select, or manipulate images, video, and music when they are being used as part of a presentation that may be posted on social media?

It is important to help students and your community understand that content on the Internet is often owned by others and does not automatically come with the rights to reuse, copy or share.

• Use images that have been deliberately tagged for reuse and model this behaviour to all members of the school community.
• Check the copyright on music and songs; select copyright-free or create your own.
• Be clear on what fair use means with regard to video.

More information »

• Creative Commons in schools  – offers useful guidance on the use of online content, and on assigning open licences to content created by your school.
• What is fair use? – information from YouTube with examples.

Review policies regularly

Review your code of conduct/responsible use agreement regularly to make sure that documentation, processes, and procedures are appropriate to help you manage the challenge and opportunity of using digital technologies.

Apiti School principal, Mary Cumming explains their process step-by-step for reviewing and updating their digital citizenship agreement. The is a collaborative process involving teachers, students, and the Board of Trustees.

Prevention is better than response

“Involving students, parents, and whānau in meaningful discussions about the role of digital technology at school and beyond can help to prevent incidents occurring and reduce their impact when they do.”

Digital technology: Safe and responsible use in school  - Netsafe (p. 14)

The overall objective is to create a learning environment, which involves the safe and responsible use of social media tools.

• Clearly explain appropriate and expected behaviours.
• Display clear guidelines for use.
• Revisit expectations regularly within the context of learning.
• Respond to incidents when they occur. 

This approach should reduce negative outcomes by:

• reducing the incidents of misconduct involving digital technology
• minimising harm to students.

Your prevention and response plan needs to take a proactive approach to managing the online environments the school is responsible for.

Principles of the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015

A digital communication should not:

• disclose sensitive personal facts about an individual
• be threatening, intimidating, or menacing
• be grossly offensive to a reasonable person in the position of the affected individual
• be indecent or obscene
• be used to harass an individual
• make a false allegation
• contain a matter that is published in breach of confidence
• incite or encourage anyone to send a message to an individual for the purpose of causing harm to the individual
• incite or encourage an individual to commit suicide
• denigrate an individual by reason of his or her colour, race, ethnic or national origins, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or disability.

More information »

• Digital technology: Safe and responsible use in schools
• Key parts of the Harmful Digital Communications Act
• A school’s guide for managing negative social media

 Agree expectations

Clarify with all members of the school what is considered appropriate to post online, whether that is on a blog, Facebook page, Instagram, or other platform. Think about your school values and learning focus.

Agree expectations first with staff and then, if appropriate to your context, the students. It’s important to link your school values and definition of a good digital citizen together.

Model appropriate behaviours

Consider your language, content, and the permissions for images. 

• Always ask permission before taking photos or video of others, especially if you wish to share the images. 
• People have a right to privacy and asking permission to publish their image models courteous behaviour.

Always monitor your social media channels

Monitor wherever the school name, brand, and content is associated with any form of social media.

It is important to be proactive and monitor what is being said about you so you can:

• promptly respond to questions and comments
• quickly identify situations where there may be bullying or inappropriate comments
• be alerted to when your school is mentioned online.

Discuss setting up your school social media platform(s) with your community

• Develop a shared understanding of your purpose for using your chosen social media applications.
• Work together to develop and agree protocols for appropriate posting and use of images. Publish these on your page or profile so you have a set of criteria that can be referred to if you need to address inappropriate behaviour.
• Encourage parents, whānau, and the community to join, “like”, or “follow” your school social media platforms.
• Post, monitor, and respond to comments regularly to build your audience interaction.

Request that other social media tools/pages associated with the school be carefully considered. For example, if a parent creates a school Facebook page separate to the “official” school one, encourage the parent to ensure their page is not confused with the official or teacher-driven page. You will not be able to control this, but it’s important for parents to understand that the school’s reputation and perception from the community can be greatly affected by having several pages and sites associated with the school.

School story: Dealing with inappropriate comments on Facebook

Image source: Anna Briggs

“Our school set up a Facebook page to help with broadcasting and sharing of school events. We decided to use Facebook because the social media survey we did with our parents and community confirmed this was the most popular social media platform. Not only did we find that the Facebook page was a quick way to connect with parents and the rest of the community, it was also effective in directing people back to the school website. So, we had more people engaged with what was happening at school and greater participation as far as volunteers and support for school activities.

The downside was that we had a parent who left a negative comment about one of the events on the Facebook “wall” when she should have spoken to one of the teachers directly. The comment became a spark that ignited a huge discussion between three parents on Facebook where their opinions about a variety of things related to the school were shared with anyone who might be visiting the page.

Our Facebook administrator quickly removed these comments and contacted the parents directly. We asked that any other issues or concerns be addressed by physically coming into the school and discussing face-to-face. If that was not possible, then an email sent to the appropriate teacher would be okay followed by a meeting to follow up if necessary. We definitely wanted to make sure that our parents understood that it was distracting, unproductive, and hurtful to broadcast a concern, rather than raise the issue in person or with a direct message.”

Examples of schools using social media

It can be confusing and distressing when incidents occur through the inappropriate use of digital technologies. The Education Act 1989  contains provisions that are directly relevant to how schools should manage an incident involving digital technology.

More information » 

• Digital technology: Safe and responsible use in schools  – see Section 4: Responding to digital incidents
• Contact Netsafe  – for advice and support related to managing and responding to incidents related to the use of digital technologies in your school community
• A school's guide for managing negative social media  – steps you can use to manage negative comments, some things to keep in mind, and resources for further reading