Should Orange County (FL) Public Schools have a social media policy for educators?

[This is the text of an e-mail I just sent the 7 board members for the Orange County (FL) Public Schools.]

Dear OCPS School Board members,

Greetings from the freezing state of Iowa!

I read with interest the recent Orlando Sentinel article on educators, students, and social media. Before you forge ahead with any policies that target any specific technologies (whether they be cell phones, messaging formats, or online social media tools), I would encourage you to read my short blog post on this:

The key point of the post is that tools and technologies both change and actually are irrelevant to the underlying issue of inappropriate teacher behavior. If you feel as a board that your existing policies are insufficient (and I would be surprised if what you need already isn’t in place), I hope that at least you will not frame them in terms of specific technologies (per my reasoning in the blog post).

I would be happy to discuss this with some or all of you if so desired. All my best.