Catherine, and all,
Let me give you another perspective on Twitter and some of the other online tools.
As an attorney, we have to look beyond the face of things to see what potential
pitfalls lie ahead.
Not so recent changes in trial procedure have brought about a new wrinkle in trials
called "e-discovery." Discovery is the process through which opposing parties in a
lawsuit are allowed to request information from the other side so no one is
blindsided at trial -- everything is out in the open and no one is allowed to hide
anything related to the lawsuit. E-discovery means getting all the electronic
records, such as word processing documents, spreadsheets, emails, and other
electronic evidence.
Twitter is one of those things that may be considered to be evidence in some cases.
If you Twitter in the course of your job, those messages are documents as far as a
court is concerned. Since the messages are typically ephemeral, there is no
archived record that can be delivered over to lawsuit opponents because you are not
in control of the technology. Failure to turn over those types of documents can
generate huge fines. IT people are concerned that using these sites and then not
being able to produce information from them under rules of discovery places the
district at risk, therefore, IT doesn’t want to open up these sites.
You are much more likely to get the district to sign off on electronic
communication tools that the district can control. It isn't an issue of not
wanting to provide the tool -- it is an issue of potential fallout from using a
tool over which the district has no effective control and no documentation of what
actually happened.
Carol Simpson, JD
retired SLMS
csimpson at carolsimpson dot com
---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: "Catherine A. Trinkle" <CATrinkle@AVON-SCHOOLS.ORG>
Reply-To: "Catherine A. Trinkle" <CATrinkle@AVON-SCHOOLS.ORG>
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:37:17 -0400
>I am so thrilled by twitter. I am going to tweet every day for one year on the
>topic of a book, author, reading info for parents & teachers, etc. Many parents
>ask me for recommended reading and I make suggested reading lists a few times each
>year, but twitter will allow me to communicate about great books and authors more
>frequently. My principal asked me to speak each month at staff meetings about the
>best in children's lit and twitter will be another avenue for reaching out to
>teachers. I also want to tweet with my students to summarize stories, use
>adjectives to decribe books and authors, work with words, etc. but my school corp
>has blocked the login for twitter, though any page can still be viewed. I'm
>hoping to get the block removed so I can tweet with the kids at school.
>
>Anyone else out there twittering on literacy? Here's my page:
>http://twitter.com/lovemylibrary
>
>
>
>Catherine Trinkle
>Media Specialist
>Avon Community School Corporation
>Avon, Indiana 46123
>catrinkle@avon-schools.org
>
>
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