Yesterday the Washington Post published a great article about young teachers and their wild Facebook profiles. What did The Washington Post find? Sexual innuendos, a talking sperm cartoon, helpful tips like 'Don't smoke crack while pregnant' and a lot of sexual objectification and drunk party photos.

How do you find these "wild teacher" profiles on Facebook? It's easy.

1. Log on to Facebook. You need an account.
2. Join your local neighborhood/city network.
3. Search Facebook for the name of your local school system.
4. Then sit back and "watch the public profiles of 20-something teachers unfurl like gift wrap on the screen, revealing a sense of humor that can be overtly sarcastic or unintentionally unprofessional -- or both."

So who is in the wrong here? Are the young teachers naive to the fact that their students, parents and school administrators can see their Facebook profiles? Or are we wrong for holding teachers to a higher standard than the average Facebook user?

Some American states including Florida, Colorado, Tennessee and Massachusetts have banned teachers from having public profiles on MySpace and Facebook. And teachers unions have started warning their members of the dangers of having a racy social network presence. The teacher's unions might want to add Flickr to that caution list. A quick Flickr search for "sexy teacher" introduced us to Jennifer. She's a teacher in Taipei who wants to be a model.

Here's an easy solution for everyone. If you are a teacher, then edit your privacy prefs. Don't allow everyone in a Facebook network to see your full profile. Anyone can join your local city/town network and see your profile. Or take advantage of Facebook's "Limited Profile" feature. It only takes a few seconds to edit your privacy preferences and it could save your job.




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Labels: internet, social networking