Boundaries: privacy and public

I like boundaries. I do not mind that my students are avid users of Facebook and not D2L. Technology can be used for both private and public reasons, for social networking and scholarship. I do not want to hear all the cell phone calls my students make nor do I want to read their text messages to friends. I do not want to check their Facebook page to see who their friends are. Students have lives away from college, and I like to respect their privacy

However, I do want to read their rough drafts and ask them to revise them on a word-processing program. I do want to use a PowerPoint to enhance a lecture on parallelism or wordinesss. I like the doc cam so I can point to a specific text in the reading. I use email to remind them of assignments and communicate changes in the lesson plan.

Of course some technologies can be used for both public and private reasons. I just think there needs to be some boundaries or parameters to distinguish between the two functions. I use the email addresses students are given by SCSU unless they ask me to email them at a different, off-campus one. I will use technology to see if they have plagiarized or paid for a paper instead of writing their own paper. Luckily, it is not my job to check on their behavior outside of the classroom. I can just be their teacher and use technology to energize their learning. They can mature on their own time.