via academhack, Should you live blog/twitter a college class?
It’s quite common these days for people to “live blog” or “live Twitter” different conferences or events they’re attending, filling in others what’s happening in near real time. However, what happens when someone does that in a college class? Already, there are some professors struggling with the fact that students use the internet during class, but they’re not at all happy about the idea that they might not just be using the internet to surf around — but to report to others what’s happening inside the classroom. The issue is discussed in detail by Mark Glaser in his latest MediaShift column after an NYU professor told her students to stop blogging or Twittering things about her class. (more)
Glaser’s article raises a variety of different questions about the relationship between student journalism and classroom publicity/privacy. I think of everything I say in the classroom as both public and private — but I keep in mind that because it is both, that everything I saw is ultimately accessible to others if one of my students chose to write about it. It seems to me that there is no legal requirement that someone gets permission to quote a teacher during class (though there might be for a student to quote another student by name), though perhaps there is an ethical ideal that permission would be asked for.
