Missouri Teachers Union Sues Over Social Networking Law
August 21, 2011 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
The Missouri State Teachers Association has filed a lawsuit against the state of Missouri, looking to stop enforcement of a new law barring online contact between teachers and students in any forum where the communication can be private.
The paperwork was filed in Columbia on Friday.
Linda Daugherty, the librarian at Northwest High school in Cedar Hill, is one of five named plaintiffs in the suit. She says she has no problem with the goal of keeping kids safe from sexual predators, but she says the unintended consequences far outweigh the benefits.
“It literally ties out hands. It takes us back to where we’re not able to communicate with our students one on one in real time,” she said Friday after the suit was filed.
She points specifically to the use of Google Docs, a document sharing and email site, as one problem with the law. Northwest High uses Google Docs in so many ways, that there is a direct link to it on the school website. All communication between students and teachers there would be illegal if the law takes effect, as scheduled, on August 28.
“I talked to our superintendent today and he’s look at some sort of parental permission kind of document, but even then, that’s going to go into that grey area, and that’s what he’s concerned about and I’m concerned about,” Dougherty said.
There is also a ban on texting, something that is widely used on school field trips and with sports teams as a way to gather everyone quickly.
“Trying to herd a bunch of teenagers into one place sometimes can be a major undertaking,” Dougherty told us. “Not being able to use a cell phone text like they have up to now saying, ‘hi guys, the bus is leaving, let’s go,’ otherwise it’s back to call the parent.”
Parents at the school say it seems like over-legislating in Jefferson City.
“As far as school is concerned, I don’t know of any teachers who do that. Most teachers refuse to friend kids until the day they graduate,” Northwest parent Debbie Bicklein told us after band practice.
“I’m standing here face to face talking with this child. I think I have a greater chance of doing him harm in this place than I do on Facebook.”
The suit is asking the court to stop enforcement of the law based on vagueness and what is termed an unconstitutional infringement on teachers’ freedom of speech.
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Facebook’s live feed ‘Ticker’ rolling out to more users
August 21, 2011 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
While the Top News feed is likely going to remain the same for the time being, Facebook is launching a new method for users to watch every single action that’s happening in real-time with friends.
Called the ‘Ticker’ by internal Facebook employees, the social networking company is slowly allowing more users to view a real-time feed of friend actions to the right of the main Facebook News Feed. This unfiltered flow of news shows actions such as comments, like clicks, new friend connections, photo uploads and status updates that friends are creating on mutual friend pages as well as non-friend pages. It’s basically a feed of every single interaction that a user does on Facebook.
The Ticker is designed to replace the Most Recent filter on the Facebook News Feed, which is absent from the new design. Users will only have the Top News option to view on the wall and have to rely on the Facebook algorithm to dictate the most interesting stories. The algorithm watches how many times you visit a friend’s page as well as the number of comments and likes you make about the friend. When a user clicks on a story in the Ticker, it appears in the main feed in the middle of the page and the user can make a comment.
There is also a highlight function that sticks the update to the News Feed, but it’s unclear if this action manually raises the importance of the update within the Facebook algorithm. If this action does add to the algorithm, users will have a way to mark the importance of posts or photos directly rather than waiting on Facebook to guess what’s important to the user. Similar to the main news feed, users also have the ability to hide a single post, hide all user posts or hide posts from the application. However, the addition of the Ticker is likely a welcome change for developers of social games and other applications. A user is probably less likely to remove app updates from the real-time feed after it’s separated from the main column of content.
More About: Facebook, Facebook algorithm, Facebook Apps, Facebook Like, Facebook News Feed, Facebook Ticker, Like, real-time news, social games, status updates, Ticker
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