So I am brand new to twitter, never tried it and I have some questions about basic functionality. Their help system has ZERO information on anything other than basic consumer problems. I'm hoping someone here can point me in the right direction. Basically we are a K-12 school district, looking to set up twitter for staff-to-student use (think 5th grade math teachers to their students, or football team announcements.) Since we are a public entity I need to do a few things: have a list of all accounts/feeds, is there some kind of "umbrella" account I can create the dozens of sub-accounts under for easy management? have a searchable log/record of all tweets in all accounts for information requests and inappropriate contact lawsuits ("I need every tweet relating to the discipline of Johnny") is there a way to force a "broadcast" only style so a teacher cannot send a inappropriate tweet to just a single student? The TOS states users must be 13 and there is lots of language in the privacy policy abut how everything is public. Is there any documentation about how they store/delete student private information (names, email, etc.) as we have to abide by FERPA, CIPA, etc. Mark Butler Technology Coordinator Lynden Public Schools
No No All tweets are public, but they can "direct message" No I don't think twitter is the tool that you are looking for - this is all public and will be on the record for as long as a search engine chooses to index it - potentially even after twitter ceases to exist. Have you considered the free version of Slack? It may give you a bit more control and only those in the system can see it. Have you considered Moodle? you would have 100% control over everything, nothing is public and you can add academic learning, quizzes etc too
Thanks for the info - Unfortunately twitter is the defacto standard for students (besides snapchat which we are currently blocking, for these same reasons) and I am still struggling with the realities of it. How do companies handle twitter? is it ok that an employee creates a twitter account that sounds quasi-official and sends out whatever he/she wants. Do companies typically pre-create the 20 or so accounts they think you need and tell everyone not to do anything else? Do they then just hope everyone follows the rules, how is it verified? How do you define who is authorized to send messages under those accounts and prevent others from doing it? What happens when the legal department wants a list of all twitter accounts and all messages posted by all employees for a pending litigation. Mark Butler Technology Coordinator Lynden Public Schools
Students are more flexible than you probably think, the teachers are the real problem - adults tend to be less flexible and slower to pick up on new tech. You'll probably find most of the students who game have Discord accounts too. lol, companies will have someone in charge of the accounts and employees who create their own are censured. Companies will monitor for hashtags with their name and search on their company name - frequency will vary but it'll happen. I don't know about the hoarding of accounts but they probably do to prevent cyber squatters getting them. Those who are authorised will have the account name and password - simple as that. Share the password to any company system and there's probably a clause in your contract that will see you get sacked. Legal will have a lot of leg work to do to identify what accounts exist and who controls them. A memo to all staff should identify 80% and the last 20% will take up valuable time and cost big legal fees. Your biggest problem is that Twitter is public to all and sundry and it's really not the right place to be communicating with "minors". This communication should be private. Do you really want the world knowing that little Jimmy has forgotten his homework again? or that Jimmy is struggling to understand Q4? and do the teachers want to know all the non-school stuff that Jimmy tweets?