Facing Up to New Possibilities

The Tasmanian Department of Education has created a Facebook page.

Why?

Marketing Services have been approached by a number of staff over the last few months asking about using Facebook for community projects, collaboration with partners, schools and classrooms. In many cases good news stories and useful resources were being shared in vibrant online Facebook communities without any formal involvement of DoE staff.

Marketing and Communication Services were missing out on opportunities to promote great stories of engaged learning, active citizenship and global connections. So a Facebook Page has been set up that will link to ('like') existing Facebook pages related to learning and hopefully build an audience to share these stories both online and through traditional media.

We believe the creation of a DoE Facebook page will also

• Provide a strategic DoE presence and official voice in Facebook
• Model and promote good use of social media
• Facilitate the sourcing of good news stories from school communities
• Engage students and parents with their school communities
• Connect the DoE with its numerous partners and supporters who use Facebook
• Make the DoE visible to schools, colleges and business units with Facebook pages
• Build organisational capacity in the effective use of social media to achieve desired goals
• Encourage schools to engage with social media according to DoE policy and guidelines
• Promote participation through online polls and advertising events
• Provide opportunities to promote staff expertise

Our planning and implementation has been informed by a number of pilot projects in the use of social media in education and other government agencies as well as the work done in other states. eg the NSW Education & Training Social Media Guidelines. Initially posts will be hidden by default and only published after moderation using response processes such as those in this EDINA flowchart. We hope this delay will not frustrate frequent users of social media who expect reasonably quick responses. Comments will be monitored and hidden if deemed inappropriate. 

Through an Online Safety link we have provided users with easy access to quality national information and support on the use of online media and online spaces.