During hiring @gcouros does a Google search of the candidate. No online presence at all? Weeded out. #Educon #cpchat
— Gerald Aungst (@geraldaungst) January 29, 2012
Amid getting ready for baby girl #2, I was able to jump in and out of the conversations at Educon 2.4 via twitter and the live stream. The particular tweet from Gerald Aungst came during George Couros and Patrick Larkin‘s “So You’re Connected … Now What?” conversation around their Connected Principals initiative.
Now I’m not interested in hiring processes from a school’s perspective as much as I am from a candidate’s perspective. What do you do when the school or district you are applying to (or considering) is not connected?
Is it a warning flag when a school has little more than an schoolworld site? No obvious teacher websites? No online presence of its own? Or is it an opportunity to bring those tools into a district, build on the pockets of teachers who are dabbling, thrust the school into the world of social media?
Or do you, as George puts it, weed them out?
When a school has only a token website, candidates should be warned that the wider community may be similarly isolated from 21st century realities. It’s not just a matter of teachers not using Twitter. It’s a matter of how the community views education.
Of 27 people on a community panel to interview superintendent candidates in my local school district last spring, not one had a digital presence. One woman on the panelist said she didn’t want her high school senior using a computer in school.
Call me a coward, but I think I’d weed out that school district.
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