Social Media debate

Since Missouri passed a law prohibiting teachers and students from being 'friends' on Facebook, the whole issue on social media has come under debate.  (Is it odd that we are now starting a Facebook page for Lincoln High School?)

I rarely use Facebook as a way to communicate with students.  I rarely use Facebook at all, actually.  Personally, I find it useful to share pictures of my family with other members of my family.  I've also used it to send colleagues messages.  That's it.  Other than those two purposes, I dislike Facebook.

I don't need to see someone state in their status that it's Thursday so they are getting drunk even though they have to work on Friday.  (I do wish, though, that their boss would see that status).  Or see others whine about how lonely they are or how much they hate school, college, or their ex.  And most of all, I loathe to see some cliche post about "if you are really a friend of mine, you will paste this on your status" (no.  If you care about them you will call them or visit them) or "if you care about the troops in Iraq you will post this on your status" (no.  If you cared about troops or veterans, attend a Veteran's Day ceremony or donate to a local VFW or visit injured vets) or any other such stupidity often posted on FB.

As a teacher, though, I use social media to work with students all the time.  For my College Comp II class, we have a class blog where I encourage my students to use tools such as Twitter, blogs, wikis, youtube, and even FB to explore their ideas and engage each other in dialogue concerning our readings.

Here is a great quote that gets at the importance of social media in today's schools --

It’s the impact on Facebook that seems to have made the headlines, but there are lots of other social networking and social learning sites that could be impacted by the law. No following students back on Twitter. No class Nings. No sharing Google Docs. I started collecting a list of them on Google+ and came up with over 30, including social bookmarking sites like Diigo and learning management systems like Blackboard.

“Wait a minute,” I hear you say. “These aren’t social networking sites!” But they are. See, almost everything on the Web nowadays is “social” — there are opportunities to follow, “friend,” share, “like,” and (private) message via almost every site. Indeed, when I asked on G+ what tech tools could be impacted by the Missouri law, one person responded wryly (but pretty accurately, I think), “The Internet.”

So the question “why would a teacher want to ‘friend’ a student on Facebook?” seems like the wrong one to ask. It’s a question that’s already steeped in suspicion (suspicious teens, as my kid demonstrates, or suspicious legislators, as we have in Missouri). Instead, we should be asked“why would a teacher want to utilize the Internet to communicate with her or his students?”

The answer to the last question is obvious for teachers: there are no longer any excuses for late work (the days of "Oh I didn't know that was due today" are gone because I can say "Yes you did.  I Tweeted it last night, I sent a mass text out to you and the class after that, and I put it on the class blog."), there is no way a student can't engage in dialogue now (even if they don't like to speak in class, they can text and tweet their questions and comments to teachers or they have an appointed identity (from the teacher, of course) and then engage in a discussion on our class blog or a D2L site), there are so many ways to immediately use information and apply it directly to class (on my first day of College Comp I I'm going to have students text a friend or relative who is already in college to see what their work load is like.  When they see it first hand from others, it has a far greater impact than hearing me say again and again how much they have to read and write in college.).  

My final question for teachers is simple: if you aren't using social media to be a better teacher, why not?

Here are some interesting links to the Facebook debate (which I culled from Twitter (the best professional development tool there is):

50 reasons to invite Facebook into your Classroom

Why Your School Needs a Facebook Page

Schools as Curiosity Centers (here the blogger illustrates an assignment that wouldn't just involve students and staff but also the community at large.  Though he doesn't state it, the easiest and most effective way to do this is through FB and other social media).