This year I have decided to use Facebook as a means of communicating with students and parents outside of the classroom. Now, before you look at me with a shady eye, I am not communicating with students on a personal level, and I am not using my personal Facebook page. I would rather not get arrested or fired!
Instead, I have set up page that is my dedicated “educational” Facebook. This page is still set up with my name, but I don’t use the personal wall at all. I have set three pages, one for each level that I teach, under the homepage. These are the pages I will use to communicate with students and parents as to what is going on within the classroom. So far, I have used the page mostly to post assignments. When a student is absent, I can now tell them to go to the page and get the assignment.
This brings up another aspect of the Facebook page. I am not actually posting assignments directly to the Facebook page. First, assignments are posted on my class blog. These are then pushed to the Facebook page. This might seem redundant, but I know that more students will see the Facebook pages on their mobile devices. However, posts on the blog will be accessible for those who do no have a mobile device.
Right now, this experiment is in the beginning stages. I am surprised at how few students have “liked” the page so far. There are getting to be more and more but not as many as I w0uld have imagined. My biggest success so far is that a parent of a student who lives out of state has liked the page to keep track of what her students is doing in class. I never thought of the page being used in that manner!
I’ll keep you updated on how this all pans out in the future.
And this post proves that social networks can be used positively
Perhaps all technology is not ‘bad’
I totally would like to try this, but have been nervous to do so. What kind of disadvantages have you run into so far?
Honestly, I haven’t found any disadvantages so far. The real problem has been in getting students to go and find the page. Since Facebook is blocked in the school, I can’t help them do this.
I guess one draw back is that not every students has a Facebook. However, I have other means for them to do the same thing. Really Facebook is just one of many tools I am trying to use.