Thing # 18 - Social Networking

It is important that teachers are familiar with social networking sites, because it is an assured thing that most all of their students will be incredibly fluent in them. In this generation, the majority of young people have a facebook or twitter account. These large and popular social networking sites have become a highly utilized and preferred form of communication. Facebook allows you to keep up with old friends, family, and even certain groups. By having a facebook account, you stay connected to numerous individuals by way of messages, posts, activity invites, instant messages, blog links, feeds, pictures, and a new feature that they have implemented... the timeline. Teachers must be familiar with these sites if they want to better relate and connect to their students.

I didn't necessarily gain any new insights about Facebook, as I have had my account for some time and use it on a daily basis. I am familiar with most all of Facebook's features and thoroughly enjoy the many options of sharing and communicating that it has to offer. Many of my friends married military and my brother is military, so Facebook is great for keeping in touch with them while I try to maintain my own busy lifestyle. I do not use Twitter on a daily basis and am much less familiar with this social networking site. However, I do see the benefits of using Twitter for the influx of educational information that it provides, given that you add appropriate influential educators!

Although Social networking sites can be helpful in staying connected and may serve to be useful for teachers in communication with other educators, students, or parents, these sites can subject users to a multitude of sometimes uncontrollable and inappropriate behavior. I don't know how many times I have encountered an inappropriate post from someone. Unfortunately, it seems that many people like to air their dirty laundry on these social networking sites....for the world to see. I have no tolerance for people who bad mouth others on these sites as well and usually delete them immediately, as these types of post are not what I want to read first thing in the morning! All in all, I think that it is still important for educators to understand what social networking sites are and how to utilize them. As long as the user understands the responsibility of the content that will be readily available to them and how to "customize" filters to their liking, I think that social networking sites can be very useful to them. For example, creating a classroom group limited to your students and/or parents could be a productive learning tool.

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