Facebook & Privacy Reflection

When I first decided that I was going to go into teaching, I immediately thought that it would be really cool to have my own website or Facebook page to use to engage with students, deliver material, announce surprise quizzes...all sorts of things.  After my brief experience student teaching I still feel that it can be a very valuable tool, but I'm more aware of the limitations as well.

Mr. Quinton's FB pages for his classes were a great example to me of what a FB page can be used for.  They are ideal for students to share information with each other, and collaborate on difficult assignments, problems, etc.  The best part of it is that it is very much student-driven, and can give them a sense of ownership over their education that they might not have had.  Going beyond this type of use though can lead to issues that must be carefully dealt with. The two issues I see specifically have to do with real-time usage, and mandatory usage. 

The idea of actually requiring students to do something on FB, or some other type of social media site, may run into opposition from some parents who do not wish their children to use those types of sites.  Also, unless you are doing the work in a computer lab at school, you may run into issues of accessibility.  I have had some teachers tell me that this should not be an issue, since students have access to computers while they're at school...that may be fine for something like word processing or internet research, but what if the school network blocks the site you've required them to use, as many schools do with FB?

Another issue that would have to be overcome would be the distracting nature of a site like FB if you were trying to do some kind of real-time activity.  The students would find it extremely difficult to stay on task and not visit other pages and/or chat.  This might limit the effectiveness of the activity that they were engaging in.  Other potential problems could involve certain students intentionally doing disrespectful/inappropriate things on the page, which could quickly spiral out of control if parents felt their children were being exposed to inappropriate material.

Ultimately, I am still hopeful that I can find an effective use for web-based content.  And apparently the mroverstreet.com URL is still available! (and a quick search discovered this awesome page, which is a FB page for students complaining about a different Mr. Overstreet's temper tantrums!)