Thing #18

I already have both a personal Twitter account and a personal Facebook account.

https://twitter.com/#!/abelizsm

http://www.facebook.com/abbyesmith

It's important for teachers to know how social networking works because so many of their colleagues, students, and parents will be using social networking sites. Teachers should understand how to use these sites so that they know what their students are talking about when they mention things like "I tagged you in a photo" or "Did you see that tweet?"

I didn't really learn anything new about either of these sites because I use them often. I have both a Facebook and Twitter app on my iPhone, so I can check each of them wherever I am. I enjoy using both, but I use Facebook more for keeping up with friends and I use Twitter to keep up with national news. With both of these social networking sites, you choose who you want to follow/friend and you can also choose who you want to be able to follow you. That does allow for some control over privacy and security, but teachers, students and parents must understand that some of your information may be visible to people you don't want it to be visible to and that you can't control what others, whom you're following, may post.

Classroom teachers may decide to create a Facebook group for their class. This allows students a chance to be able to reach each other and the teacher when not in class. Parents could also join since many parents are also members of Facebook. The drawback to this idea is that the teacher's personal information is available to students and vice versa. As I mentioned before, Facebook has very detailed and specific privacy and security settings, but the teacher would want to make sure that those settings were engaged in order to protect his or her information as well as the students. (The group should be private, not available to view by non group members, etc).

Twitter would be easier to use if a teacher wanted a classroom feed. The teacher could create a Twitter account for this exact purpose and wouldn't have to worry about any personal information beign compromised. Students and parents could follow the teacher's tweets, but the teacher would not have to follow the students. This may provide more privacy for the teacher, parents, and students.