Thing 18

Ahh Facebook.  We really have a love hate relationship these days.  Back in the days when Myspace was no longer cool anymore, I was one of the millions who changed over and opened up a Facebook account.  At the time I was was living overseas, and it was a great way for me to keep in contact with my friends and family.  However, I basically used Facebook as a way to organize and store my travel pictures.  These days, it seems some of the only times I find myself on Facebook is when I need to write a paper/study (yep, procrastination) or when I know I need to go to sleep, but it's important that I first read about what so and so had for dinner.

I decided to go against the grain here and not paste a link to my Facebook account.  Granted, you could find me if you wanted (I'm not that cool to warrant a search though).  However, after a presentation in another class about the importance of educators keeping their Facebook pages private, I realized that I want to do a major overhaul of my Facebook privacy settings before I go around posting any links that direct anyone straight to my page!

Twitter is a site that I tried in the past, never got into, and no longer use.  I have no intentions of trying it out again.  It's not for me.

As educators, I feel that it is very important that we are at least familiar with Facebook and other social networking sites.  Granted, by the time many of us are in the classroom, Facebook is likely to have gone the way of Myspace, only to be replaced by the newest "cool" site.  That being said, I don't want to be like my dad and tell my students that they should really check out this cool new site called BookFace (my sister and I literally lost it when he said this in all honesty to us one day). 

I doubt that I will ever actually utilize Facebook in a classroom setting.  I will even probably do my best to limit the teachers that I add as friends.  Although I didn't always follow that motto, these days I try to limit my Facebook friends to actual friends and family.  But it's always good to know a bit about the technology that our students will be using, even if it isn't an active part of our classroom lessons!