I do.
I know teachers who absolutely refuse to as well. Where do you stand?
At the beginning of the year I tried different online techniques to give out information (homework, resources, etc…) and found more and more that students weren’t using the software or the applications. My facebook status updates usually looked like, “don’t forget to check the class site for homework”. Eventually I just put the homework reminder directly in the status update instead of sending them elsewhere.
I am happy that my students are comfortable enough with me to let me into their facebook worlds. I see their updates, photos, and videos and am able to celebrate or give a hug when needed.
I am the staff rep for our school’s lacrosse team and created a group for them where we talk about our practices and games and share pictures.
I absolutely love when I see status updates like
my house 8:00 to work on project or who is down for math group tomorrow?
I also love when students post links or videos to my wall as suggestions for classroom resources. Even especially when they ask questions about homework they are having trouble with.
At times, it is a convenient way for students to contact me about issues they are having, either with school work or socially.
At the beginning of the year I had my students on a limited profile list of some sort but I soon changed that as I realized that there was nothing that I posted on facebook that I needed to hide from them or anyone else.
So, where do you stand on maintaining a relationship with students outside of the classroom via facebook (or twitter or plurk or anything else)?