My relationship with Facebook is undergoing a change. I have set up a closed group for incoming first year students and we have 40 members already, with still a month to go until Induction. Also, unlike last year's experiment with a FB Page, there is quite a bit of discussion and some messaging going on which is mainly around joining and preparing for the course. We don't have any student mentors on the group as yet as we are still in the process of recruiting these for our Digital Literacy project, but I am hoping once they are on board we (tutors) can relinquish control and quietly slip away.
On a personal & professional level I also sense a change. In the last few months I have joined more professional FB groups, liked a lot of education related FB Pages and find myself sharing posts from fellow educators and techie types whose posts I find relevant and interesting - much like on Twitter.
Twitter would still be my first port of call for interesting ed tech links but it is surprising how much goodness is emerging from good old FB. Earlier this year I had considered leaving it all together but now I'm possibly more hooked than ever.
Apart from the whole student engagement advantage of having a new students' Facebook group, my aim is also to use the group in my teaching this year - in particular to kick start a debate about digital citizenship and digital identity.
A resource I am planning to use is the "This is Me" workbook which draws on examples of profiles on Facebook, Twitter and Linked In and asks students (or health care professionals or the retired etc) to consider the impact of their own public digital personas. It's a really useful and simple downloadable text which should work well as either a class based or homework activity.
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