Social Networking...And ALL of the drama that comes along with it...

This week, a lot of our out-of-class activities included researching different social aspects of technology. More important, we were to look at their accessibility and importance in the school setting.

For me, it's mixed. I think there's a positive side to it--the fact that kids could be in a supervised setting I think has merits. Of course, justifying why a kid is on mySpace or Facebook, for example, is easier said than done. If I were to look for a positive purpose, I think it's being in a "safe" environment, where if a child makes a mistake, the adult in that setting can help the student troubleshoot how to get out of it. Because, to be honest, I have quite a few kids who are on these sites, and definitely without parent supervision or knowledge (I think my parents would notice if I was online at 3 or 4 in the morning...)

However, I can see the negative side as well. I like the idea of social networking, but I could see staff taking advantage of this, and necessarily in a good way. My wife is also an MPS teacher; imagine how happy she'd be to know that we could keep a running conversation for the whole day. That might be fantastic for our marriage in the long run, but at the expense of me neglecting my duties as a teacher? We have to face it; we're not that far removed from the students that we teach. For every student that's trailed off when I've taught, I've been guilty of the same for every staff meeting that I've been at. If I could see myself taking advantage of it, I could definitely see others doing the same.

I think it's going to be an eternal question with no right answer. For me, I know I can teach my kids to instant message with Moodle. I can keep contact with parents with the website I currently have. But I may have to wait a bit before my class Facebook page is up and running....