I like Facebook. A lot. Maybe too much. My best friend suggested that I consider giving Facebook up for Lent.
Luckily we don’t celebrate lent in Sharjah so I didn’t follow the example.
For me Facebook is less of a social networking site and more of a networked socialising site. I make this distinction because I have never used it for anything apart from a great way to communicate flippantly with friends around the world and/or in the next room. That’s the role it has in my life. It’s not work; it doesn’t come near work (apart as a way to chat with colleagues in a non-work sense); it’s a welcome distraction from work and the idea of using it for work, as a tool of my work is, as an initial thought honestly – pretty repulsive.
So with that off my chest and in my mind, I’m off to explore how I could use it for professional interests. Will report back in a couple of days.
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Come on Rach, I've been counting on you to counter my own lack of enthusiasm for it as a teaching tool with some well chosen activities. Do you remember at the HCT conference in Dubai last summer that the 'teacher of the year' prize went to someone who'd been using Facebook with her classes? I musr do a search to see what she was actually doing.
ReplyDeleteWell she wasn't working with female students, that's for sure.
ReplyDeleteQuite agree Rachel, I was encouraged to join Facebook by a previous teaching colleague. We share banter and annecdotes and even (horror) use it to sound off about work occasionally, (quite worrying I guess if we take the example of the Essex teenager who was recently sacked by her bosses over her comments).
ReplyDeletehttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/7915212.stm
Facebook as a work tool? I'd need to see an example, but honestly I'm SO against work encroaching on my personal space.
Some of the views here reflect opinions that we often see when technology is integrated in the classroom. Students for instance, resist the use of social technologies that they've been using outside of the classroom because when integrated in the classroom it ceases being personal and turns into a "school thing." Teachers also feel uncomfortable with some of these technologies as well: the following quote comes from a paper I wrote with colleagues, "The teachers indicated that instant messaging places them at a peer level with the middle school students, which seemed to be an uncomfortable situation for them as they were trying to set themselves apart as teachers and as professionals. This unraveling of traditional teacher-student roles challenged what Lewis and Finders (2002) called “the implied teacher” which they described as the perception preservice teachers have of who a teacher is or should be. "
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