Using Facebook with my students

As one of the trailblazers for using new technology at the college - (we prefer this phrase than guinea pig) ;) I started using Facebook to work with my students.

I wanted to get the students to upload the graphics they were designing to a facebook group to then allow the other students to see what wonderful creativity there was. This also allowed links to be shared, discussions to be used and also to invite ex-students now working in the industry in to the group and get them to feedback on current trends and give feedback where necessary.

We have learnt lessons along the way.

You cannot change the name of a facebook group once it's been created, so give a generic name that will stay with the group for the years that they will be with you.

At our college we must now have 2 facebook accounts, one personal and one professional (students only allowed to add the professional), to maintain a professional distance.

Benefits are the ability to message students with updates and important information, they are more likely to read these messages than emails. Excellent opportunity to explain the privacy of data and how careful they need to be about the information that they display, and making them aware of the use by businesses during recruitment to checkout potential employees, do you want them to see inappropriate photos, or status comments etc.

Drawbacks, not all students want to use Facebook, so this cannot be forced upon them, you do find that they start selling you as a pet, but we laugh it off and tease that you hope that they are looking after you properly.

I have now used Facebook for 2 years.

Our college is very proud to be one of the first Technology Exemplar Network Colleges in the UK and I have included a link below to videos that share this best practice.

http://www.thecollege.co.uk/ten/

Yes, there is a video of me talking about web 2.0 technologies, its the use of Facebook with computing students, have a laugh.

Tags: Exemplar, Facebook, Network, TEN, Technology

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Comment by Anne Mirtschin on March 1, 2009 at 3:49am: Thank you for sharing this post on the use of facebook. Your experiences and documentation of them will be valuable to many others who wish to 'trail blaze' soon. (Loved that term!)

Comment by Lisa Nielsen on March 1, 2009 at 7:28am: Thank you for sharing this. Using Facebook in education has been of interest to me. I have a few comments/questions about your post.

1-You can change group names now. It is a new feature that was added recently.
2-The two Facebook accounts idea makes sense. Most educators I know have yet to do this. I'm not sure why.
3-I wonder why you cannot require students to use this platform when we can require them to do all sorts of other things. I’m just not sure if that is true. If it is, I wonder if some dummy type accounts could be set i.e. Student56 or something. What did you do with these students?

Comment by Benjamin Skipper on March 1, 2009 at 11:59am: Using Facebook as a means of communication is certainly effective and I think you are right on track.

I am curious to why a second account was chosen over a limited profile to help keep a professional distance. If we as faculty are practicing what we preach, does the professional distance become a problem? (I do not know the complete answer and am looking for examples to help refute or support this idea for a presentation)

"Excellent opportunity to explain the privacy of data and how careful they need to be about the information that they display, and making them aware of the use by businesses during recruitment to checkout potential employees, do you want them to see inappropriate photos, or status comments etc."

I am creating a podcast for colleagues to use these resources in a meaningful way and would love to give out more perspectives and options when it comes to maintaining the professional relationship. Thanks for your help.

Comment by Sylvianne Lambert-Hutchinson on March 1, 2009 at 1:32pm: Lisa - thanks for the update, I hadn't spotted that group names could be changed.
We did only have one account to start with, but it did prove cumbersome to setup the different levels of profiles. It is also beneficial having 2 accounts as they cannot start chat sessions with me when I'm logged into my private account and off duty. Students do think that being online means "available" and I don't want to answer questions about assignments during the evening or weekends, they have enough time to do that during the week.

Lisa - you asked about those that don't want to join, we cannot insist, but it is interesting that those that rebel to start with soon join when they miss important information or find that we have used it as a part of an assignment. They just need time to adapt to new applications. They were also as equally resistant about Twitter 2 weeks ago, they are active users now. Perhaps fear of the unknown and not seeing the benefits is part of the problem, but they do seem to have been picking up negativity from the press/parents and this takes time to counteract. They don't need to give personal information and this is the big lesson.

Ben - happy to help give you my opinions if it helps.

Comment by Benjamin Skipper on March 1, 2009 at 5:18pm: Thanks Sylvianne, duly noted and included in the presentation.

Does any interaction happen in class through FB? Are kids posting links or sending discussion questions via the chat?

Comment by Sylvianne Lambert-Hutchinson on March 2, 2009 at 12:27am: Ben - the students upload their graphics and animations to the group for sharing and hopefully commenting on each other's work. We have used the discussion section when a student has an IT support problem and it's useful to get some feedback from others. The students still see Facebook as a social setting, therefore I've just created a Ning for them (yesterday), they are beginning to add themselves and after today's lessons with 3 of my groups, should be interesting to see what their thoughts are. I think Ning will be better as there is much more functionality built in.

Comment by Bruce Cohen on March 9, 2009 at 6:01pm: Hi Sylvianne,
eNoteFile allows students to upload graphics and share their electronic notes.
They can search by where they've marked on a page or 'slide' through pages using Windows Presentation Foundation.
Regards,
Bruce