Facebook and Myspace for Teachers
I recently recorded a conversation held between me and Stephan Spencer, president of search engine optimization company, Netconcepts.
Spencer talks about the basics of both social networking sites, such as whether or not you should make your profile private if you are worried about your job, or prospective jobs. There are plenty of cases where exactly this has happened.
I can recall myself a time when my company was hiring and it was possible for us to gather a lot of personal information about the candidates just by going to their social networking profile. I had never thought of using these websites to learn more about the prospective employees, but it does work.
It’s not just making your profile private, but you also have to be weary when you are making comments on other people’s public profiles which can then later be associated back to you.
I also link it back to teachers, making the point that teachers could make a better connection with their students if they were found on the social networking sites. All they have to do is make sure they are actively moderating comments for anything that may be inappropriate.
Make sure you listen to this conversation for more information about the two popular social networking sites.
Hi Steve –
My wife and I are launching a new online community for teachers at http://www.teacher-space.com.
It’s free and our goals are simple:
to assist teachers and others in education, to change the landscape of teaching, and to dramatically broaden the support available for teachers locally, nationally, and globally.
Please visit and spread the word…Teacher-space.com…a place for teachers!
It is important for teachers to network. Exchanging ideas and techniques is the whole point of web 2.0. I hope teachers see the potential.
What about a school-specific social networking platform? There’s a new site called FatClass that a friend told me about. She created a “fatclass”–as they call it– where she was able to upload files, post blogs and assignments and communicate through email. The web 2.0 system presents us with incredible teaching potential, but we have to find something do-able. This looks like it might work.