Joining this century--need your input

SandiaPinaMama · July 2011

I just made a FB page. I'm a teacher, as I've mentioned before, and now I need to make sure that I've done everything I can to privatize or whatever. Can someone clue me in? Any other pointers for keeping on the DL? Should I be wary of friending everyone I know? Just feeling a little clueless here. Help!

SandiaPinaMama · July 2011

Oh, and what on earth do I do when people send me friend requests that I don't want to be friends with??

shaindelr · July 2011

Just hit "not now" on the friend request, then it gives you a further option to say yes or no. And set your privacy settings as high as possible. If you want to be friends, I'd love to, but I understand if you'd rather not. I'm just my real name on there: Shaindel Beers :-)

MrsMackenzie2010 · July 2011

click on "account" on the top right hand corner, then privacy settings and make everything you can viewable to friends only (or you can customize it).

Personally I wouldn't friend any students, and I'd be weary of friending anyone I worked with that I didn't want to know my personal business, but to each his/her own.

Good luck! And please remember, do NOT bash any students or staff that you work with. Do not bash anything about the school you work for, in fact, try not to mention any of these things, as you truly never know who will get ahold of this information, friends or no friends, the internet is a scary place!

katlizabeth · July 2011

I agree with what every one says. I have the highest privacy settings, and I only "friend" people I'm actually friends with. I've had many students ask (and I teach 5th grade-technically they're too young to have an account!) and I deny them. Same with most parents of students (unless I'm friends with them outside of school) and I never talk about school on FB. I actually don't do much-except I like the PM feature-often faster than email for a lot of my friends.

cmm8311 · July 2011

Grace0609:
MrsMackenzie2010:

click on "account" on the top right hand corner, then privacy settings and make everything you can viewable to friends only (or you can customize it).

Personally I wouldn't friend any students, and I'd be weary of friending anyone I worked with that I didn't want to know my personal business, but to each his/her own.

Good luck! And please remember, do NOT bash any students or staff that you work with. Do not bash anything about the school you work for, in fact, try not to mention any of these things, as you truly never know who will get ahold of this information, friends or no friends, the internet is a scary place!

Yep, all of this! And don't feel bad about saying "no" when someone tries to friend you that you don't want to be friends with. Just click not now and forget that they ever asked! That's what I do, b/c I don't want clients or coworkers as friends on facebook. I felt bad the first couple times I said no, but not anymore. My privacy is important to me. And, just remember to never put in writing anything you wouldn't want any particular person to read....stuff gets around even if a particular person isn't a "friend" or isn't even on facebook. Have fun : ).

Absolutely all of this! And when it asks you where you work under employment just put Teacher or leave it blank, do NOT list the district you work for or the school you work for! There was one case in my district where a teacher bashed the school they were in and the board was able to print out everything she wrote. At the board meeting when she was called out for it, she quit on the spot. Just use common sense and you'll be fine!

Sweet Sadie Mae · July 2011

Privatize all settings. You have to go to your account and change everything. Don't give personal info that the public can view such as birthday, city, etc. and keep it classy. Watch what you post and for god's sake watch what pictures you put up. Also be wary of friending people.

shaindelr · July 2011

This thread makes me SO glad I teach college. I use Facebook as a teaching tool all the time. If my creative writing students want to know if something works, I'll ask them if I can post it to Facebook, and within minutes a few hundred writers respond. One of my students wanted to know if he could use "text speak" in a poem like Tupac Shakur did, and about 270 writers/editors/publishers weighed in.

Some of them said things that were pretty vicious, but I figure that's a teaching tool, too. If an editor says, "Your student should be killed," said student shouldn't send things to that editor :-)

And I once had a bidding war on Facebook chat during class between two publishers to publish the first chapter of a student's novel as a stand-alone short story.

I couldn't teach without using it. Seriously.

NJA08 · July 2011

MrsMackenzie2010:
click on "account" on the top right hand corner, then privacy settings and make everything you can viewable to friends only (or you can customize it).
Personally I wouldn't friend any students, and I'd be weary of friending anyone I worked with that I didn't want to know my personal business, but to each his/her own.
Good luck! And please remember, do NOT bash any students or staff that you work with. Do not bash anything about the school you work for, in fact, try not to mention any of these things, as you truly never know who will get ahold of this information, friends or no friends, the internet is a scary place!

All of this, and also, remember--your profile picture is always visible to everyone, even if your other pictures are not. I am a teacher too, and I have had students search for me (even though I refuse to add them as friends) and comment about my profile picture (just a pic of DS, but still, they can see it).

j1e2n3n4i · July 2011

Everything everyone else said is great!

Also, to make it harder for students to find you when they search, put your last name as your maiden-married name (instead of the standard FB way of leaving maiden name off or putting it in parenthesis).

This has saved many high schoolers from actually finding me although they tell me daily that they are looking and looking...

dshoop7 · July 2011

I am not a teacher, but my husband is and he is also a coach. There have been coaches fired for things they did on FB, so my husband does not have an account. Recently I have made one, because that is how my family around the country communicates. I come for a very small town. (Graduated high school with 50 people.) Therefore, I only use my maiden name and not my married name at all. Everyone who would want to friend me knows my maiden name or I just let them know I am not under my married name. It keeps the highschool softball girls from finding me as well as his coworkers. He teaches elementary special ed, so that is not as importatant. I just do it so no one can come back and say anything. Everything that everyone has said is wonderful advice. Especially that part about DO NOT SAY ANYTHING bad about anyone or anything about your job or even mention it! That is how a lot of people get fired around here. Even when you are not friends with that person. People talk!

SandiaPinaMama · July 2011

baby shoop:
I am not a teacher, but my husband is and he is also a coach. There have been coaches fired for things they did on FB, so my husband does not have an account. Recently I have made one, because that is how my family around the country communicates. I come for a very small town. (Graduated high school with 50 people.) Therefore, I only use my maiden name and not my married name at all. Everyone who would want to friend me knows my maiden name or I just let them know I am not under my married name. It keeps the highschool softball girls from finding me as well as his coworkers. He teaches elementary special ed, so that is not as importatant. I just do it so no one can come back and say anything. Everything that everyone has said is wonderful advice. Especially that part about DO NOT SAY ANYTHING bad about anyone or anything about your job or even mention it! That is how a lot of people get fired around here. Even when you are not friends with that person. People talk!

Thanks for the input everyone. I took all of your advice. I guess this is the part that freaks me out. Like I discovered that I have had friends posting pics of us on FB for a long time, and I didn't know it. Ick. DH really wants to post a pic of LO, but I'm holding off on that. Treading very carefully....

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