Facebook for Educators

I have in past postings made both positive and not so positive remarks regarding the use of Facebook as part of course delivery. In one particular year, I certainly managed to get pretty much wholesale agreement with using the social network for both easy contact and handing out achievement comments’ and graphical badges and general course information. In the following year, a similar attempt led to me being almost completely unfriended, strange? Given all this, I do still continue to see articles and postings where clearly the application has worked well, then the other day I came across a YouTube video ‘The Basics of a Facebook Page for Educators’ If you have not seen this for yourself then I can recommend it as a good starter. The Movie walks you through the layout and tabs, which include:-

• Discussions, that student can join and post into



• Standards, that relate to course and using the medium



• Documents, that teachers can upload for students to access



• Strategies, on the use of social media and Facebook



• Polls, these can be setup to gather student feedback

Basically it all looks very much like a Facebook / vle / teachers website solution, and if you are in need of such a facility then this would seem as good as any.

I went on to look around the net for more on this and soon discovered http://facebookforeducators.org. This really does tell you all about it, and there is a pdf download guide, agian worth a look.

I also came across this rather large sample of (The teachers guide to using Facebook)
Facebook the missing manual from OReilly. This is one of those, have a read before you buy promotions that I seem to be seeing with increasing frequency these days, and I must say the sample pages are extensive, so again you may like to take a look at the link if you get the time.

Finally how about ‘7 Best Practices For Educators Using Facebook’ I always like reading these little summaries of best practice, after all if someone has gone to all the trouble of teasing out the details its certainly going to save the rest of us an equal and unnecessary amount of work.

So am I going to use Facebook, well probably not, because I have Moodle, would I discount Facebook, absolutely not, clearly it can and does work.

Please feel free to comment

Regards Barry