Job Discussion Forums

[gaijinalways]

[denise]

[gaijinalways]

I basically don't post much about life on Facebook (I'd rather live my life, not write about it for somebody else).

Besides, in Japan, my students wouldn't be surprised by most things I do , and the ones that they might be, I don't think I'd be putting them on Facebook , would probably take too long to type out the details .

[jivany]

test

[dackinator]

.. .. ..

[Sashadroogie]

Can't identify with 'professional distance? Get riotously drunk with your students, end up in bed with one of them until daybreak, just when hubby is coming back from working the night-shift. That will help with the identification process, and probably also dispel any notions of students on Facebook...

[Qaaolchoura]

I "friended" some of my professors in the early years of college. I was always kind of an awkward kid, and identified more with my professors than my peers. Then I realized it was kind of a stupid thing to do. Not that I have any inappropriate photos, just that even though they treat me socially as an equal (and I've been in touch with some of them via email since graduation), it's weird to have that kind of contact with anybody much older than you. (I set the line at about six years.) It's also kind of weird to friend anybody who isn't at least a close acquaintance. If your students are close in age and you end up keeping in touch with some of them, there's probably no harm in friending them after there's no chance of dealing with them in a professional capacity.

I really wouldn't recommend trying to control things through privacy settings. Being a privacy freak myself and kept trying to do that, and Facebook kept trying to mess with my settings, in some cases removing my ability to control a feature entirely (Friends get that I quote Dan Quayle because I find him funny, but many people I've met are suprisingly obtuse where irony is concerned). I finally decided to just delete my account entirely after that last shakeup where they linked everything to pages and made all pages public by default.

~Q

[mimi_intheworld]

At my last place of employment, we set up a facebook group for the institution & many of the staff created alternate facebook identities for that group. The staff used that identity to friend children on facebook.

Some teachers at my last school (including my department head) used facebook in order to post information about extra tutoring or group discussions on a given GCSE topic, etc. That was a successful experiment and has since continued.

My personal view is NO WAY would I friend students (mine are always young people, not adults or even uni students) on facebook. I use facebook to keep in touch with long-losts scattered around the world. I don't think it's appropriate for my students to have access to my facebook page. Or their parents. Just...no.

[naturegirl321]

I've decided to befriend the ones that request to be friends, after I'm done teaching them and I set them to limited profile, so basically they can't see anything other than my name

[Justin Trullinger]

I do use facebook with students and colleagues, and bosses for that matter.

THing is, I don't really use it for anything else. (And not a lot for that, in fact.)

If I had the kind of page that many people I know do (where a great deal of your social life is on display) I'd either ignore friend requests from students, or get a separate page for them.


Best,
Justin

[Chancellor]

[gaijinalways]

Talk about "BIG brother".

A lot of what people here have pointed out as being relevant for handling of social media applies to real life. People have to decide what, when, and who to share information with and their own comfort level that goes with it if they wish to maintain their "professional distance".

I get students who are surprised when I sometimes get up and come over near their seats to listen to/see what're doing during spoken or written activities. For some reason they think I should be properly situated at a "professional distance", but preferably not always in the same classroom as them.

I guess virtual lessons do really rock and you can keep your distance, too.

[Sashadroogie]

Why surprised?