FRIENDING ONLINE - DO IT CONSERVATIVELY?

Image via Wikipedia

I was reading Rich Byrne’s Free Technology for Teacher’s blog Why Can’t We Be (Facebook) Friends? this morning and he was discussing “friending” students and former students on social networks.  I started to comment on the blog and got thinking about it.  I probably need a personal policy on this issue and plan to make it a page on all my blogs.  This way others will know up front my personal policy on friending and social networks. After posting this blog entry, I plan to make edit into a “policy” page to formalize my social media friending personal policy.

Most of the time a student will request to “Friend” a teacher just as a matter of course without thinking about any other factors. The definition of online friendship to most students is different than it is for adults and they view “friending” someone much differently than most of us do.

I have had this student policy since I started on Facebook and other social media sites.  I will not request to “friend” any former or current student.  Initiation of a friend request will always come from the other direction.

If a current or former student who is still in school requests to friend me, I will automatically send a message back explaining while they are still in school it is an inappropriate boundary and refuse the request.

If the student has quit school, I wait a few days then I determine how I actually got along with that student.  I consider the question is this someone that I would want to sit down and talk with or is this just a generic oh it’s Mr. Shaw, I know him to get my friend count up.

If the former student is someone who has graduated, I think for a couple of days before I choose one way or the other.  Then I usually hide them in my stream.  I don’t want/need to know the day-to-day lives of teenagers/young adults – if you follow my meaning.  But if they want to talk to me they can still do so.

I guess I am very conservative in my “friending” of those who are still students.  Have I allowed some former students to friend me while they still are in school – yes, but none from where I currently work.  Those are exceptional cases and I usually have unique reasons for doing so and carefully consider any potential consequences of that online “friendship”.  I might even go so far as to contact the parent or legal guardian and definitely keep a copy of all the correspondence – CYA.  There would have to be a very specific reason for a student still in school to be on my “friend” network.

Friending of co-workers is another area where, unless there is a specific reason to do so, I usually won’t.  Former co-workers are fine and I have several in my Facebook feeds.  I guess that I believe that there should be some separations between my work life and my personal life.

On the whole, I really think that teachers have to be very conservative in who they choose to allow to be “friends” on social networking sites and I don’t believe that it is just about former students either.

We are role models for our students and need to project a positive image of our profession to others.  Yes teachers just like everyone else has the right to freedom of expression.  But sometimes keeping one’s choices a bit more private might be a good choice for those who work with kids.

To me “friendship” is more than “following” someone and reading about their life online.  I don’t have that many friends on Facebook, but I follow several hundred on Twitter.  Friendship is usually reserved for people that I have actually met, talked to and have something in common with and I think that I will keep it that way.  Facebook is part of my personal life and Twitter/other social networks are less personal, but important to me in a much different way.  Twitter is the way I communicate with others that I may not know personally, but talk with about common interests and are part of my Personal Learning Network or whatever people want to call it know.

So here is to being conservative in online social media sites.

HaroldTechnorati Tags: Facebook, social media, Friending, Twitter, Resource220, role model, hshawjr

[Via http://resource220.com]