Thursday, October 23, 2008
Social networking and students
We talked a lot during Bill's visit about how we manage our online identities. I was saying that I have a Facebook page under my other identity and that several of our students and past students have asked me to be their Facebook friends. I usually say yes, but as a result am very careful how I use my Facebook profile - it has no reference to this blog, for example. The extremes of such staff-student engagement in social networking were made clear in this story which Bill emailed me. The discussion about it on Digg is interesting- most people seem clear that the issue here is about how we maintain professional boundaries rather than the technology itself. So often people seem to muddle the act of engaging in social networking/Web 2.0 type activity with what we do with it, which is surely what really matters..
We talked a lot during Bill's visit about how we manage our online identities. I was saying that I have a Facebook page under my other identity and that several of our students and past students have asked me to be their Facebook friends. I usually say yes, but as a result am very careful how I use my Facebook profile - it has no reference to this blog, for example. The extremes of such staff-student engagement in social networking were made clear in this story which Bill emailed me. The discussion about it on Digg is interesting- most people seem clear that the issue here is about how we maintain professional boundaries rather than the technology itself. So often people seem to muddle the act of engaging in social networking/Web 2.0 type activity with what we do with it, which is surely what really matters..
# posted by Mary Plain @ 11:48 am 
