It’s no big secret that teachers haven’t exactly welcomed Facebook into their classrooms with open arms. Facebook has gotten the reputation of being a distraction, and even a waste of time in the classroom—it’s also been accused of being the cause of students receiving low grades in their courses. Now, to be fair, the students who are obtaining those bad scores are most likely not using Facebook in their best interest when it comes to their schooling. In fact, Facebook can be an advantage to students if used correctly—it could even correlate with higher GPAs. Here are some ways teachers can effectively use Facebook in their classrooms:
Have a focus for your Facebook use. If you simply tell your students that they will be using Facebook in your course, of course there will be a chance of things getting out of hand. Instead, tell them how it will be utilized in determining their grades. Through interaction and discussion, students will be able to be more in touch with what is going on in the classroom, and will therefore be more motivated to learn
You don’t have to befriend your students! In fact, DON’T become friends with your students. Facebook offers Groups or Pages to be used, both which do not require you to be friends with those you are interacting with.
If you are a member in a group, you will be notified when other group members make posts on the group wall. Groups can be “open”, “closed”, or “secret.” The “closed” option is the recommended version to use—this ensures that the information that is posted will be private. In a group on Facebook you can continue class discussion that were cut short and organize study groups. For the shier students out there, groups are especially nice because they can ask questions in a low-stress environment instead of in front of everyone in class—this is a huge relief for some!
Pages are open, transparent, and secure. With pages, the public is welcome to “like” the page to receive updates from the administrator. Teachers can use this to keep students up-to-date on current events and any other resources they care to share, even if it’s just a funny cat video they thought the students would find amusing. To top it all off, students can even comment on what the teacher posts to add conversation to the content on the page!
Facebook isn’t for all teachers. Actually, many are uncomfortable with it if they have younger students. For those of you in this situation, there are other sites available to you that just might fit your needs:
Edmodo: Like Facebook, Edmodo allows teachers and students to share ideas, files and assignments on a communal wall. Teachers can organize different groups of students and monitor them from the same dashboard. Once they’ve organized classes, they can post assignments to the wall and grade them online. They can then archive the class groups and begin new ones. Pretty convenient, I must say!
Collaborate Classroom: Here, teachers have four discussion format choices. Students can either agree or disagree with a statement, answer a multiple choice question, post responses, or have the choice between adding a new response or voting for someone else’s response. Teachers can add photos or videos to their prompts and all of the discussions take place on one class page.
Edublogs: This is a WordPress-like blogging platform that only supports educational content and thus, unlike WordPress, usually isn’t blocked by school filters. Since 2005, it has hosted more than a million blogs from students and teachers—sounds like many people find this site helpful!
Your students are fully immersed in technology, and if you plan on reaching them, you may have to try something new. You know what they say after all; if you can’t beat them, join them!
