Some Resources We Used in Our Decision

If you’ve made the decision to open Facebook in your district, there’s no doubt that you did quite a bit of research before you came to your conclusion. If you’re still in the consideration mode, perhaps these links will be of help to you. Whatever side of the fence you fall on regarding this issue, there is a wealth of information and resources out there that you could find useful. Today, I thought I would post some of the excellent articles and blog posts that assisted us in coming to our own conclusion to open Facebook.

The Thinking Stick, an excellent blog written by Jeff Utecht, had two posts that we found useful. One, Why Facebook is Unblocked at ISB, was a note that was sent out to the community members offering the reasoning behind opening Facebook, while the other, Make Students Your Fans, provided an interesting suggestion of making students your fans rather than “friending” them.

We also found two sites that proved to be extremely valuable resources in how our teachers would implement Facebook in their classrooms. 100 Ways You Should Be Using Facebook in Your Classroom and A Teacher’s Guide to Using Facebook. 100 Ways was an outstanding shopping list of ideas for how we could use Facebook with our students as well as how our teachers could get the most out of the collaboration resources Facebook has to offer. A Teacher's Guide was an outstanding document covering everything from the initial setup to getting the most out of Facebook as an instructional resource. Both of these were indispensible. Facebook has its own tips blog entry, Back to School: Tips for Teachers on Facebook, that we also found useful in our training sessions.

We knew that we needed to spend quite a bit of time on the account settings of Facebook. This is also an area that we wanted our teachers to be familiar with, so when we found the article 5 Easy Steps to Stay Safe (and Private!) on Facebook, it gave us a good starting place for our trainings. This article shows how to set privacy settings in Facebook and provides tips on how those settings work.

I’m sure in your searching, you’ve discovered other equally excellent resources. If you have, please post them so that we can all benefit from your research as well.