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To Facebook or not to Facebook? |
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04/Aug/2011
as more and more students have Facebook accounts, we decided it was an easy and quick way to have contact with students, parents and teachers...
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 ‘Let’s do it, Romania!’ This is how we started: September 2010…ecology…organizing??… students volunteering… photos…have you got any photos? We need them urgently…and I sent the photos to my colleagues at school and to my friends. In the evening I found out that the photos were gathered in an album on a Facebook page, with the name of our high school written there. After a humble start, here I was, with a hobby that was becoming a great responsibility on my shoulders and which proved to be a very useful way of communication for all of us, especially students.
Little by little, I had to upload everything I could, as every day more and more people-students and former students- visited that page and became members. Although a little chaotic at the beginning, my work became more and more organized, trying to make light of what was of greatest importance for the school and more importantly meeting our school friends.
This activity improved not only my knowledge about using technology, but also my communication with my students and colleagues at school. Some of the latter were a bit more reluctant to the idea of our school having a profile on a social network instead of only having a webpage, and therefore, they were a little more difficult to convince to cooperate. Still, in time, things began to change, especially when they found out that the students were interested and enthusiastic about being mentioned on the school Facebook page, as a kind of acknowledgment and reward for their different results in competitions or for their acting in different performances at school.
If one of the greatest motivating factors for teenagers to use technology is to connect to others, to socialize, why not connecting to their school, either? And the question is, do they know how to interact with the school authority in an online community? Our students need to learn to be nice and kind to others online. They need to be respectful and thoughtful about what they say and how they act online, just as in real life. We need to do a better job of teaching them that disengaging from social responsibility while using telecommunications is not acceptable behavior, as long as many of them imagine they can say mean and hurtful things behind the screen. This is what we have tried to do on our Facebook account as well. Daily posts invited them to performances, visits to museums and exhibitions and all types of events within the school. Photo albums of former graduates initiated dialogues between generations and debates on topics like the school uniform, grades, school contests, school parties or relationships with their teachers.
As the administrator of this Facebook profile, I had to be very careful not to allow mean or unrealistic comments and to be as objective as possible, since it is not a personal profile. I had to ask for different people’s permission to upload their personal photos in the school albums. I also had to find the best solution in a conflict situation, as simply deleting a comment and banning the user is not always beneficial or educational, either. Making the best choices for a text describing a photo, finding the most expressive words to say ‘happy holiday’ to the students or giving prompt answers to the visitors’ questions was not an easy task.
One more step, I created an e-mail address sonia@colegiul-ion-minulescu.com for anybody to send articles in, photographs and any kind of information and material they possess and want to share with their schoolmates and teachers. We were glad to have received comments from the parents, who appreciated publicly the teachers’ work with their children or made suggestions regarding our activity as educators.
Thus, as more and more people have Facebook accounts, we decided it was an easy and quick way to have contact with students, parents and teachers and establish a fair and objective communication with anybody interested and involved by having a Facebook page. It is also a way of making us known within our local community and among young children who have to choose from more high schools in our town.
Further on, we will continue to keep our visitors informed about the latest issues concerning our school’s activities and through everything we post on the Facebook page of ‘Ion Minulescu’ National College, we hope to contribute to a better communication within this virtual community , communication which we expect to reflect in a better relationship between students, teachers and tutors within the school, for the benefit of our students and for a higher quality in education.
For the next school year, we have already decided to expand our discussions with the students about online behavior, understanding of Internet technologies, child development and counseling, to focus on the impact of the Internet on the social, emotional and language development of young people and to organize workshops on Internet safety.
You do not know how proud I am to meet our school friends every day! You do not know how happy it makes me to see my old friends on our school Facebook and being able to communicate with them! BUT I DO… And after all, I used to be one of the students myself. I will treasure my time as a student for the rest of my life… And this is why, my work as an administrator, I did it all with love for the students and for this school where I work…
You are welcome to visit us: http://www.facebook.com/colegiul.ion.minulescu |
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