Thing #5: Microblogging

I. Love. Facebook.

I. Love. Twitter.

These 2 sites have taken up the better part of my free time for the past year or so. I am on facebook at home for several hours each night. I love to read about what my friends, family, and co-workers are doing. When I joined FB last July, I discovered many long-lost childhood, school, and college friends. Some of them are people I used to talk to nearly every day, and just lost touch with them over time. It's been an ABSOLUTE JOY to return to a little piece of their lives, even if it's on the computer and rarely face-to-face.

I have carefully guarded my facebook from parents of students at my school and from former students, as well. In most cases, I do not choose to accept friend requests from former students, nor do I accept requests from their parents. If I feel I have an actual friendship with parents, or if the students have graduated from high school and I still know them well, I may accept a request. However, I never initiate them, nor do I seek out opportunities to "friend" them. I think Facebook is best reserved, for me, as a personal social site. In fact, I have about 50 "friends" that I wish I didn't have. Some are work colleagues, some are people I hardly spoke to in high school and frankly don't care about... but I have trouble "de-friending" them b/c I think it's rude. In addition, relating to the work situation, I may offend those people if they notice they've been de-friended... it's kind of an awkward situation, and I'm torn about what to do about it.

As I work in an elementary library, my students should NOT be on Facebook (minimum age is 13), but I know some of them are. My goal is to help them be educated about it, and SAFE with whom they friend and communicate, but other than that, I don't involve my students in Facebook conversations very frequently.

Twitter has come to me later than Facebook. I began "Tweeting" about 4 months ago, and currently follow some work friends, family members, and authors (Oh, and Britney Spears, too, LOL). I like it... but I frequently forget to check it. One thing I don't like is that some people Tweet INCESSANTLY and it fills up my iPhone application and I don't see or notice other tweets. There is definitely some Tweeting etiquette that people don't subscribe to.

Both of these sites are great to use with appropriate-aged kids, b/c it's right where they are. Students old enough for these accounts could create accounts about book characters, historical figures, etc., and get closer to understanding of these characters as actual people, which always cements the learning better.

Backchanneling I have less experience with... I tried it at a meeting and we got WAY off-topic. However, it's a great way, if one is able to multi-task, to keep the right side and left side of the brain occupied so that learning can take place. I'd like to use backchanneling with a small group of students before introducing it to an entire class. I'm not sure they'd listen to me if they were all backchanneling at the same time!