Second+Reflection-After+Second+Survey

= Second Reflection = November 13, 2010

After reading the results of the second survey that I posed to my participants, my suspicions have proven correct. When I started this project, I figured that the most popular choice for communication with my students would be Facebook. I knew that my students would like it because it is something that they use on a daily basis. What I had not thought about was that having it delivered to them rather than having to seek out the information would make all the difference. It was not expressed in the results of the survey, rather in person during school time, but my students have really enjoying having my posts sent to them. With Facebook, I can deliver any information that I wish my students to have to them and I know that they will most likely see it. If I post information on any of the other sites, only those that are diligent to check them on a regular basis will see it, and that is not very many of them. Facebook seems to combat that problem but at the same time, it is not without it's own complications.

One of the main complications with using Facebook with my students is privacy. I am not concerned about my own privacy as the account that I use for communication with my students is for school only and does not contain any personal information about me. I am most concerned with the privacy of my students and protecting myself from becoming involved with i nappropriate conduct online. I would never require any of my students to become Facebook friends with me as it makes me privy to their outside communication with their friends and I believe that there are some lines that should not be crossed. When I discussed this project with my volunteers I made it very clear to them that by agreeing to help me they would be opening up the potential for me to see their profiles if I chose to. I also made this clear in the permission slip that I sent home to parents. See here: Most students said that this did not bother them but when I began to add my students as friends and was able to see their wall postings, I became uncomfortable with it. I did not like seeing who posted on their walls or when they played a game even. I felt that the professional walls of teacher and student had been taken down too much. Seeing their wall posts makes me vulnerable to having information about them that I may at some point be responsible to do something about. What if they posted something that I perceived to be inappropriate. Would I be responsible to report these things to their parents? Yes, I probably would be and I would prefer not to be. I order to address these issues, I blocked all of their wall postings from my news feed. This helped somewhat but I can still access their information if I wanted to. Friending my students also limits the number of students that will be willing to communicate with me, some will choose not to because it invades their privacy and I do not blame them. I talked to my whole class about this the other day and it was suggested that I create a Facebook Group instead. This allows me to do all of the actions that I could do before (posts, links, video etc.) but does not require my students to Friend me to be a part of it. Problem solved! I now have four more of my students as members of my group but not as friends. In my final survey I will address this development and extend the survey to the rest of my students that have joined the group.

I have come to a conclusion after questioning my students about the effectiveness of the three communication tools that we are using. No one single tool will accomplish all the goals that I have for communicating with my students. Each of the three tools have their own purpose and benefits. In the end I will be choosing which combination of tools I will use and what their purpose will be rather than one single tool. My project has turned into a way to streamline my communication methods rather than exclude options.