Using Facebook with Students

Social media has become an useful instructional tool and is used by more and more teachers to interact with their students and by principals to communicate with families and community. A recent report found that more than 70% of Americans have an account.

But there are legitimate concerns about how teachers and other employees use Facebook and other forms of social media with their students. In a recent post, Lisa Nielson provided five best practices for teachers when they use Facebook with students. At the top of the list is the importance of maintaining a professional demeanor and not mixing your personal site with your professional one. Nielson says, "You can create a page or group that students can "like" or "join" without being one another's friend or seeing one another's feed." That's really important. Nielson's other tips are equally useful.

In The School Leader's Guide to Social Media Howard Johnston and I share other ideas about how teachers can use social media like Facebook to improve instruction and how school leaders can use social media to improve communication. We'd welcome your thoughts about the use of social media in schools.