Facebook

Overview
[|Facebook] is one of the most popular social networking services on the Internet. [|One source] estimates that it is currently the second most popular in the US (behind MySpace), but most popular in the world overall.

The primary method of connecting on Facebook is by "friending" someone. Generally, you cannot see a person's profile information (contact info, wall posts, photo albums) unless you are "friends" - that is, one of you has invited the other to become "friends", and the other has accepted (there are, of course, exceptions - some, but not many, choose to make their profile information publicly viewable to everyone on Facebook).

One feature of Facebook is **Groups **, which provides people with a message board/online arena for discussing any particular topic, from the [|mundane] to the [|serious] to the [|silly]. While not widely used, these provide one avenue for collaborating and discussing professional issues.

Some relevant Facebook Groups include:
 * Faculty Ethics on Facebook
 * Using Wiki in Education
 * Parents as Partners
 * Cyberhate
 * Blended Learning and Instruction
 * e-Learning in Developing and Developed Countries

Additionally, some school-specific Facebook groups include:



as well as:



Should I "Friend" Students on Facebook?
There's no easy answer to this question. It's a personal decision, and there are probably as many legitimate reasons **not** to friend a current or former student as there are **to** friend them. This will depend solely on your comfort level with having students see the content of your Facebook profile.

If you do decide to friend students, current or former (remember, they may have friends or siblings in the school who might access your info through their account), you may wish to allow them **restricted access** to your profile; in other words, they can communicate with you, but they cannot see personal information such as address, phone number, photo albums, etc.

To do this, you should first create a list of friends who will have restricted access (call it "Limited Access" or "Current Students" or something like that). You can do this by selecting **Friends** from the top menu. When the Friends page appears, your lists, as well as the option to create lists, will appear in the left menu:

Once you create your new list, you will be asked to add friends to that list. You will also be given the option of adding any new friends to this list when you initially "friend" them.

Once you have established your list of limited access friends, go to the top menu and click on **Settings > Privacy Settings > Profile.** You will then see a menu of profile components (Profile, Basic Info, Personal Info, etc.) with drop-down menus. Under most of the drop-down menus, you have the option to choose **Except These People**. Any friends or lists included under **Except These People** will not be able to see whatever component you selected:



With a little ingenuity and elbow grease, you can create different levels of profile access for friends, family, professional contacts, current students, former students, etc. Of course, you could also give everyone unlimited access - the choice is yours.