9-12

=As a High School, Secondary teacher, administrator what is your school doing to integrate Facebook into the Curriculum?=

Well, I'm starting small! I don't friend-request my students or parents of, but I always accept their friend requests. I tell my students that if I find their content objectionable, I'll de-friend them. It's simple, and I don't comment on any of those types of posts. It's not school, it's social, and it's not up to me to censor. On the other hand, if I saw something illegal or dangerous, which I never have, I wouldn't ignore it. Aside from being a great place to see what they're excited about (they won their game, did well in scholar's bowl meet, got a new dog), it can prepare me for their bad days (Grandma's in the hospital again, we took my brother to the hospital twice yesterday because of his asthma). I'm a LA teacher who teamed with a SS teacher this year to offer American Studies to juniors and seniors. When I'm grading projects or quizzes at home (usually electronically!) it's great to be able to send a private message to my students on FaceBook and say, "Hey, I'm looking at your podcast now. Great job! I love the music you found - it's perfect with your message!"

For an economics project, we had our students establish a business with the Facebook app Restaurant City or FarmVille. They blog about the purchases they make, the workers they hire, how many customers they have, etc. Their mid-term and final products ask students to explain how their choices affected their income and the ultimate success of their business. They included as well a lot of information about how they learned from their mistakes, such as when they'd forget to harvest their crops and they'd lose the money they'd invested to plant or when they forgot to care for their employees and work didn't get completed at the restaurant. They learned the benefit of cultivating neighbors and helping each other in their work. It has amazed me the number of students who were lukewarm when we began but now admit they've learned things they didn't expect and they continue their business operations after the end of the assignment. (Poelover)

From the Tomorrow's Tech in Today's Schools Blog, a Facebook Template for creating Facebook Fan Pages and ideas for how to use the Template. What a great idea! [|Facebook Fan Page Template]. Done as a Power Point


 * We have an American Government teacher that uses a Facebook group (without friending students) to post discussions to topics and feedback to reading assignments. It also was used to keep students up to date during multiple snow days as to how the teacher was going to reorganize the class, especially around tests.
 * We also have a new group that is pushing a class on Wind Energy (complete with plans to putting a turbine on school grounds), so they've created their own group to share ideas and keep students who are interested as to where they are at in terms of their presentation to their administration and the district school board. (me )