Facebook – Getting Started
With serious demands on your time, why should you consider joining Facebook as an elected school board member? For same reason why virtually every school district eventually built and maintains a website, Facebook provides another channel of communication with your community. As Facebook continues to become part of everyday life, more and more parents and community members use Facebook. Therefore, each school district and its elected officials need to evaluate when to take advantage of the benefits Facebook has to offer.
From the Facebook statistics page, here some numbers:
- More than 300 million active users
- 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
- The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older
- Average user has 130 friends on the site
- More than 6 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)
- More than 40 million status updates each day
- More than 10 million users become fans of Pages each day
Beyond the opportunities for using Facebook for community engagement, there is a need to understand the implications of the educational benefits of Facebook. In 2008 study done by researchers at the University of Minnesota found that students using social networking sites are actually practicing the kinds of 21st century skills we want them to develop to be successful today. Students are developing a positive attitude towards using technology systems, editing and customizing content and thinking about online design and layout. They’re also sharing creative original work like poetry and film and practicing safe and responsible use of information and technology.
Take Action -Your Profile
The first step in joining Facebook is creating a profile. The best profile on Facebook is a complete one. Don’t be shy – the purpose of Facebook is to connect and interact with others, so don’t be shy!
•Always provide the Basic Information about yourself: Full Name, Sex, Birthday, etc.
•Provide a good updated profile picture of yours so that people get to know how you look like.
•In the Personal Information block fill up your activities, interests, write a few line about yourself. Try to be specific about yourself. Focus on your activities, likings, achievements. Don’t attempt to write an essay though.
Join CSBA Fan Page
One of the benefits of Facebook is the ability to join groups of like minded individuals to share thoughts and ideas. The California School Boards Association has created a group for school board members. At minimum, join CSBA fan page.
Friends and Requests
Once you have completed your profile and joined your first group you then have to decide how to connect with others. Facebook has the ability to group connects into “lists”. A typical setup for lists would be “Friends”, “Family”, and “Professional”. These three groups can then be used to apply different privacy policies. For example, you may want your family to see photos from the birthday party you were at last night, but you don’t want your friends or professional contacts to see those photos. In a future post I will cover in detail how privacy settings can be used to maintain boundaries on the information that is shared.
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