I'm not to the point yet where I am willing to go into the social media world with my students. We have always been told not to be friends with our students on Facebook or twitter. There are just too many legal issues. We as teachers have sworn to protect our students, so if we know something about them no matter how we find out we have to report it. Then there is the other side of it, I have a personal life that I don't need my students to be apart of. My friends and my family don't need to be subjected to my students opinion of them and their comments.
From a parent stand point, I am protective of my children. I would not want part of their grade to depend on their participation on Facebook or twitter. There are just too many other unknown people involved that could get to my child's information, or simply talk to my child. So as I am not a proponent of using the social media for my students, I think it would be a good idea as a place to post information for the parents to access. I am also not apposed to an educational format like Facebook, such as My Big Campus. It has most of the features of Facebook, but is set up by the teacher, so other people cannot ask to join from outside of the class. Even here we will have to be constantly teaching the students were the good citizenship line is, and not to cross it. We as teachers have to create and maintain a save place for our students to learn whether that is in our classroom or our virtual classroom space.
