Social Networking

I found our guest speaker about social networking quite informative! I hadn't known that the same people who tend to use social networking sites such as Facebook, are the same people who tend to be social in the off-line world as well. I had worried that it was the other way around; that online social networkers weren't getting enough face-to-face time in the real world. It is wonderful to find out that my assumptions about this weren't correct.

Our speaker's comments that young people tend to communicate with "adults" through email and peers through social networking sites made me think about the importance of not blocking this way of connecting for our youth. Still, I absolutely believe that we need to teach online safety, what to do about online bullying, and how important it is that people who put information online, realize that it will likely be seen, at some point, by prospective college admissions and prospective or future employers. People have lost opportunities and jobs, because of poor and/or uninformed choices about what they have decided to post.

Lastly, I didn't realize that social networking also serves a professional purpose - educators can and do connect with other educators to share questions and knowledge. With this in mind, I will be trying this option in the future.

Thanks for reading.