Facing Up to Facebook
by Andy Carvin, 2:10PM
With all the bad press that MySpace has gotten over the last year, it’s easy to overlook how its rival social network Facebook has become a staple communications tool in higher education. The Christian Science Monitor took notice earlier this week, and it highlights the enormous gap that exists between higher ed and K-12 when it comes to online social networks.
Started by a Harvard student who wanted to make it easier to network with his classmates, Facebook has blossomed to a robust online community of more than 12 million people. Like a traditional facebook, the website will display a profile of you and your interests, but it also allows you to form discussion groups, swap multimedia files and post notes to other people’s pages. Because it started as a tool targeting college students, the bulk of its users are enrolled in universities. But there are still millions of others participating, from K-12 students to adults that aren’t affiliated with a school. That’s because Facebook now allows anyone to participate in the website.
Because of this, a growing number of the people you encounter in Facebook are educators and administrators. One of them is Pablo Malavenda, the associate dean of students at Purdue University. Malavenda was one of the first administrators to embrace Facebook as a way of communicating with his students, and as he tells the Christian Science Monitor, he’s seen both the positive and negative sides of it:
“Any [campus] behavior that you could experience face to face, you’ll see on Facebook,” says Malavenda. Mr. Malavenda created his profile in January 2005 and now has more than 700 friends. His early knowledge of the phenomenon made his school less reactive. As Facebook picked up steam, Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, banned its athletes from using it. The University of New Mexico banned it outright for months. Malavenda says the schools overreacted because they were confused - after all, he adds, social networking is the biggest campus phenomenon since phones were allowed in residence halls.
Malavenda knows dozens of Facebook stories: relationships that ended when one partner read the other’s “wall” and realized that he or she was seeing others; the student who didn’t get a job because their Facebook profile presented them as the next big thing in binge drinking.
There’s his own story, too. Last fall, Malavenda caught a group of students selling cocaine and kicked them off campus. In response, they started a Facebook group called “We hate Pablo,” complete with directions to his house and instructions to hurt and eliminate him.
“I signed up for this job with everything that comes with it,” Malavenda says. “But my kids haven’t. My wife hasn’t.”
Malavenda got the police involved. The students were put on academic suspension for five years. But he doesn’t blame Facebook. “The behavior is what you deal with, not where it occurred,” he says. It also doesn’t hurt that a “We Love Pablo” group formed in response - something Malavenda says is “quite enjoyable.”
Other universities are getting in on the act as well, particularly when it comes to educating students about using Facebook responsibly. At the University of North Carolina, for example, administrators created a pair of dummy Facebook profiles to demonstrate what can happen when students reveal too much information about themselves. These dummy personas, Ivana Bea Stalked and Lloyed Unemployed, reveal more info about themselves than you’d probably want to encounter, from their personal contact information to images of what they look like inebriated or in limited clothing. The point behind these personas is to get students to think about the ramifications of revealing such information, whether it’s seen by prospective employers or even stalkers.
Mercyhurst College, in contrast, takes another approach. They actively encourage their staff to enroll in Facebook, the goal being to have a “norming influence” on student content. The theory, which has also been embraced by teachers and parents in MySpace, is to show students that they’re not alone in this online community, and they need to behave there as they would in public. For Mercyhurst, this has led to the majority of their campus - both students and staff - participating in Facebook, allowing them to have a virtual network for various campus activities. It’s not uncommon there, and at countless other colleges across the country, for students to use MySpace to organize on-campus election drives, political protests or community meetings. The site is just another way for the entire community to engage each other.
Which brings us to K-12’s role on Facebook. There is no doubt that hundreds of thousands of high school students are using Facebook, particularly now that it’s open to users outside of higher ed. And when I hear many educators talk about Facebook, it’s often in the context of MySpace and the negative side of social networks. This is understandable, because there are serious issues in these social networks when it comes to online safety, privacy, acceptable behavior and cyber bullying, among other problems. Yet administrators within higher ed are finding ways of embracing the technology, using it as a new medium for interacting with students while tackling these very problems rather than ignore them.
Is there an appropriate way for K-12 do be doing the same thing? For example, should schools set up their own social networks in which students can interact with each other in a controlled environment while being taught the appropriate media literacy skills for how to behave online? Is this possible in a world where policymakers seek to ban access to social networks and the news media emphasizes the scourge of online predators? Or should schools stick to doing what they know best and leave it to higher ed to tackle these issues when students graduate and move on?
The answer is probably somewhere in between. Schools, quite rightly, are concerned about online safety and student responsibility, yet it’s hard to teach proper behavior in a vacuum. Given the current environment, though, is it possible to craft the right kind of compromise and make it useful to students and teachers alike? -andy
Filed under : Social Networking
Responses
I have seen how Facebook consumes my friends time. I have not created a profile simply because I do not have the time to check and response to all the messages. I have talked to my friends that have spent hours on end looking at the posting and talking to other friends. Now everyone is starting to get into Youtube.com. I think it is a crazy fad that will pass as time presents something else to take up their free time.
By Vashawn 3:03PM on 21 Dec 06
As a middle school counselor, I have become aware of the misuse of MySpace. No student has come forward to tell of being praised online, but instead to tell of being threatened, or made fun of. Each incidence of threat or harassment is unique, but the message from the education system is the same. That bullying on any level will not be tolerated.
The school system’s solution to using MySpace to harass others was to eliminate access to MySpace… at school. Parents are much more influential on a child’s behavior than the school system.
It seems there has been a shift in the way parents view the education system. The majority of parents who are called to school over discipline issues do not assume that their child is at fault in any way. The teacher’s motivation is automatically called into question.
We live in a world where many parents of K-12 children are not holding their children accountable for their actions. These same children go into adulthood to discover the harsh reality that you have to make your own way.
Is the school system’s answer to the problem of online bullying a perfect one? No. But the school system has not chosen to ignore it either. It has made an attempt to educate parents about sites such as MySpace, and to encourage parents to be more vigilant when it comes to their children using the internet.
Whose job is it to teach children proper communication? The school system does it every day. Not by monitoring how students talk to one another, but by teaching them how to express themselves in writing, by telling them that it is not OK to harass one another in school, and by monitoring behavior in general.
The school system is expected to do much these days. But school consolidation and cutting back on staff has done much of the damage. Schools are expected to more with fewer resources. Larger class sizes and blending students with special needs into the mainstreem make it difficult for teachers to deliver a lesson… let alone monitor and address appropriate classroom behavior. These are problems not faced by colleges.
By Mike 3:07AM on 27 Dec 06
These are thoughtful comments on a tough subject and given my work with communities, I am curious whether anyone has examples of school systems that have initiated partnerships to provide evening or online workshops for parents to learn, hands-on, about social networking (e.g., Facebook, MySpace). I think a lot of parents are intimidated by the online environment (and couldn’t until recently join) so they felt perhaps as excluded as teachers and even less informed.
I am fortunate that my work provides rich opportunties for me to learn and use web-based technologies, but not everyone’s job is like that. Who helps parents learn about these environments, where and how? I am especially concerned for parents who have limited access to or experience with computers or those with English as a second language? I would love to see and hear examples of school-community partnering.
By LaDonna 4:53PM on 08 Jan 07
I am a high school technology coordinator, and I have very mixed feelings about Facebook, in comparision to other DSN tools. I’d like our school to be able to embrace DSN - it does seem like the next wave of communication.
However, Facebook’s greatest strength is also its biggest weakness. What appeals the most about Facebook is that for minors, it is pretty restrictive in terms of membership. Students under the age of 18 may participate, but they require a school email address. If they come in contact with people who they decide should not be in there, they can report them.
The problem is that teachers and parents can’t join the students’ network. When I tried to create an account, it lasted 2 days before I was booted out. (The halls were plastered with signs: “Teachers on Facebook! Watch out!”) When I have contacted Facebook (repeatedly) they have denied me access, even when I have offered to identify myself as a teacher at the school with this account (i.e., a letter from my principal, my face on our school website, a photocopy of my driver’s license).
So what we are left with is an environment where the kids can play, but the adults who are responsible for them can’t get in at all. We can’t advise them when they are using bad judgement (a la the fictious characters described in the original post), and when incidents do occur, we can’t investigate to resolve them. It’s “Lord of the Files.”
Facebook places a lot of faith in the idea that teenagers will always report inappropriate action by their peers, even in the face of bullying behavior and social pressure. This seems a bit naive to me.
So where does that leave us? We can’t block all the DSN sites out there (even if we wanted to), and I really don’t want to block a site that is trying to protect its underage members. At the same time, we are the ones who have a responsibility to these children, not a server farm in who-even-knows-which state.
I’d like to think that there is a constructive solution out there, but as far as I can tell, it’s not coming from the folks at Facebook.
By H. Howe 1:31AM on 27 Jan 07
great article..
i am a public high school visual arts teacher. i use facebook for education in many ways, club info..activity communication..and to post pictures of school events…i allow my student’s to friend me, i only accept friends…i don’t solicit my students friendship..also they ask for permission to tag without friending…but some find it easier to request friendship.
i was recently asked to stop posting facebook pictures of school events by my district. this is in the interest of safety. some kids, and parents are dissapointed…i am saddened that the kids won’t get all these no cost photos of themselves that they really enjoy. i will say that i do feel some relief that i can’t post though…it frees me from the chance of litigation if someone claims embarrassment or whatever..but i don’t think there is a better way to get my pictures to them, so it is a bit of a bummer…anyway..just my 2 cents.
By al nakas 8:40PM on 04 Oct 09