... so I've got a Facebook account. Most of my friends on Facebook are family members, some from far away. There are also some friend's pages that I've connected to, though people of my generation tend to use this social networking software much differently (and much less frequently) than its original targeted demographic. I've found a couple of friends from high school as well, which is a real trip down memory lane, that's for sure!
But now I've got a message in my in-box saying that one of my students has added me to his friends list. We're only in the third week of our semester, so I don't know this student well, but we've talked about assignments and such, and he seems a harmless and fairly nice person.
Now I have to decide how open I want this application to become. I never made my settings private, because I felt like doing so would defeat part of the purpose of having a page. But I also don't know that I'm comfortable with this latest request. I would have little problem adding this particular student, if it was just him. But it's the web that it will connect me to that I'm more concerned about.
At the same time, I'm also not sure I want my students to know much about my personal life. I've never felt comfortable as a teacher sharing personal details - professional ones, yes - personal, not so much. I know some teachers of adults who are comfortable doing that - I've just never found myself comfortable with sharing personal information. I'd rather keep our relationship friendly, but bound by the classroom, or at least the institution we both are affiliated with.
So now I have to decide. It doesn't really help that the institution I'm at fosters a kind of informality between instructors and students. I'm barely getting comfortable with students calling me by my first name. To share an online presence as well just feels like it crosses a boundary I'm not comfortable breaching.
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