Should teachers and students be “friends” on social networking sites?

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The video Social Media Revolution that I watched last week illustrates how fast social networking sites grow. I believe that social networking sites can be the learning tool for L2 learners, and it can also create platforms that relate students and the teacher together to learn, to communicate and to share. For example, by encouraging L2 learners to join native speakers through groups on Facebook, talking with native language speaker on Skype or following native speakers on Twitter. However, social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace are the places where both teachers and students share the same forums to connect and keep in touch with their friends and families. Some students will send friend requests to the teacher in order to learn, to communicate and to keep in touch with the teacher. The thing is, networks will sassily blur the students-teacher relationship since all the personal information may be available on profiles. Is it appropriate to be “friend” with students on a social network? The blog The Digital Down Low from Matt Montagne discussed same topic: "Should teachers and students be 'friends' on social networking sites?”

In the Blog, the author illustrates his idea that it is necessary to set up social network policy if one is going to share his/her information with students. For example, the author has set up his own Facebook policy to state that he only accepts a friend request from past/present students and parents under the condition that everyone must use respectful language and keep their profile “clean”. By doing so, he gave positive feedback towards the topic, “ the experience of connecting with students in a variety of ways and spaces allows to talk intelligently to other adults about what students are doing with these powerful communication and collaboration platforms.”

When I was teaching at a language institution, my students used to ask me for my personal blog website, I refused to give to them because the blog is personal and private, and I think there needs to be a certain distance between teachers and students to maintain respect. But in terms of encouraging students to use social network to be a learning tool, I think it offers a new way for students to communicate with their teachers and could serve an important purpose such as ask questions online or get any assignments they missed. However, I do think that teacher should set up a separate Facebook account to interact with the students to separate from his/her private personal page. And setting up a Facebook policy like what Matt Montagne did is a great idea to clear up all the information for students.

I did some researches online about this topic and found out that Missouri State just passed Missouri Senate Bill 54 on August 28^th that any social networking is prohibited between teachers and students. I wonder how my classmates and the teacher think about this.

Here is another link that I found helpful for me to understand this issue.

Positively Media