Should Educators be Afraid of Having a Facebook Profile?

Whether you are a teacher at a grade school or work at a Fortune 500 company we have all heard the stories of educators being removed or suspended for inappropriate posts on their Facebook profile.  So, the question stands, can you take advantage of the educational opportunity provided by a social network like Facebook without running the risk of loosing your job?  Well, today I’m not going to make you wait for the answer. The answer simply is “yes.” Yes, you can create a personal Facebook profile and still use the social networking platform to educate your learners.  Here’s how…

Protect Your Personal Facebook Profile

Believe it or not Facebook is on your side.  They have provided a great resource that covers the 10 steps you can take to protect your personal Facebook profile.   In their overview they walk you through:

1. Using your Friends Lists option. By categorizing your “friends” you can limit the amount of information they see on your profile.  Mashable (The Social Media Guide) also came up with a great overview on this feature.
2. Removing yourself from Facebook search results. Searching is the way that most people will find your personal Facebook profile, so don’t let them.  If you would like to show up in search results you can also choose what you want to display from this area.
3. Removing yourself from Google. A lot of Facebook traffic comes from Google searches.  That’s way this is officially the mother of all musts for anyone that wants to protect their privacy on Facebook.
4. How to avoid being tagged in photos. This is how most people get in trouble on Facebook.  It isn’t that they are going out and posting inappropriate pictures (otherwise I wouldn’t feel sorry for them), it’s their “friends” that are posting embarrassing pictures and linking them to a profile by a method called tagging.
5. Protecting your photo albums. Even if you aren’t posting what you consider inappropriate pictures, some people may have a different view of what is appropriate.  For instance a teacher in Georgia was fired over photos of her vacation in Europe where she was holding beer mugs and glasses of wine.
6. Preventing stories from showing up in your friend’s news feeds. Do you want your boss or co-workers to know that your relationship status is “complicated”? Use this feature to remove selected activities from your updates.  One thing Facebook doesn’t tell you is to click on the “Facebook Ads” tab on this page and change the “Allow ads on platform pages to show my information to” from “my friends” to “no one” but I suggest you do.
7. Protecting against published application stories. Are you up at midnight and decide it would be fun to play that “Have Sex!” game your friend sent to you?  Did you know that these types of games/applications can automatically post to your news feed for the world to see?  Even if you aren’t planning to play these games, it is better to be safe than sorry.
8. Making your contact information private.  If I want anyone to have my contact information I will give it to them,  but if you want to make your contact information available just remember you can hide it from some people.
9. How to avoid inappropriate wall posts. Not sure what those “friends” from way back in grade school will say?  I’ve found that is always best to control who can post to your wall.
10. Keeping your friendships private. While you have gone through all of this trouble to protect your Facebook profile, your “friends” probably haven’t.  Go one step further just to make sure you are covered.

Here’s one more that I would add to the list.  Within the “Applications” privacy settings make sure that “Don’t allow friends to view my memberships on other websites through Facebook Connect” is checked.  Facebook Connect is a great feature to use but you don’t need everyone to know what other sites you visit.

Build Your Professional Facebook Profile

As I said before, there are other options besides your Facebook profile that you can use to create a “learning community.”  The main option is groups, but you could also choose to use pages.  Alot of the functionality of these tools overlap but there are slight differences between the two that will make a difference depending on your need.

Groups are great for activities like training courses or creating a learner network around a specific topic. Within groups you can upload pictures and videos, post links and messages, create a discussion board, add events to a calendar, post news, add polls, and choose to have the group be public or private.  One of the down sides of the group is you can only invite people to join if you are “friends” with them.

Here’s a great video targeted at educators that will walk you though how to create a group.  The video also shows you how you can build your group membership without having to “friend” your learners.  NOTE: Facebook was updated since this video was made, so the “Applications” button she references at the beginning is now at the bottom of the page.

Pages are most often used for publicity and marketing.  Pages look and act like Facebook profiles, but unlike profiles you can have as many pages as you want.  Businesses and celebrities use pages to highlight their products or increase their following.  Pages are always open to the public and Facebook users can actually refer pages to their friends.  I only mention pages because you may want to use them to promote a training outside of your organization or if you have an internal program you don’t mind sharing with the rest of the world.

As you can see there are many ways you can protect your privacy and take advantage of the educational opportunities that Facebook has to offer.  If you have been struggling with the decision to create a Facebook profile then now is the time to start one.  Go to www.facebook.com and create a new profile.  Then, before you do anything else, change your privacy settings and create lists that you can use when sending out your “friend” requests.  Once you have sent out your “friend requests” and updated your profile, join or create a group so you can check out the functionality.  One group I am a member of is eLearning Professionals.  Feel free to check it out!

Best,

P.S. Want to learn more about Facebook?  Check out these great resources!!

• I’m on Facebook–Now What???: How to Get Personal, Business, and Professional Value from Facebook
• Facebook Me! A Guide to Having Fun with Your Friends and Promoting Your Projects on Facebook
• Facebook: The Missing Manual
• Facebook For Dummies

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Tagged as: Facebook, privacy