Thanks for sharing all of this here. My mind is racing…

I don’t believe that teachers and stuents should be friends on Facebook in a High School setting, but I see that the app you’ve developed allows for your staff and students to interact with each other without “friending” each other.

One of the complaints that the students I posted about shared was that they were working in too many environments. Your app could very well satisfy their need to reduce their number of online networks. But, what about those staff members that are not interested in creating a Facebook account?

The syncing between the Google calendar and the Facebook notifications is brilliant! I would love to see and hear more about this and how you brought in parental support of moving towards this type of platform. Also, how your IT department supports this.

Again, thanks for taking the time to share your plans here!

Lisa

First, we developed a Facebook app, which is no mean feat let me assure you. This app has a home page, a shared calendar, and a groupspace where any group (class, team, club, etc.) can create a workspace — and then pick from a growing app list of apps to apply. This is all coded as a native Facebook application and when fully launched will be available like any other application in Facebook.

Second, we developed new rules. For instance, our native Facebook app does not work off of “Friends” or “Friending”….we created a more detached relationship — a meet-in-the-middle relationship — where teachers/coaches/leaders/etc. can interwork with students/teammembers/clubmembers/volunteers/etc. without friending each other. We call them “Classmates”. This was deemed critical to the kids and teachers. Neither wanted the other in their personal space. Classmates can form study groups, work on projects together, and do anything, and walk away without being Friends if they want to.

Third, we love Google and have been linking it to the “mapped” Google applications. So the shared calendar syncs with Google calendar, all uploaded docs are stored in Google Docs, etc. The calendar shows the same layering and such as Google Calendar, but just reflected in Facebook and also linked into Facebook’s notifications and such. So as new homework is assigned, say, in a Google Sites’ calendar, it flows through to be in front of the face of the kid glued to Facebook.

Fourth, we’re creating vertical topic spaces so that we can better support each group with their own apps. The kids have loved coming up with ideas for this. For classes, for instance, there is a Study Hall….a teacher could be online for an hour the night before a test to answer questions, and the Study Hall can be saved for others to view in archive. Another example: we’re working with the local boy scout troops now to build mini-apps to bridge the previously admin/troopmaster-oriented software out there to “reflect” that content in Facebook. So merit badge tracking and Eagle Scout project support applications for instance. It’s a modular app store approach.

Finally (I won’t keep going), we’ve opened lines of communications now between school admin and the kids in Facebook. Emergency alerts will span the top of the Facebook page. Guidance owns a widget on the Home Page. There are grade-specific widgets, such as CollegeBoard test dates (and SAT question of the day), that are pertinent to high school kids but not so much for middle school kids. An admin portal controls access to all.

We’ve got other things going on, I won’t dwell, but the kids have been adamant that they wanted to use Facebook as the core, but be able to DO something in Facebook. Facebook is lousy at groups; Google is great with groups. Under this model, if someone logs into Google, they see everything (APIs permitting) that they would in Facebook. We’ve been working on this for almost two years now, and it’s getting slick I must say. I’ve been advising the kids working on this, and hooked them up with programmers to help actually do this. I’m a real long term Google fan, and think that it’s going to take a bridging app like this to fully move kids hooked on Facebook over to relying more on Google as Google itself figures out Social Networking. It appears to be getting some interest from neighboring schools which is a nice affirmation.

So this so far is one vote for taking advantage of the Facebook mass. If anyone is interested seeing it, the kids love to show it off!

1. Forward all your e-mail to one address. I forward all my different accounts to my Gmail account.

2. I use the same three passwords and rotate them. It makes it easier to manage them.

I hope that helps a bit. Thank you for leaving a comment.

Thanks,
Lisa

A web portal of some kind is always a great way to unify everyone in some way.

Perhaps the answer is this: Our school district has its own website with every teacher listed there. Perhaps the school can link to each teachers blog, thus becoming a portal for the students. They simply go onto their school site and click on each teacher they have, and they’ll never have to remember which teacher uses which blog.

Any thoughts?
Thanks!
MB