Facebook has its perks!

I've been on Facebook for about 3 years-since our first son was born and we started to share some photo's with our "friends' that lived farther away. I've moved to being more of a "lurker", I think they are called, those who snoop at other peoples pages and don't actually add anything to their own or comment on others. One reason for this is because I noticed that I was privy to what everyone else was doing and saying and posting-something that I like to view myself, but I don't really want others to be watching me in the same way-sounds odd doesn't it! Maybe some people don't know how to use their privacy settings, but I've been able to get into other peoples photos even if I'm not allowed to look at their profiles or view any of their information. Sometimes, you can get to a page by going through someone else's page-very creepy, and I don't really want someone to do that to me!

Social networks for education? I've seen some kids start up facebook pages for their courses-although this tends to turn into a complaints area instead of anything very productive-if they really have a homework question all they need to do is use their cell phone, right? Haven't actually seen a good application for them.

The concerns of course are privacy-or lack of it in some of these spaces-as a teacher it gets difficult to separate work from our real lives! As much as some of these sites boast about their privacy, I don't know if I'll ever really be able to trust them, I still think writing your deepest thoughts in a journal and hiding it under the mattress is a safer idea!

I'll continue to snoop on others using Facebook-some of my "friends" I haven't seen since Grade one, and wouldn't really call them "friends"-not even back then, maybe they should be called "acquaintances" instead of friends-although having 83 "friend" makes me feel pretty important!

I don't even want to think about my kids having a facebook page or twittering-maybe by the time they get old enough to play on the computer these social networking places will be obsolete and they will actually be talking face-to-face with their friends again! If only!