November 22nd
Social Media
Welcome to the first installment of the Head Boar’s blog, and welcome to the school’s new website. I’ve been thinking and reading a lot over the past few months about this whole business of social media, something that I suspect many of you have thought about as well. I took the step of establishing my own Facebook page last summer, and last spring I established a Twitter account, which has been dormant for most of the time since then. (If any of you are following me on Twitter, you must lead a really boring life.)
Having a Facebook page has been quite interesting. I’ve reconnected with several old friends, as well as some cousins that I haven’t seen in a long time. I’ve also been “friended” by a few GUS parents. I’ve also come to a few conclusions (subject to change, so I guess it isn’t accurate to call them “conclusions”):
1. Facebook has proven to be useful, at least to me, for keeping up with people who were important to me in my past, as well as my present. I’m a lousy correspondent, partly because I literally hate the physical process of handwriting. I would rather type for two hours than write something by hand for ten minutes. I’ve lost more than one friend because of that. Facebook makes it much easier to keep in touch with a lot of those people. I’ve even reconnected with a Turkish citizen who was a foreign exchange student in my high school. We had a very friendly relationship at the time, but I hadn’t heard from or about him in 46 years. (I told you I’m a lousy correspondent.) (Yes, I’m that old.) Anyway, he’s living in Germany now, teaching chemistry (I hated chemistry), and it’s good to hear from him. It’s also been interesting to reconnect with other high school classmates, some of whom I didn’t know very well at the time. Their lives have taken various turns that I certainly never would have predicted. Some probably feel the same about me.
2. There are definitely risks associated with Facebook. Sometimes I have found out things about people that I really don’t want to know. It can seem like an invasion of privacy at times, even though people are responsible (theoretically) for the content of their page. I’m a bit uncomfortable “friending” current parents of GUS students. I see my relationship with parents as being on a more professional basis, and it sometimes feels a bit awkward when looking at people’s pages. The line between personal and professional starts to blur, so I’ve decided not to “friend” current GUS parents unless there happen to be really good reasons to do so. There is now an official Glen Urquhart School Facebook page, and I encourage parents to become “fans.” That seems to me to be a more appropriate relationship.
3. There’s a lot of stupid stuff (pardon the vernacular) on Facebook as well. There seem to be a lot of silly games that hold no interest for me. Maybe I’m too serious, but I see most of those things as a waste of time. (I’ve been told more than once that I’m too serious and that I should channel my “inner child” more often. I’m willing to accept that as fair criticism.) On the other hand, it’s pretty exciting when a posting on Facebook really makes me think, or provides me with a link to an interesting article or web page. What a great way to share information to a large audience.
Speaking of which, isn’t that the primary goal of Twitter? The people of Iran really proved that last summer. That was powerful. My goals with Twitter, Facebook and my blog are twofold: one is to keep “friends of GUS” informed about interesting things that are happening at school; the other is to provide links to various media that provoke thought about education. I hope I can stimulate some thoughtful, reasonable discussion about the education of children. I promise not to tell you what I had for breakfast. I guess the bottom line here is that Facebook and Twitter, like so many other things, can be used for good or evil. It all depends on how someone chooses to use these new media. Several of my friends have told me that they think I’m just following a fad and basically wasting my time, but I don’t think so. I think this is the way the world is going to communicate for quite some period of time. It’s certainly the way our children are learning to communicate. I just hope we can raise the level of discourse and teach our children, through modeling, among other ways, that any new tool is just that – a tool that we can and should decide how best to use.
Trust and Go Forward.
