My Facebook Policy

As the explosion of 30, 40, 50, 60, and even 70/80/90 somethings getting involved in the world of Facebook continues, we're all going to be confronted with knotty questions of whether or not is appropriate to become contacts/friends with different people. Perhaps it is a former girlfriend/boyfriend, college buddies, childhood friends, former teachers/professors, current/former students, current/former colleagues, people we don't know face to face, etc. Every phase from our lives now can be merged together in the Facebook experience. For some people, this can be an unanticipated positive outcome and for others it can be a bit disconcerting.

Anyway, in the spirit of openness and inspired by Lorna Costantini's wonderful live webcast last night on the topic of Parents and Facebook, I thought I'd spell out my professional policy regarding establishing contacts with past/current students and past/current parents. As a disclaimer, this policy works well for me but very well may not work for someone else. I believe that we all need to make our decisions with what will work best for our own particular circumstance.

For me the experience of connecting has been nothing but positive. I've reconnected with a great childhood buddy of mine who lives out here in the Bay Area, I've reconnected with cousins I haven't seen or talked to in years, I've been able to keep in touch with all of my good teaching buddies from Milwaukee, I've been able to get to know current students better, I've been better sensitized to the experiences of the busy lives of parents and their families, I've shared resources and learned new things from others, I've reconnected with scores of college and high school buddies, and I've furthered my online relationships with many people I don't even know but who are doing some innovative things in the area of teaching and learning around the world.

Here it goes...Matt Montagne's policy for connecting with past/present students and parents on Facebook (as of February 24th, 2009, that is...this is surely bound to change going forward):

I will accept a friend request from past/present students and parents under the following condition...everyone must use respectful language and keep their profile "clean." This, actually, is my rule for maintaining connections with anyone online and I post this clearly on my Facebook profile picture.

To date, I've had to discontinue the connection with only a handful of adults/students primarily due to repeated foul language in status updates.

That is it...that is my policy. I don't put people on limited profile because you can find out more information about me via a google search than you can by my facebook profile. And outside of doing my best to contribute and share with other edu-nerds around the world, I can't really control what shows up on the first page of a google search for Matt Montagne.

Best of luck developing your own personal Facebook policy for accepting/not accepting friend requests from people in your life, both past and present. These are interesting times and as a result, there is no one method and technique that will work for everyone.

2008 EduBlogs Awards...Parents as Partners has been nominated!!

I've had the good fortune to be a small player on the wonderful Parents as Partners webcast team assembled by Lorna Costantini. The mission of the Parents as Partners crew is to create a space for conversation to take place centering around new ways to think about parental engagement in the 21st century. We started our live webcast series over at EdTechTalk just under a year ago and I'm pleased to say that we've been nominated for an EduBlogs 2008 Award under the category of "Best Educational Use of Audio 2008." Please pop over to the EduBlogs award site and vote for us if you would like!! We're up against some pretty excellent projects and we know we're a huge longshot, but who doesn't like an underdog!!!

Dean Shareski on Parents as Partners this coming Monday night (9 PM Eastern)

Please join the Parents as Partners webcasting crew this coming Monday as we talk with Dean Shareski about issues of digital citizenship, students as content creators on the open web, and what we all can do to help mentor young people as they develop their online profiles/footprints. We're pretty much centering our talk on a slidecast that Dean created and posted on his blog a few months back. Check his slidecast out here. Dean is a fun dude and this should be a fun conversation.

Please join the webcast and invite other parents to join in the conversation by doing the following:

1. Go to http://www.edtechtalk.com/live at 9:00 PM Eastern Time.
2. Sign into the chat room with your first name/last name...no password is required.
3. Click one of the little audio player icons and the live audio will play in one of your media players (iTunes, Windows Media player, etc). See picture below:



4. People in the chat are really friendly and enjoy 'meeting' new people and engaging in coversation.

Hope to 'see you' for the Parents as Partners broadcast this coming Monday with Dean!!

Listen to Parents as Partners with Steve Hargadon on Monday, April 14th!

Join us live tomorrow night (Monday, April 14th) at 9:00 PM EDT as Parents as Partners is joined by special guest, Steve Hargadon, to discuss web2.0 pedagogies in schools and best practices for educating parents about these tools. You can participate in tomorrow's webcast by listening along and by entering the chatroom at http://edtechtalk.com/live. Please spread the word and encourage parents from your school to join in as well. This is a great parent education opportunity for parents in your school and community!

If you can't join us live for the conversation with Steve, know that this will be archived online as a podcast at the Parents as Partners page on edtechtalk.com (you'll see past episodes posted online as well).

Please take a moment to join our Parents as Partners group on Facebook. You will need a Facebook account to join the group. This Facebook group centers around the theme of supporting students in the 21st century. Encourage other school parents to join as well!

Hope to "see" you online tomorrow for the Parents as Partners webcast!

*Photo courtesy of Leonid Mamchenkov on flickr (Creative Commons)

USM Parent to Present to Parent Study Group on February 29th!

Join us live via Ustream as school parent, Anne Reed, joins us at the Mequon Public Library to talk about her transformation from that of a Web 2.0 skeptic to that of an active blogger and user of social network tools in her career as an attorney.

The talk will begin about 10:10 CST her in Wisconsin (4:10 PM UTC/GMT) on Friday, February 29th. Click here to find the time in your time zone.

The link to the live video/audio feed may be accessed here. We will also have a chat room so you'll be able to participate in that manner as well.

We hope you can join us for this exciting presentation!

Upcoming Parent Education Events

We have two interesting parent education opportunities taking place during the week of February 25th. I blogged about the "Parents as Partners" webcast earlier today in a previous post. This will be a great opportunity for parents to listen in to a conversation about participatory media tools and the classroom. Blogs, wikis, and many other tools are being used more and more in our classrooms. Join us tomorrow as we talk about effective ways that these tools are being used in the classroom.

The second exciting opportunity is taking place on Friday, February 29th at 16:00 GMT (10:00 am EST). Members of the Middle School "Web2.0" parent study group have the good fortune of being joined by Anne Reed, USM Parent, who will be speaking with us about how she uses participatory media tools in her career as an attorney. Anne's story is really quite interesting, so we're hopeful that you're able to join us at the Mequon public library this coming Friday. If you're not able to join us, we are most likely going to live broadcast the audio and video from the talk so you'll be able to watch from your office or home location. The link to the live broadcast will be posted on this blog and emailed out to parents on Thursday night. If you will be joining us in person at the Mequon Public Library this coming Friday, please be sure to RSVP by visiting the Middle School Web2.0 Parent Study Group at the link below. You may RSVP by clicking "Edit this Page" and entering your name on the page.

Blog Post Notes:

1. Anne Reed being interviewed on the Lake Effect this past November. Be sure to click the audio player that says, "Jury Blogging."
2. Middle School Web2.0 Parent Study Group
3. Parents as Partners Website
   

Parents as Partners Tonight!

Lorna Costantini will be moderating tonight's "Parents as Partners" conversation at GMT 1:30 am (8:30 pm EST in Canada/USA). The focus of the conversation will be social networking and parenting in a web 2.0 world. I'll be joining the conversation to talk about some of the parent education opportunities we're offering here at USM. Cindy Zautcke, USM parent, will be joining in the conversation to share her experiences with her three children and parenting in the web 2.0 world. We'll also be joined by Rhoda Cipparone, parent and community rep on the Niagara Catholic Regional School Council, who will share her experiences in this area as well. I'm really looking forward to the talk tonight with Lorna, Rhoda and Cindy. Social media and schools is a topic that I thoroughly enjoy talking about and it should be an interesting webcast.

To access the talk, you'll go to the Webcast Academy's "Live" page and click on one of the media players in Sandbox A. Follow the directions at the "Parents as Partners" page for a more detailed description of this process. We'll be using one of the World Bridges chat rooms, but at this point I'm not certain which one it will be. We will be sure to announce the chat room at the throughout the webcast.