I'm curious for those of you on facebook do you have a public or private profile? I set mine to private, but when I search friends of mine that are also teachers such as people I went to college with, I'm amazed how many have public profiles. Nothing inappropriate on their pages(just info about them, pictures such as family, weddings, babies), but I do feel as teachers we need to be careful and should set our facebook profile to private. I even saw a principal I know on facebook who's profile is public. You never know what a parent or someone in the community might think is "inappropriate" or what a principal could find on facebook if you are interviewing for a job. Teachers should be able to have a personal life, but I just like to be on the safe side, so I set everything to private and even have it to where nobody can even view my friends.
Mine is set to private & only friends can see my pictures. I also do not invite parents of students I teach to become friends. Not that I have anything I am ashamed of or embarrassed by but I just do not feel it is appropriate. Plus, I do not really want to know that much about the personal lives of my parents.
My profile is private also. I don't have anything inappropriate on it, but you never know when someone is going to add a picture of you. And if someone did happen to add a picture of me drinking(I occasionally do) I don't want it out there for the whole world to see.
I think we have the responsibility to set it to private. I am a bit opinionated. I really think everyone should be set to private....for a variety of reasons. If you are 'tagged' in a picture that you are drinking or doing anything else in...like a teacher friend of mine was, a parent who was a friend of a friend saw the picture and confronted the teacher and told our principal.
Mine is private, only because my district frowns upon these types of websites. We are not allowed to mention the district by name or link ourselves in any way to the district. I am very careful about what I put on Facebook and who I am friends with. I keep mine private just for security.
Mine is set to private, where only my friends can see my page. But, I am searchable where people can find me.
Also, I do want to say that when I first got on facebook, I had no idea that people could see my page without being my friend. I thought I had set it to private, but wasn't too clear on how everything worked, so my page was public for a while. Thank goodness I clicked on one of my sister's friend and went straight to her page without being her friend, which I didn't think you could, so I quickly checked my settings and fixed the problem. Maybe the principal and some teachers think theirs are set to private when they aren't?
I also keep my page private. For me, I use facebook as a way to share pictures and videos with all our overseas family and that's not something I'm willing to share with the whole world. I have many friends who do and I don't understand why you would want just anybody looking into your private life.
our union strongly suggested being private. you never know how a person will connect to you. (?) I was sitting with my daughter looking at old high school classmates. We came upon a girl that now teaches middle school in the district. There were some average college type antic pictures that parents could easily misconstrue.
at a union meeting I brought up how easy and innocently I came upon the page. her page went private the next day!
about 10 of my students' parents from my Facebook.
I had trouble saying no at first, then it started getting out of hand. Now, I just have a rule that I am not friends with parents. Although, I have a few old parents I am friends with, but I am pretty selective.
Our old board president asked me to be her friend, along with all the other teachers at our school. I thought it was pretty bizarre since most of us don't know her well at all and her kids go to the school.
I deleted her. I wonder if she will even notice.
I also had a bit of a problem being friends with parents on facebook. I only have one, but realized that she was friends with a lot of other parents and don't really want them on my profile... I set it so only MY friends can see it.
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12-28-2008, 12:06 AM
