I must confess that it took me a while to open my Facebook account. At first I just didn't see much use in it. I've always considered myself to be a very busy person, constantly planning and developing new projects. Spending my time browsing photos and comments just wasn’t my thing. Then something happened, a very close friend of mine went on a long trip across Europe and decided to upload all his photos on FB. Wanting to see the places he was visiting, I opened my account and in a few hours my list of friends had grown considerably. My life has never been the same after that. I now check my Facebook account twice a day! What started to be just a social tool has become a part of my work and studies.
I’ve had some good experiences this year with using social networks at school. The first one came as a surprise. A few months ago when the Pacaya volcano went very active and everything was covered with ashes and later hurricane Agatha hit Guatemala, this resulted in such chaos for the country that classes had to be suspended for about two weeks. Many of the teachers were able to use Facebook and Twitter to communicate with almost all of our students and advance in their classes. It turned out to be a great tool in case of and emergency, thanks to the popularity of FB and Twitter among middle and high school students! My second good experience with social networks came to be by creating my very first NING network for the Math Department. In this network teachers and students that like Math come together. What started to be something local, then turned into something bigger when we decided to invite other students from Guatemala that like Math into our first virtual Math challenge. I was so excited to see all the students chatting, and posting math problems and solutions in the forums and blogs. I think there are still so many things that you can try with social networks. What makes them so appealing is that you can learn and work by sharing and connecting with others.
One of my plans for the future is to make a social network for all the parents of the seven schools where I work. Sometimes parents are the ones who are more skeptical or have a negative approach about social networking. I wish they could see all the advantages that they could have, and not only be a waste of time like I used to think. As educators we need to set a good example of how to use these tools productively, and also have fun playing Farmville from time to time! I’m sure we will create at the schools many other social networks for different causes. We’ve been doing that without technology for a long time, only now it is easier and you can reach more people without having to worry about the distance or time zone.
