OLMC Facebook Fan page update

Bright Ideas featured Our Lady of Mercy College Heidelberg Library’s Facebook Fan page three weeks ago. As most readers would know, Facebook has had some serious fallout due to privacy changes (or more to the point, lack of privacy) and OLMC have changed their approach to Facebook. Teacher librarian Michael Jongen says:

This week following the lead of the Media Teacher I pulled down olmclibrary Facebook page as he had pulled down his media page.

This was because of safety concerns. A speaker on cyber-safety had spoken at the school and demonstrated that identifying a school is a danger to students who ‘fan’ the site.

Both of us have re-established our pages as a group which is invite only and private. The groups name is anonymous in terms of identifying the school. Both of us will need to build up the audience base we had to promote our services and useful links and information. We have used the same branding as the media department.

As a school we have looked at using Facebook for assessment and concluded that wikis and blogs and googlesites were better Web 2.0 tools for providing collaborative and private assessment within and educational context.

It seems clear that with recent Facebook controversies about safety and privacy that if as educators we wish use Face-book to communicate with our students it should only be done as a closed group with strict membership control.

This is a parallel post reproduced with permission from Michael’s blog web 2.0 and other library stuff. Thanks to Michael for taking the time to inform readers of Bright Ideas of the changes and why they were necessary.

2 thoughts on “OLMC Facebook Fan page update

  1. Pingback: Tweets that mention OLMC Facebook Fan page update | Bright ideas -- Topsy.com

  2. Well done OLMC for your continued research in the best and safest methods for using FB as a learning and communication tool for the library.
    I am following your Library FB with some interest.
    Could we have a brief rundown on your experiences at the nest CLANS meeting here at Emmanuel College on 14th July?
    Cheers
    Joyce Sendeckyj

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