NRHEG Star Eagle

137 Years Serving the New Richland-Hartland-Ellendale-Geneva Area
Newspaper of Record for NRHEG School District
Newspaper of Record for Waseca County, MN
PO Box 248 • New Richland, MN 56072

507-463-8112
email: steagle@hickorytech.net
Published every Thursday
Yearly Subscription: Waseca, Steele, and Freeborn counties: $52
Minnesota $57 • Out of state $64

I’m a Facebook addict, I admit. Ever since former student Allison Waage helped introduce me to it many years ago, I’ve been hooked on the social network.  It’s been a great opportunity to catch up with old friends and to get to know others better.

I check the site at least once a day to keep up with news, see who is having a birthday, and play my daily doses of Candy Crush and Zuma Blitz. It’s been really great in that regard, though I still curse the people who hooked me on my games.

Facebook has had many benefits. My classmates and I basically organized most of our 20-year class reunion via Facebook. Most of our class is on there, so it was easy to communicate and get numbers on who would attend.

I was able to find so many high school classmates, as well as college friends, online because of Facebook. Some of these people from college and high school have really spread out across the country, and it’s been fun to catch up with them. The same goes with former students who have headed to college or gone on to great careers and families. In fact, the other day I got a message from one in college who needed some advice. She got a pretty quick reply!

When I want to talk to all my sisters at once, I log into Facebook rather than go to my email. I usually get a quicker response. Boy, you should have seen the lightning-fast responses I got when I put on my status that we were selling our minivan; who needs the classifieds?

I’ve even found some educational benefits. First, there are some great links to teacher sites, and I’ve even won a couple of contests through those, netting myself a nice sound system for my school computer as well as a personal voice amplifier (though whether I need that is debatable!).

I also made the decision early on to allow students to “friend” me. This was, in part, because Allison was in my class at the time she helped me get set up, and once I allowed her to friend me, I opened the floodgate.

Some teachers frown on this practice. It has actually been very helpful, both for students and for me. First of all, it makes me very cognizant of what I post. I don’t ever put anything online that I wouldn’t want my students to see or know about me, so I have a very clean homepage.

Secondly, it’s opened up communications between my students and me. There aren’t many kids who will call a teacher at home if they have a question, but they are not afraid at all to ask online. I’ve helped numerous kids with homework over the years, and that’s a positive item.

Another thing this allows is to help guide kids away from trouble. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t go creeping around my students’ Facebook pages. However, if something pops up in my news feed that is concerning, I’ve been quick to communicate with that student, whether it is to warn them away from posting some potentially volatile comments or to give them a place to vent about a problem.

The simple truth is social media isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. If anything, it’s expanding.  People can rant and complain about it, but it’s better to embrace some things and see how to make it a positive experience. I have a Twitter account, but rarely check it. It’s too overwhelming for an old guy like me; I’m not quite plugged in enough to want constant updates about people, but I’m sure it will lure me in at some point.

Facebook is just fine for me for now. I’ve found a lot of benefits, even if I spend too much time crushing candy. Of course, with anything that has positives, there are also some negative aspects, and I’ll look at those in yet another “to be continued” column next week!

Word of the Week: This week’s word is logomania, which means an obsessive interest in words, as in, “The columnist’s logomania was evident in the vocabulary he used as well as his daily new words in his classroom.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!

You have no rights to post comments