I was impressed with the thoughtfulness of Ira Wise’s recent NATE listserv post about how students use Facebook.
We’re all struggling with the issue of what role social networking and media will play in the lives of the religious school. Our educational community is so varied: we are populated by technically sophisticated 20-somethings, who Tweet and Post, who view email as passé, and who abhor paper and think the newspaper contains yesterday’s news. And at the same time we are populated by people who don’t believe it if they don’t read it on the physical pages of the New York Times, read books on paper, and think of a Polynesian dessert when they hear the word “wiki.”
Ira pointed out that the media we choose should depend on the circumstance, and even how we use a particular channel should depend on that circumstance. In particular, he noted that Facebook has lots of uses. But “friending” people doesn’t work well with today’s teens when coming from an authority figure. Those teens don’t want to “friend” their religious school any more than they want to “friend” their parents. But they will join a group.
They will use the Facebook channel, if we set it up properly and don’t make it too intrusive. Ira wisely notes that if we are too intrusive, we will simply encourage the children to go elsewhere to find their privacy, something that is increasingly important in the teenage years.
When I was in high school, they taught us there were 3 types of particles: protons, neutrons, and electrons. Now there are quarks (btw, they come in six “flavors”); electrons, electron neutrinos, muons, muon neutrinos, tauons, tauon neutrinos, and more. And now begins to emerge that that there are different kinds of Facebook experiences: friends, group members, and different circumstances in which to use each vehicle.Who knows how many varieties of Twitter there are, and how many there will be in a year.
We need to be alert to these things, and informed about the changes taking place. We need to know how to reach each of the groups in our congregation and our school, just as certainly as we need to know what our universe is made up of.
