I’m on Facebook regularly. I love the wesbite for keeping up with my family, connecting with old friends, seeing current pictures of my niece in Virginia. We also use it as a tool at school, we have a Technology Committee FB Page, a District FB page, and lots of teacher classroom pages. Love it.
Here’s what I don’t love. Can we please remember that just because something’s posted on FB it doesn’t make it fact? On Friday night, I left our football game at half time. When I arrived at home, I logged on to FB because I knew Marla Frame would post updates of the score. (Thanks Marla!) What’s the first thing I see? ” Oh my gosh! They’re vandalizing cars in the parking lot!” along with a number of comments asking “who?” and “which cars?” and finally a post stating that it was actually a window on the school. While running back to my car to return to the district (can I just note that this would definitely NOT be typical behavior here), I texted Dave Flaherty and Mike Frame, both still at the game. Dave Flaherty, our Head Custodian who was working supervision that night, was able to assure me that it was ONE CAR, a specific and isolated incident.
And now I think . . . how is that information ever corrected? Will there be community members who are afraid to come to our games for fear of vandalism in the parking lot? I hope the good and right information circulates FB as well as the misinformation. As our communication continues to evolve and it’s so “right this second”, we have to remember to question everything and check the source. It was a good lesson for me.
This is one of the lessons I try to teach my fourth graders! We talk a lot about how just because you hear something or see something on television does not make it true. I might show them some of your post tomorrow. They need to know how to use their own brains to discern what is true and what is false when we are using our Ipads to gather information.