Crossed lines

Some professor over in the states has just blogged about his (or her) reservations about colleagues using FaceBook. In the anonymous blog, revealingly called Rate Your Students, (bit of a give away..??) s/he asks rhetorically: 'Is anyone else creeped out by profs who spend as much time on Facebook as our students?' I say rhetorically, because s/he doesn't appear to have any facility for readers to feed comments back. The blog post, titled 'Who's FaceBook for?' goes on to tell readers how deeply disturbed s/he is: 'My colleague across the hall is always talking about events he reads about on Facebook, knows the nicknames of most of his students, and posts a ton of personal info about himself on his own page.' Well, fancy that, but it could be worse I reckon - he could be on Bebo.

The anonymous blogger continues.... 'He showed me a long list of his "friends," all students, and on his Facebook "wall," dozens of students had left him messages like: "Prof. Dude, how's it hanging?" and "Yo, Proffy, wot that smile on yo face?!?!?"I've never heard a single untoward thing about him - and this is a very gossipy place - but it still seems odd to me.' Well, perhaps this tells our blogger something about the power of social networking. It certainly tells me something about online identity and how some academics relate to their students. Oh, and isn't that last statement just a little gossipy?

Our anonymous and visibly shrinking academic in a state signs off ominously with: 'Is Facebook one of those lines that faculty shouldn't be crossing?' I guess it all depends on how you view your students, doesn't it...? The same professor seems to spend a lot of time on blogs though - s/he has 47 posts for October already... 38 more than me.