Social Networking Opinion ( Lesson 7)

Social Networking still scares me a bit. I have been dabbling in Face Book and Twitter as this is a requirement of the course, however I must admit that I can still not 100% convinced that they should be used in a classroom setting and that I would use them with students.
I am one of those exact teachers who “feel(s) very uncomfortable with the idea of joining these networks, concerned that students will locate them in the network and see all of their posts and photos. I do understand that I can set your settings so that only invited people can see my profile, however I still do not trust the system. Living in a small town, I still fear that information will be leaked.
Even though I know that my second fear may be a modern day Urban Legend I am concerned with the stories of companies using people’s pictures etc for advertising purposes etc.
However, I agree with Owen, Grant, Sayers, & Facer (2006), of Futurelab, when they state that education is “ to support young people not only to acquire knowledge and information, but to develop the resources and skills necessary to continue learning throughout the rest of their lives.” In support of this notion I have been creating blogs and Wikis. Currently, I have a blog that students can refer to if they have been absent from my class. I am also searching and developing lessons in which my students will use these technologies to present new information learned. Before the students start using these new concepts, I need to teach familiarize my classes with the technologies. Eventually, I hope to have at least one new activity planned per semester. This way I will slowly build up my collection. Also, once the students are taught how to create Wikis and Blogs, I will be able to include them into more lessons plans.