The Student News Site of Marlborough School

The UltraViolet

Marlborough School Student Newspaper
The Student News Site of Marlborough School

The UltraViolet

The Student News Site of Marlborough School

The UltraViolet

Faculty on facebook

Six members of faculty and staff fil­tered into the PC Lab in the ARC (Aca­demic Resource Center) at the beginning of lunch. Taking seats at the computers, they logged into Facebook before await­ing further instruction from their teachers: two students from the Class of 2012.

Facebook has become an icon of popular culture, and its widespread use among Marlborough students has grabbed the attention and cu­riosity of faculty and employees. In response, Kathryn ’12 and Kira’12 led a Facebook literacy class for faculty members on Oct. 18 and Nov. 4 during lunch. Together, they introduced the basics of the site, ultimately explaining to faculty why our generation has found it so im­portant to have a Facebook account for social networking as well as basic communication. Kira and Kathryn ex­plained how users can change secu­rity settings, send messages and tag images, and even gave a tour of the new timeline feature.

Director of Academic and Ad­ministrative Technology Stuart Po­sin proposed the idea this year af­ter learning that other independent schools, such as Harvard-Westlake, have held Facebook classes for fac­ulty. Posin said that he decided a class at Marlborough would be a good opportunity for a student-led discussion.

“The School strives to give all of the girls leadership opportunities, and this is one small example,” Posin said. “I have wanted to do something like this for a long time. I hope we will do more of it.”

Facebook is prominent on campus, especially now that girls are allowed to use mobile devices for non-voice ac­tivities when not in class. It is common to see girls in the ARC sitting with Face­book open on their computers while they work on homework, even if they are not necessarily engaged in the site, ac­cording to Associate Director of Admin­istrative Technology Ida Dahan.

“Every time I log into my com­puter, I sign in to Facebook,” Dina ’12 said. “I had to buy software to block it for the times I need to study. I think it would be great for teachers to learn how we use Facebook because it’s like my e-mail. Nowadays, students aren’t just on the site for fun.”

While there was a small turn-out in the first session, the lunch period on Nov. 4 attracted a larger group; in the end, a total of ten faculty and staff attend­ed at least one of the sessions, includ­ing Librarian Nichole Gomez and other ARC-based technology employees. “It was fun,” Dahan said. “Kathryn and Kira were great, and they covered a ton of topics.”

Kira and Kathryn said they found that the biggest topic faculty mem­bers wished to discuss concerned profile security.

“We discussed how to change privacy settings and tagging, for those of us who are paranoid,” Dahan said. “On that topic there were a ton of questions.”

While most of the teachers said they attended the class to learn more about Facebook, history instructor Tom Millar said he was most excited to encourage student-led activities.

“One of the reasons I went to the class was to support the idea of stu­dents teaching teachers,” Millar said.

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