Facebook: Ideas for Use

Now that you've successfully set up a Facebook class page, it's time to start using it. 

Here are my ideas about how to use Facebook in the classroom:

1. Host discussions. Maybe instead of having students post comments to a blog, you could have them answer discussion questions found on your Facebook page. You could also consider hosting weekly discussions where students get to ask questions about materials -- homework? -- for an hour or so. Facebook makes it easy to reply to certain comments or to just post a general comment on someone's wall.
2. Post updates. This tip is vague because there are a ton of things you could post. Check out my article on ways to use Twitter in the classroom; a lot of those ideas could be used on Facebook, as well. 
3. Create events. Maybe you could create an event about a large, upcoming exam, or a project that's on the horizon. You could also do silly things to boost camaraderie between classmates -- like participating in "talk like Shakespeare day." 
4. Have students share book reviews in wall messages.
5. Use Facebook apps. Teaching economics? Find a game that makes kids set up their own business. Want a summary of something? Have kids log on to the bumper sticker app to find a sticker that summarizes a character of chapter of a [text]book. Want to conduct a poll? Use the poll app to get some answers. 
6. Keep up with current events. Find groups over world events and ask students to learn more, discuss, and/or get involved. 
7. Teaching government? Have students friend a politician and ask him/her questions. 
8. Post multimedia. Share videos of things related to your class's materials, podcasts you've made, pictures that go along with that day's assignment, etc. 
9. Have students post multimedia. Refer to the suggestion above, but make posting the students' responsibility. 
10. Create photo albums of special events or lessons in your classroom so that families can see what's happening in your class, even while they're at work. 
11. If you wanted to flip your classroom, you could post all of the assignments and due dates on your class Facebook page. If you needed the students to download something, you could post a link to the document in your Dropbox or other cloud storage.