Facebook for School

[kransden]

Someone at our new school wants to have a Facebook account for the school. Can anyone give me reasons of why or why not? It seems pretty silly to me, why not just send out an email or setup a yahoo group, but it might be great.
Thoughts Everyone?

[TwinFoxes]

And who exactly is going to be in charge of maintaining this account? There are so many groups/businesses/whatevers that start accounts because it seems like a good idea, but then no one maintains them. Our NICU has an account that no one posts to, which is a real bummer because I'd like to be kept up to date with the babies that were there when our girls were, and with the nurses. Unless someone plans to spend time updating, I don't see the point. And I'm someone who really likes FB.

[Andi98989]

With Facebook, you could set up an account for the school, have the students or parents become friends, and use the status messages as a secondary way of distributing school announcements and communicating with everyone.

I'm going to guess that more of your students and parents use Facebook than Yahoo groups, so it would probably be pretty easy to become friends with a bunch of them versus getting them to join Yahoo and join your group.

[egoldber]

Our school maintains an e-mail list and sends out announcements via e-mail. You don't need Facebook and all it's potential privacy issues for that. And many people REFUSE to get FB accounts because of privacy concerns.

Also, at least 20% of the kids at our school do not have internet access in their homes, so it isn't that reliable a means of communication anyway. The school also has an automated phone calling system for major announcements and events.