A teacher - trying to protect my identity from so many students.?

[Mabel]

I have been teaching for many years, and would like to join Facebook to catch up with many long lost friends etc. I must clarify right from the start that I'm not very literate with Facebook and that there are many things that I don't know eg: everywhere I go I read "Like us on Facebook" I have no idea what is meant by this. Anyway, if I do open an account with Facebook is there anything that I can do to limit the number of students who I may come across as a result of joining? I believe that you must set up your profile, must you provide your date of birth, your age, marital status etc? I don't mind sharing this with friends and acquaintances but I have no interest in the entire student body knowing. Can anybody check your profile? Is is exposed for everybody to see? I'm from Australia, therefore could I upload a picture of a kangaroo if I wanted instead of my photo? For a complete beginner to Facebook, are there any pitfalls that I should be aware of? Many of these questions may seem so ludicrous but I'm new to this and would appreciate any feedback.

[ninjzeus]

There are many things you can do to "hide" yourself from your students, for example you can choose to provide information about your education, job, etc. You can leave those fields blank, or you could fill them in with false information (a common one is Studied at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry). You can also choose to upload a general photo (like the kangaroo you mentioned). Under the privacy settings (Top right gear) you can choose who sees what type of information (from email address to pictures). You can also choose who can read your posts (I have this set to friends only). If a student manages to find you anyway, and sends a request you can select to accept them or not. If they keep requesting you after you denied their request there is a block option that can be selected at the left side when you go to the privacy settings.

Hope this is enough information.

You can also google search Facebook privacy settings to see the layout, and what options are available.

[Boss D]

quick personal note: My aunt was forced to give her first child up do to her age and never saw or spoke to her ever again. Then her daughter found her on Facebook 28 years later and they met and cried and what not and now shes close to our whole family and attends all family events. It was pretty touching to me and since then I've become an advocate for everyone having a Facebook.

Completely pointless story but I feel the need to offer what little help I can because of that.

The best I could suggest would be to set everything to private after you've made your account. Then no one could see any of your pictures or anything you've ever posted until you add them or except them as a friend and even then when you post something you can select which of your friends can see it.

fyi some peoples profiles aren't profiles, instead they make a page that can't have friends or like other peoples status' or pictures. All you can do is hit the like button on their page. This gives them a number to look at to see how many people actually care about them and add agencies a number to look at to see if they're worth investing in or whatever. Also when you like a page anything they decide to post will come up in your feed. So only like things you wanna hear things about. I like the science pages