When it comes to classroom management and keeping parents informed, a lot of teachers use the trusty ol flyer that they send home with students. Another popular tool for classroom management are Yahoo! Groups.
It may come as a surprise to a lot of people, but teachers and other educators are among the highest user demographics of Yahoo! Groups and this is also why we were integrating them into Yahoo! Teachers.
One of the big hurdles for teachers to use Yahoo! Groups was trying to get the parents to sign up and join the group. Given that Facebook has just crossed the 500 million users mark, chances are that most parents already have a Facebook account which makes it the next best choice for student-teacher-parent communication.
I was happily surprised to stumble on (thanks Matt!) this very well done Prezi on using Facebook Pages as a classroom management tool. Erin Schoening, the author of this Prezi, uses Facebook in their 1st Grade classroom to keep parents in the loop and provide narrative feedback to students. This is pretty ingenious.
Are you or any teachers you know using Facebook in the classroom? If so how's it working out? What are the concerns of parents? If you do use Facebook (or Yahoo! Groups for that matter) don't forget to get those permission slips signed.
Update: I've recently partnered with Facebook and co-authors Linda Phillips and Dr. BJ Fogg to write the official Facebook for Educators Guide! The guide is also available in Spanish, Portuguese and German. We also have a Facebook Page (come join us!), free handouts and more!
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