Thing #18, Teachers and Social Networking

I have had a Facebook account for a few years now, it has been a way for me to communicate with friends and family that has been much simpler than email. Since I moved to Tennessee from California it seem to be one of the few ways to stay up to date with the people I care about lives and for them to stay up to date with mine. I have a really large family and circle of friends and there is no way that I would be able to talk to all of them and it's so rare that I use email anymore except for school communications that Facebook has been very easy to stay up to date, although I don't like all of the changes that the site has made such as Timeline, it seems more of an invasion of privacy and having to re go through all my privacy settings over and over gets redundant, but it's a free service and I don't have to use it if I don't want. I'm not really comfortable putting a link to my Facebook here and can't make another one because I don't have another email.
But I had to setup a Twitter account for this class already and am perfectly comfortable posting that link.
ShannaGuentert Twitter  

It's important for educators to know about social networking sites because the students they will be teaching will be up to date and very aware of the functions and can use them to spread information quickly to anyone who has access. Now that cell phones are just as connected to the internet as laptops and computers, students have any new information at their fingertips. Whether it be via Facebook or Twitter, these students can spread information about tests, dances, locker searches, or anything they want. This is also another forum that can be used to bully or humiliate other students, which over recent years has become an increasing problem. I didn't gain any new insights on these sights since I already had access to them, but Twitter still seems like the bigger waste of time. I know that the shortness of the posts is specific to keep people from being long winded, but other than a few "people" who are on Twitter I just see it as a place to dump minute and seemingly inconsequential information about a person's moment to moment actions or thoughts. Sometimes it's just better to keep those kinds of things to yourself. Facebook can be just as bad depending on who you have on your friends list. I see social networking as important for teachers to know but also an avenue that can get us in trouble. Although we think it's safe to express ourselves on these sites and have an outlet for such expression, it is the internet and easily seen no matter privacy setting we place on it. So I see social networking as a potentially dangerous avenue to express ourselves.
I was told by my first ever boss that "if it's not in writing than it never happened" and recently a teacher told me "Never put anything in writing that you wouldn't want to testify in court about."