Facebook in schools?

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2010/09/08/dnt.facebook.in.class.ketv

This video on CNN (in the link above) is a report about how a school is using Facebook to update parents about what is going on with their children. The teachers update their class's page with things they are teaching, and in some of the older classes the teachers let the children update the status. Their reasoning behind this is to help them learn sentence structure, as well as let their students know that social media can be a positive tool. But how positive is having Facebook in your classroom?

One may argue that this could be a very positive thing to have social media tools, such as Facebook, in schools because it lets the parents know what all is happening inside the classroom. Also, since teachers are letting their students use the status feature, many agree that they are learning correct punctuation and spelling. Being up on current trends could also make certain schools more marketable. Since parents always want to know what their children are up to, schools could use this to their advantage to attract more students. Facebook is giving schools a competitive advantage over other schools if they are willing to take it. Parents are willing to pay more for a safe environment, and in the future, status updates on how well their kids are doing in class.

On the other hand this could be a very negative influence on today's impressionable youth. One may pose the question, "Why spend time on Facebook updating the parents, when you could be teaching the children?" Whenever I am sitting in my 300 and 400 level college classes, my professors always tell us you can go an hour without Facebook. By updating Facebook pages in the middle of class, it is sending the message that you really cannot live without Facebook for a few hours every day. It may even send the message that this one website may be more important than your education.

My opinion about this is simple. From a marketing standpoint, this idea is genius! Some traditional schools are going to be harder to convince on the Facebook issue, but that just makes the schools that are willing to use social media more competitive in their market. Although people don't normally think about marketing schools, it happens a lot within the private school sector. Private schools could use this as something to have over the public schools. I think that although using Facebook in the classroom has some disadvantages, it definitely is a smart marketing move if used correctly.