Harnessing the power of FB is something I feel strongly about. I agree with you whole-heartedly and feel the same twinge about the “rightness” of accepting friend request from students. I generally accept any request from a student and while I haven’t helped with databases per se…I’ve had students see me online and ask me to proof read papers, and if I need to I try to steer them in the right direction.

On the other hand, I’ve also seen students post disturbing statuses about drugs/suicide/animal mutilations and I immediately turn them into the student’s guidance counselors. On those occasions, I’m glad to be their friend as well.

As for my district’s policies, we are encouraged to only communicate w/students via “official” channels. I’ve been wanting to take control of the fb page for our school (the one they generate from wikipedia), but our board policy forbids it. I’ve been lobbying to get the 10 year old policy reworked so that we can harness the power of facebook….it make take a year though

OH, and by the way, I was a media specialist in Cola, SC for 6 years. I loved the reference to Discus (and I miss it dearly).

-j