Social Networks

I am admittedly a bit of a facebook addict. Why? We live in Poland... Before Social Networking we relied upon emails or "snail mail". I would anticipate going to my cubby in the office to find a letter, but be so disappointed that none would be there, I would do the same thing signing in with my email... Did anyone write?? Living overseas has connected me with people from all over the world, I have friends in so many countries, I could probably no longer count how many. Facebook has brought us together. It makes me feel comforted when I know that my sister is making my niece pancakes on a Saturday morning and that my friend met Jane Goodall yesterday. It also makes me feel connected, which makes me feel sane. Another small thing is that pre-social networking, there were some friends who just never wrote... We'd see them in the summer and then it was like they had disappeared, but somehow many of these friends can write a sentence every now and then and tell us how they are doing or if their child started walking. So personally, social networking changed my life.
Profesionally our school uses Moodle. There are lots of opportunities for us to share and use forums on Moodle, but I can't say I love it. Our last school (Dubai) ran all it's new teacher orientation on Facebook, which I thought was great. It brought so many teachers together with staff already there and new ones coming in, everyone had a new friend! I cannot say I use it as much as I should on the professional side. That said, after reading the article about Edmodo, I immediately went to the site and started checking it out. I am intrigued!
Our school also has a strict policy about facebook (no use during the day for students) and I go back and forth about this policy. When I was reading about it in the articles for CEP 810 I felt like we should reconsider this policy.