A reflection on creating online friendships.
Strangers are just friends you haven’t met yet.
My Flat Connection Global Educator Course has now finished and one thing I will miss is seeing my new online friends in our weekly virtual meet on Fuze.
Doing the FCGE course has opened up the possibility of forming relationships through an online community group and weekly virtual meetings. These meetings were a new experience for me. Now, I’m wondering how will I use social media to keep connecting and learning with my new friends.
To answer this question I’d like to share Simfin’s blog. Who is Simfin? He is Simon Finch, an expert on Digital Safety in Education from the UK. Simon’s video (below) from his blog ‘A Blog From Under the Floorboards’, is about how to behave online and how to say what you think. It encapsulates an important learning for students and teachers.
Simon asks the question, What are we doing to prepare young people for relationships that don’t exist yet? and that … We need to acknowledge the flaws in our own perceptions of relationships and their need to be grounded in face to face contact. We need to give them the skills to manage, nurture and enjoy these new communication opportunities, safely.
Continuing my FCGE friendships will be a personal lesson about how I will
manage, nurture and enjoy communication with my FCPE community. It is about relating to people using social media and digital/global citizenship through best-practice. My Flat Connections Global Educator course has really only begun.
Ann, what a true statement regarding the #flatconnect course. I love the last part which says they are are only just beginning the journey. I will watch your whale project with great interest. All the best
Good advice for managing on line relationships from Simon for sure. Thanks for sharing.