In April this year, the NUT warned teachers about the dangers of befriending pupils on social networking sites such as Facebook. The implications are so great that some schools have banned teachers from using Facebook altogether.

It's certainly true that Facebook can be a perilous place for teachers. Is it okay to accept a “friend request” from a pupil whom you know personally? What happens if you reject that friend request? Can you prevent pupils from viewing your pictures and wall posts? What should you do if a pupil posts a message on your wall? What happens if a pupil sees a comment you've made on someone else's wall?

I pride myself on my ability to think outside the box. Rather than going down the traditional route, I often think of more creative ways to teach lessons. Two years ago, I had a class of 34 children, 21 of whom were boys - who fidget. As a result of this, I decided to do a learning style questionnaire. The figures amazed me, as 60% of the class came up with a dominant kinaesthetic learning preference. The need for hands-on learning opportunities was immense. So, I collaborated with another Year 6 teacher and designed a unit about the Aztecs, as part of our creative curriculum. The only difference was that I used our school blog, which I oversaw, as the starting point for the unit.

I asked the children to come up with things that they wanted to learn about (not an original idea) and make them post information about it to the blog page as a link. They responded by finding out loads about the Aztecs (most of which seemed to centre around ritual sacrifice –boys- and chocolate – both boys and girls!).

Currently there is a gap between what students at the secondary and post-secondary levels are learning about human rights violations, and what is being done to stop them. Many humanities’ classes and curricula have genocide and human rights as a unit, but assess their students using traditional assessments.

In 2008-2009 a group of students in Mr. Juliani’s 10th Grade English class asked the question, “Why do we learn about all of this stuff (genocide and human rights violations), but never do anything about it?” This question sparked an idea and Project: Global Inform (PGI) was created. The students picked their own groups and researched current human rights violations. Each group picked a violation they felt particularly passionate about and began to develop an action plan. Their action plans allowed the students to judge how effective each method of media was at spreading information and creating awareness. At the end of Project: Global Inform’s first run, hundreds of people had been met face-to-face with information they did not know, while thousands of other teens and young adults saw videos, visited websites, and became Twitter and Facebook fans of media meant to create awareness.