For all those waiting for me to post my true thought on Facebookthis video sums them all up but my words are a bit stronger. Perhaps not a good idea to show it to your kids .
My strongest belief is we must separate the debate on the educational use of social networking totally from whether Facebook should be used in an educational context. These are two totally separate issues.
Facebook is just one form of social networking; the educational benefits of social networking shouldn’t be devalued because managers and educators base their views on social networking solely on their own personal limited knowledge and/or experience of sites like Facebook and MySpace.
It’s about Educational Networking NOT Social Networking
I totally agree with Vicki Davis — It is about Educational Networking NOT Social Networking. There is huge difference between social networking and how we use these social platforms in an educational context; educational networking is a far more appropriate term for educators to use than social networking. Read Vicki’s excellent post for a better understanding of the difference!
The Personal Nature of Social Networks
We each have varying levels of personal connection to different social networking sites, and spaces that we want to keep private and personal, and this needs to be taken into account when considering the use of sites for educational networking. I’ve no personal connection to my own Facebook account; and happily connect to anyone, including my students, within Facebook. Yet my twitter network is extremely personal to me; it’s my personal space, I don’t want to interact with family or students in twitter.
My personal belief is that Facebook should be used only as a personal network; where educators and students can choose if they do/don’t connect with one another, and if learning occurs it is a result of informal networking and support. If we want to encourage educational networking then we should be using social platforms such as Ning community; where we can make the distinction between personal and education networks.
Banning of Web Sites
I believe it is far better to educate appropriate use than ban or block web sites. As educators, we should be treated as professional, and not have to justify reasons why we want to use a web application.
The shame of the Facebook debate in the TAFE sector actually has more to concerns that adminstration staff will waste time inappropriately; then concerns of how we might use it with students.
FINAL THOUGHT
Allison Miller has asked the following questions to ponder from this discussion which I’m unable to respond back to in this post; however we would love it if you added your thoughts to the conversation.
What are the POSITIVES of Social Networking? and what are the NEGATIVES of Social Networking?
Why do Educational Institutes ’shy away’ from embracing ‘Social Networking Sites’ - and ‘block’ them?
How do we entice Educational Institutes to ‘value’ Social Networking?
Do Educational Institutes have an ethical responsibility to be ‘guiding’ their students through ‘how to operate’ in SNS?
How do we ‘measure’ and ‘demonstrate’ the educational value of SNSs?
How can we gather the data to show the ‘ROI in terms of relationships’ and ‘ROI in terms of information and learning’?
Yippee stay up late, get up late, get dressed late and …..fit in a bit of time online.
I am slowly starting “to get” the fun things you can do in Facebook.
FunWall
Frances introduced me to the FunWall application which lets you do creative things with photos that you can add to your wall or a friends wall (provided they have the FunWall application). I really love the cool things you can do to photos with these application (love the glitter so pretty).
Scrabble
Harriet introduced me to Scrabble. Really cool I kept wondering why they were talking about Scrabble in Twitter - now I know - personally I thought they had gone slightly nuts. Hopefully she will stay distracted for long enough for me to win! I am a bit competitive with Scrabble.
Come and join me in Facebook (Sue Waters) if you want to play Scrabble.
There are lots of applications in Facebook which I will have to check out over the next few days - definitely a fun task for the holidays.
A week ago I posted that I had decided to persist with Twitter and Facebook because other people who I read are obviously getting them so hence they must be worth investigating. LOL some of them have contacted me and requested me to inform them when I “get it” so they can also “get it“. At least they didn’t say to Google it to find the answer.
Where I am with Twitter
Yes, given my addictive personality, I have become a twitteraholic in an incredibly short period of time. Why? Well twitter means that a message sent out through twitter can be distributed immediately to a group of people using a variety of methods such as mobile phones or IM services like Google Talk. What a really good concept for managing a project! Also great way to ask a question and get a response back from a group of people. Check out my twitter account if you want to see it in account.
Facebook - calling in the experts
If I am still not understanding Facebook and neither are most of my online friends then it is time to call in the experts. Fortunately a few of my students are really into Facebook and were more than happy to give me a Facebook lesson.
The student from Zambia uses Facebook a lot. He says “the key feature with Facebook is being able to keep in contact, easily exchange information and share items (e.g. photos) with friends. It is easy to lose email contact with friends. Facebook give you a mechanism to locate friends (provided they have a Facebook account) and scan through friends’ list of friends to locate the more hard to find friends”. He also stated that more of his friends overseas are using Facebook compared to friends from Australia.
So my lesson with Facebook is still ongoing and here is where I am at:
My student has been testing out applications and sharing them with me. This has been really good because I would not have thought to try out applications and he has shared some really cool ones (e.g. Slideshow that takes photos your photos from Flickr and puts them into a slideshow within Facebook, Top Friends). Reality - I was so not sure of Facebook that I did not think about adding an application.
I have had people join me as a friend based on locating me via their friend’s friend network.
Learnt that giving a virtual gift in Facebook is not a good idea - they try and charge you $1.00 per gift. Maybe I have got this wrong?
Facebook is just another way of connecting online with individuals. For some people this is their preferred method of you connecting to them.
You can find me in Facebook as Sue Waters (with I looked like the Susan Waters further down the page).
FINAL THOUGHT
I recently attended the E-trends Unconference online using Elluminate (was really good). Participants choose the topics and 10 minutes was spent talking about each topic. Grabbed some great links and was impressed by Generation Yes Youth and Educators Succeeding web site that Jason Hando showed us. The concept is that students work with teachers to bring effective technology into classrooms and libraries i.e. students provide professional development for teachers on using technology. I think this is a really good idea.
In my post on the Fickleness of Consumers and its implications I talked about the “Word of Mouth” by one of the most powerful reasons why I will give a Web 2.0 application a try. If I hear enough noise (e.g. people talking about them on blogs) I will give it a go - even if I can not immediately perceive a benefit.
There are lots of Web 2.0 applications that I just “didn’t get” when I first started using them (e.g. flickr, del.icio.us, blogging, wikis) - many of these it has taken me a year “to get them.” However it was worth persisting because once I understood how to use them effectively - WOW they are great!!!
If enough people, who I follow, are using an application they must “get” what I still need “to get”. So currently the two Web 2.0 applications that I am going to persist with are:
If you want to read a post that has great information on Twitter read This Twittering Life by ELT Notes. If you want to try out Twitter you can follow me at twitter.com/dswaters. Although I don’t “get” twitter yet I must admit it is pretty cool how twitters from my friends can be set to forward to my GoogleTalk account.
If you want to learn more about why Facebook may end up being more important to us than we realise check out Facebook’s new face by David Kirkpatrick. If you want to join me in Facebook you will find me as Sue Waters.
Thankfully a couple of my students that are into Facebook are trying to educate me. Sorry to all my friends in Facebook who are receiving invites but my students keep sharing Facebook applications - if they find them cool they must be?
Final thought
Lets hope the people who I follow (Sean, Darren, Kathryn, Vicki, Kate, Jacinta, Stephen) that are using these applications are actually getting them …. because I am hoping that the Wisdom of Crowds is going to help me here.
Maybe I just Got TWITTER hehehe
Just wrote a message in Twitter about “Writing a blog post about trying to get Twitter and Facebook”. Kate instantly sent the following message back to Twitter which was delivered to my GoogleTalk before I have even finished the post. Her was her twitter back.
My answer is I have no idea. I could not get it working initially either. I know I installed two versions of Twitter application into Facebook by accident. One works and one doesn’t. It was also annoying me that Sean could easily post from Facebook into Twitter and I couldn’t.
.
Subscribing for free
