Everytime I think about social networking sites, I begin to question where I fit in the whole scheme of things, especially now that a friend of mine has asked me to be his friend on Facebook. Yikes! What should I do.
I went to the Facebook site. It seemed like you needed to become a member in order to take a look around. Hmmm... I'm feeling a little funny about this, so I didn't join up.
Instead I asked the work study student here in my office to give me a tour of her account. It seemed like the feature of Facebook that would apply to a school / library setting would be the groups feature. A librarian or teacher could set up a group, post assignments, announcements, surveys, the usual stuff, and have students participate. The librarian or teacher would be the site administrator and would therefore be able to monitor postings. All good stuff...
Still I did a little research on the pros and cons of Facebook in education. These two sites had some interesting insights:
http://webometrics.fi/blog/blog/2008/08/28/facebook-in-education-good-or-bad-idea/
http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/Top100Tools/facebook.html
They both seemed to discuss Facebook as a college application. I am leery about requiring students to participate in Facebook or Myspace. For one thing it sees to abrogate the role of the parent. Yikes!
Still, I'm happy to have someone show me great uses of these popular social networking venues.
And, like I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I still have this friend who is waiting for me to become his on-line friend. I still don't know what to do.
Mary B.
Monday, April 20, 2009
A Note About Skype
Thanks to learning 2.0's lesson on Skype, I was able to participate in new technology at work the day after I viewed the lesson. Typically folks in my office would get on the phone and chat or broadcast a meeting or drive long distances to meet together. In this time of money and time shortages, it was terrific to be able to gather together through Skype in order to collaborate on a problem. I love the possibilities. I hope to use Skype more in the future.
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