I've been spending a lot of time on Facebook recently. I'm confident & comfortable enough there now to admit publicly that I'd steered clear of it for ages because I had it confused with Faceparty, controversial hangout of teens & thrill-seekers with money to spend on its more, um, interesting features.
One big attraction of Facebook for me is the way it lets me combine different real-world networks: my Facebook "Friends" are primarily OU colleagues, but also fellow students & family members. Another appealing feature is the "status updates" where I can post short & trivial comments about what I'm doing right now, & read the same from my friends. I don't always feel like writing a mini-essay for a blog entry, but there's always time for a quick Facebook post.
There's no doubt that Facebook is becoming increasingly pervasive. Just two illustrations, one positive & one negative:
1. A personal anecdote...
I look after several FirstClass forums for (mostly new) OU students. This week, for the first time, one of the new arrivals announced - within hours of the forum opening - that she had created a Facebook group for fellow students on that presentation of her course. She didn't need to explain what Facebook was, & within a day, over 20 members had signed up.
2. Two news stories this week...
Tuesday saw hysterical reports of the 233 million hours a month spent on Facebook & similar social networking sites by UK workers, along with calls for such access to be banned.
Then on Wednesday, we were 'reassured' (ie alarmed) about the risks of loss of privacy & even identity theft associated with Facebook.
I'm not yet convinced of Facebook's potential as a pedagogical (rather than social) aid to learning, but I don't think it's just a fad, & I certainly don't think it marks the End Of Civilisation As We Know It.
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An Open University tutor's explorations of Web 2.0 technologies
2 comments:
I'm not yet convinced of Facebook's potential as a pedagogical (rather than social) aid to learning,
I tend to agree but I think something taht it can claim is that it's a harbinger and those involved in online education should look to the ease of use and customisability (is that a word?) as a model for VLE design. WTF should I, as a learner, mess about in some restrictive and restricted environment when I can engage with something like FB?
Good question! Is there maybe an argument for retaining some boundaries between online spaces: here you work, here you play, here you study? Boundaries that can be marked partly by the same sort of distinctions we use in the built environment? I think I might find it harder to pursue a serious academic discussion on Facebook, where anything resembling a forum is squeezed in between "graffiti walls" & "hatching gifts".
Or perhaps I've just been irrevocably scarred by a teacher who indignantly told a bunch of us who were daring to sit on the desks while waiting for the lesson to start: "Girls! Get down at once! This is a classroom, not a coffee bar!"
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