Hey Bookface!

Reflections on Learning

I’m not sure if any of you are avid “The Office” viewers, but you had to get a laugh out of Jim’s hallowe’en costume. The best part was the character in the warehouse scene that was trying to figure out what Jim was dressed up as and called him “Bookface”.

In a lot of ways I think I missed the Facebook wave. I think if I had been in university at the time when Facebook took off as a university based tool, I think I would be more into it. I think if I had been an earlier adopter, I might use it more. As it were, I ended up being known amongst my friends, family, students, players as the anti-facebook guy. So when I joined Facebook this fall, people who found me were in a state of shock. So obviously there was a bit of bias here for me from the start.

As I made my way through the trailfire this week I was desperately looking for that hook that would make me better appreciate this tool (I may have found something I’ll discuss on the professional level section below) and found that I really struggled to do so. The CommonCraft talks about the potential of social networks (or as the Harvard Review article called them, “the telephone on steroids”) to uncover potential opportunities and I can understand this thinking, but at the same time for me it’s too naked of an experience to be worthwhile.

The Personal Level

I think at some point social networking is going to have some sort of connection to your personality. I’m not the kind of person to put the lamp shade on my head at the party, I’ll listen a lot before I respond, I like to ruminate. The notion of “putting myself out there” in hopes of making potential connections seems akin to running through the streets naked hoping to get a dance partner. I just don’t need that kind of attention.

Obviously a bit of an exaggeration, but I think there are some real perils with being so “open” on Facebook. Mack Male may advocate for this in the elluminate session we listened to, but I think we have some professional responsibilities that can potentially restrict how we interact on line. School district’s (ours is Policy 561) are developing policy that governs and restricts how teachers should interact with their online world. In some ways, we are strongly encouraged to be safe rather than sorry.

With this as my background, I did give Facebook a try. I have 19 or so friends, I shared some photos, posted status, wrote on people’s walls. In the end, I simply didn’t find this to be useful for me, mostly I think, because I was so cautious with it as a tool. To explore this more I turned to my wife (who has been using Facebook for quite some time) to better understand the appeal. I asked her what her top three usages of Facebook were:

1. A quick form of email – her and her friends arrange everything from play dates to golf league team line ups through their Facebook email.
2. A way of sharing photos – we have family all over the place, so this has been a great and easy way of sharing photos. I can see how this is much more valuable/easy than just using a photosharing site.
3. Local groups – things like “Garage Sale Medicine Hat” have been a boon to those looking for good deals or looking to get rid of things in a hurry. I have to admit I can believe how quickly you can sell a couch on Facebook!

The Professional Level

This week’s reflection on learning is actually one mostly of regret. While I did set up a Facebook account back in August I also set up a Ning. I played with Facebook, but my Ning just kind of sat there, mostly because even though I set one up, I simply didn’t understand it.

As I did the reading this week and followed the trailfire, I became more and more interested in the concept of Nings. I realize that they are essentially the same thing as Facebook, but the interesting thing is about how much easier they are to control. I can definitely see the appeal of setting up a class Ning to build a sense of community. Knowing that it was monitored, protected and had ground rules could make this a very effective classroom tool.

The difficulty with Nings though I think is that they require time and patience. Whereas Facebook has millions of users out there and dozens of people just waiting to be your friend, the Ning starts at nothing. And even though you have a captive audience (a class) waiting to join, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are going to readily adopt this tool as one of their primary ways of sharing.

If I could start over, I could think of ways to build a ning from the start of the semester that could have given me something more valuable to relate to. If there was a suggestion I would make to future students of this class, it would be to do some reading, exploring of this tool earlier rather than later.


New Knowledge

I know that social media is here to stay and I know that Facebook is not simply some fad that is going to die. Individuals will make choices about how they choose to exist and project themselves online and think it is here that schools will have the largest responsibilities. The ethics of being an online learner, online entity will be most crucial and we have many things left to consider:

1. Child usage of social networks. The Abrams article talks about things like ClubPenquin and Webkinz. Are we simply producing apprentice Facebook junkies or is there an opportunity here for parents/teachers to start informing children about decisions made online? Abrams points out that we could embed this directly into the curriculum and uses the example of what would you share with your grandma vs. what would you share with a stranger.
2. The blurring of lines between the real and the virtual. While I didn’t explore Second Life during this course, the idea of this virtual world where land is being sold and economies being created is extremely fascinating and disturbing all at once.
3. Teaching of online responsibility – as schools and school districts we have to be carefully to not swing the pendulum too far in one direction (ie. Blocking everything the Internet has to offer). Meaningful learning is going to happen in real time as children and teachers interact with tools and applications. We know that people are simply going to find ways around the block anyhow.
4. Finally, thoughtful debate. Hamel’s article tends to paint Web 2.0 as some panacea of hope. That it will be a place where “all ideas have equal footing” and that workers of the future will expect the workplace to reflect their online worlds. I think this is open for debate. It would be naïve to think that all ideas have equal footing on the internet, simply because not everyone has equal access. And even if we did have equal access, we don’t have equal skills. Ask any viral marketer about techniques to get people to adopt ideas, it’s not necessarily the idea that has to be the best, it’s sometimes (still) the marketer behind it.

References

Abram, S. (Mar/Apr 2008). Scaffolding the new social literacies. Multimedia and Internet @ Schools.

Armstrong, S. & Warlick, D. (2004). Tech & Learning. Retrieved from: http://www.techlearning.com/article/2806

Boyd, D. (2009). Social media is here to stay…now what? Microsoft Research Tech Fest, Redmond, CA.

http://blogs.wsj.com/management/2009/03/24/the-facebook-generation-vs-the-fortune-500/

http://www.commoncraft.com/video-social-networking

https://eclasslive.srv.ualberta.ca/UofA/play_recording.html?recordingId=1246988369343_1249504407175 – not sure how to reference this (Mack Male’s elluminate recording)