On Facebook
I was quite intrigued with the whole idea of Facebook upon hearing about it. My husband had joined initially and I felt a little left out and socially out cast, so I had to join. Slowly my husband the unsocial butterfly that he is, became quite annoyed with the whole thing and eventually dismantled his page and I kept on finding more friends and spending time catching up with all kinds of people finding out what they were up to and how their lives had changed. It was fun while it lasted but alas I felt like it began to take up too much of my time and the more friends you accumulated the worse it got. I just hated receiving all those silly group invitations and would always delete them…I know that there are many useful links/groups to join but I feel like I am not on enough to participate. My husband ended up rejoining the end of last year because there were many working colleagues that used Facebook to communicate so he jumped on board again but it did not last long as he has recently dropped out again feeling that Facebook is not an appropriate venue for work collaboration. My usage has slowly become less and less as well.
I will visit my page a few times a month when I receive a message and take a bit of time to see what friends are up to but I have not posted pictures in a while and I begin to feel bad when I don’t because there are many friends I left behind in Vancouver that would like to see recent pictures; there is a sense of obligation which I feel puts pressure on me which I don’t want to have. Also, there must have been an issue the last time I tried to post pictures because they would only upload one at a time. I got frustrated and have not tried to post pictures since then. I really do need to be more patient when it comes to technology.
For educational purposes I would probably choose another type of tool rather than facebook. I find that the development and creation of facebook is to be a social place and just too personal for use in the classroom. Although I do agree that you can create a more educational forum on facebook but the social connotations are just too strong. If I were to use it I think that it would be beneficial to use it as Richardson has explained. Teachers or librarians could create a class site where students can communicate ideas, developments on projects, share images on topics and share what they are learning together as a group. They could also join a particular group of interest based on particular topics, e.g. ‘Bring Back the Wild’ campaign organized by the Royal Ontario Museum to preserve Canadian wild life. Other tools I would use would be Wikis, Blogs or Nings because they also provide collaboration opportunities and the students would be less familiar with them as solely a more personal social network.
On Nings
All the nings that I have explored feel a little overwhelming to me. There is just so much information on them, which makes them difficult to navigate. I was also unimpressed with the ‘Most Popular Ning Networks’ list, which included musician 50 Cent, The Tyra Show, and the rap-rockers ‘The Hollywood Undead’. A couple that were more useful included, ‘The Modern Metropolis’ for art enthusiasts and ‘PickensPlan’ dealing with U.S. dependence on foreign oil. Again, I guess I need to resolve in the fact that these tools are highly popular and based on mainstream culture, but this is not their full potential when thinking about using them as educational tools.
I looked up teacher librarian related sites and found many. One in particular, ‘Library 2.0’ was interesting but many of the comments I found by its members included topics with no responses, and many Nings were no longer in existence. I did find a great Ning while searching Facebook groups called, ‘Teacher Librarian Ning.’ It is an amazing, well-established site with many useful links that are current and easy to access. There are great ideas and book selections presented in the video links section, the forum section includes a post by Joyce Valencia which asks other librarians what kind of plans they have for the upcoming school year, and a number of useful groups you could join such as, ‘Web 2.0 in the Library World.’
Find this Ning at: http://teacherlibrarian.ning.com/
I think Nings would be less overwhelming if I were to create one for my own purposes. This would be a great tool to develop with individual classes on particular subjects of interest. A place where students could contribute by adding their findings such as information links and websites, photos, videos, have group discussions, post questions of interest, invite other professionals, create resource lists…the possibilities are almost endless. There is so much you can add to your NIng. Again it can become overwhelming so organization is key and navigation through the site can be revisited as new information is added.
On Book Related Social Networks
I also checked out Shelfari (http://www.shelfari.com/), LibraryThing (http://www.librarything.com/) and weRead (http://weread.com/), which are all amazing resources. I love that you can create your own bookshelf, check out other peoples bookshelves and recommendations, write reviews, access e-books, start book conversations, create and participate in book quizzes, search popular books and award winning books, look up books by subject or series and look up feature authors and their profiles. It is a great extension to the library that students can access at home and contribute to. In my travels for kid’s websites I have come across ‘cool-reads’ (http://www.cool-reads.co.uk/default.asp) which reviews books for kids ages 10-15 and the reviews are written by kids aged 10-15. It’s a neat site in which you can look for books under subject headings, latest reviews and kids aged 10-15 can contribute by submitting their own reviews.
It would be neat to create a site using one of these social networking book sites for the whole school community with students' favorite reads, reviews, events, book discussion forums etc…I think many students would really be interested and for others it would serve as a great resource to see what their peers where reading and encourage a love of reading.
Many possibilities are available with social networking in your school; it is just a matter of deciding on a few choice tools and running with them…
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