The most important thing to know about Facebook as a learning tool is what it isn't.
- Facebook isn't Blackboard or any other course management system.
- Facebook is the digital social center of the college campus.
- Students know that staff and instructors are on the Facebook, but they primarily expect that their profiles will be viewed by their peers. Therefore, you must respect (at least in name) student privacy in Facebook.
- Through your news feed you can directly engage with your entire friend group. Your friends will be notified each time you post a link (a share), a blog post (if you've integrated or use the "notes" function), join a group, attend an event, and so on.
- Facebook has a number of services that directly support engagement - photos, shares, notes, groups, events - utilizing these will register directly on your students.
- Groups are a way for students to say they are part of something ("I support Net Neutrality", "Library Fans") as well as get information ("The Library will be closing at 6PM this week").
- Events - Facebook is a great place to promote events.
- Notes - You can integrate a RSS feed into your blog with notes.
- Developing a better understanding of your students perspectives. This may be the most underappreciated aspect of Facebook. Using the Facebook you can get a glimpse into the interests and insight of your students, hopefully reducing some of the generation gap between you two. http://chimprawk.blogspot.com/2006/12/facebook-as-tool-for-learning.html
1 comment:
So...hmmm. I'm wondering whether the primary advantages of Fb aren't its features or what you can create with it because of its features -- because other, more instructionally-centered tools have these features.
I'm wondering whether the primary advantage of Fb is the way in which it spans social spaces and contexts. It already is functioning very well as a way to connect people (especially students) with each other in a purely social way. If it's true that students want to keep it as "their space" (meaning that professors aren't really welcome as participants), then perhaps the most reasonable educational uses are those that are social in nature and ancillary to the instructional process.
So -- maybe the key is not to think about instructional uses, per se, for Fb, but to think about ways that the existing social network of students can be appropriated to help them connect with each other (and with their professors, perhaps) so that they can collaborate around instructional tasks.
(Not sure if that makes sense -- please tell me if I need to say it differently.)
What do you think?
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