Social Networking Sites

Please go to the following web site and discuss the following: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html.

1. What was the target audience for this social networking site?
2. How long was the site in existence?
3. Why was it popular? What was its demise?
4. Is/was there another competitor in the same market that was more popular?
5. Would you ever consider creating an account and using it? Explain your reason using a personal experience as an example.

I have chosen to discuss Friendster. Friendster was created to compliment some other popular social networks as a competition with Match.com, an online dating service. Their premise was that it would be a better solution to match friends of friends rather than matching strangers. Friendster was started by Jonathan Abrams in 2002 before the creation of MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn. It gained popularity as a social network greatly due to being featured in several high profile print media magazines and television talk shows. Friendster was slightly before its time and suffered with technical difficulties and later with users not trusting the service. Their servers and bandwidth was not ready for the onslaught of users who were ready to take on the use of the service. A problem occurred with Fake users called Fakesters who created accounts to battle for the title of Most Popular in the network. This caused the company to form stricter rules which resulted in the loss of users.

Friendster lost ground in popularity in 2006, but moved into the limelight with an increase in membership throughout Asia and the Philippines. Services such as MySpace and Facebook seem to have replaced Friendster in the USA, but the service is still available worldwide and very popular in Asia.

I remember the start of Friendster, but cannot remember ever using it. I tend to join many new internet services, trying to use my last name as my account identity. I failed to get luffman@hotmail.com and have kicked myself ever since. I had even signed up with Hotmail before they were bought by Microsoft. Enough about Hotmail for now. Friendster's name implies being a friend or making friends online for the sake of increasing your group of friends. I have no interest in this so I would not be joining. On the other hand, I have been interested in joining new innovative technical services which had something to offer like an online identity, email storage or bookmarking services. I would never have joined FaceBook if it had not been for my son's involvement while he was in college.

Steve Hargadon - Classroom 2.0

In response to Steve's article: Some Things I've Learned About Building Effective Social Networks

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If you Build It, Will They Come?
"You don't really know what social networking sites you create will take off or succeed."

I totally agree with Steve's point! Over the years, I have built many online sites and methods for social interaction. Some have been flops and others have reached various degrees of success. I have learned that you must nurture your efforts and not expect too much. I have never tried to build a group in order to create an income, but have focused on getting folks together based upon a common interest for the benefit of the participants. Like all online groups, you will find few who actively participate and many who are known as "lurkers."

Transparent...
"There is very real value in "moderating" or "guiding" your network. Being polite matters. Setting boundaries matters."

I have had a few bad experiences with folks who just wanted to create disruptions. The first disruptions hurt personally. So did the first few times that people left a group dissatisfied. I learned to not take it personally and to never deal with disruptions in public. I also had to learn how to keep the members from ganging up for or against the disruptive member or members. Being "transparent" is an essential skill that must be used carefully and in the right situations. My most successful online group is the Internet Only Mac User's Group which has over 15,000 members with over 1,300 actively participating in a daily mailing list with Yahoo Groups.

Week Four: Social Networking

Visit YC Edu 255

How could you utilize some social networking tools, such as Twitter, Facebook, Ning, etc.?

I have used Twitter to record things that I want to remember later on. I can "Tweet" to my account (http://twitter.com/luffman) from various means like my Cell through texting, calling JOTT and speaking a message that is sent as a text to the account, emailing, web page entry, etc. I don't expect that anyone is going to follow me except for a few friends so I am not concerned about the relevance of my tweets since they are really just notes to myself for now. I follow several Twitter accounts for folks that I am interested in keeping track of. One of them is set to send text messages to my phone so I get immediate notification about an added "Tweet" by that person.

Facebook has become a way of life in my daily activities. My son got me hooked up with FB while he was in college. Many of my family members and friends are my "friends" on FB. I try to not allow vendors who I deal with from work to become a friend. I doubt that I would allow any of my students either. My FB account is rather personal and through it I share my biking/gps and family activities and photos. FB has many "Add-Ons" that can be used with its interface, but I am wary of most of them as they tend to share your information and that of all your friends with them and others. Everyone who uses FB should review their account settings and tweak them to evoke the privacy that they desire. Maybe this defeats the purpose, but I don't what others that are not my friends to know who all of my friends are and then who their friends are... SCARY!!! I also use FB Groups to share information about the local Verde Valley Cyclists biking group. Folks can be added specifically to this group by members or they can request membership. It is a group type FB interface that FB members can join. This might be a good interface for a college class who wants to connect through the FB interface and not all be friends of each other. Most folks won't understand this subtlety.

I am already using Ning to connect with several groups. It is a rather robust means to give control to your own social network where members have some control over their interaction and the owners can control the group with various means. This would be an excellent system for supplementing a college course. Ning has lots of gadgets that can be added to the interface.

Another online tool that I use to interface with a group is Yahoo Groups. It is rather outdated, but it has a huge following since it has been around for many years. It was originally known as E-Groups when I first joined during 1996. Yahoo later purchased EGroups and used their base of users to boost their Yahoo Groups membership. Before that my group was using a listserv interface that was on servers at a university in Texas. The group I host is a Macintosh User Group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/iomug) that has over 15,000 members who have joined over the years since 1994. The Yahoo Group has steadily had about 1300 members over the years. I started another group for getting local folks to get together for group bike rides. (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vv-cyclists) The coolest part of this is the ability to post events on the online calendar and have reminders emailed to all members regularly.

What are the benefits and challenges of bringing your students into this environment?

Bringing student into this environment is challenging since you are giving control to your students by allowing them into this type of environment. Keeping personal and professional areas apart may not be easy and require concerted efforts. You may find that some students may even become part of your personal group. I believe that an "instructor" identity should be used with students. This is the same as not using your instructor email for personal business like shopping or banking. This environment can be a great benefit to your course by giving another means for communication between you and your student or even between students. It is also possible to have former student remain part of some groups in order to an alumni type of assistance to the class. While the benefits may be great, they may also be greatly overwhelming! One must be cautious to make these environments meaningful and worth the efforts of the members or they will not be used (or despised!)

Your comments are welcome..... :-)

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Using Wikis in Classrooms and Online Courses

The wiki that I have made for will be used with the course I am teaching this fall for Yavapai College. It is CNT110 - A+ Computer Certification Preparation course that introduces students to Computer Software and Hardware repair as a career. They are prepared to progress toward their final certification requirement of passing two professional examinations. An introduction to hardware and software are included in the wiki along with networking and peripherals.

Students would be expected to contribute their ideas and experiences relating to these topics through several forms of input like narrative which may present a technical question and then responding to each others questions with advise and recommendations for a solution. Students could build a collection of links and images that would also relate to the course topics.

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Mark's Wiki http://a-plus.wikispaces.com

A New Pedagogy?

Supplementing My Kids’ Education

Richardson discusses his children’s school out in Farmland, USA, and the use of technology in their school. He is frustrated by the lack of “connecting going on,” and the large amount of paper and pencil activities and production. He senses that they are missing the boat when it comes to utilizing technology to become part of the “hyperconnected and hypertransparent” world of the future. He goes on to say he sees some signs of change when he noticed an interest in integrating interactive technologies into the curriculum.

Making changes to our schools is difficult to say the least. There are many forces against us, ready to shoot down anything new or different. “Why try something new when the old is working?” “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” Our students are highly interested in trying out the many new technology tools that are at their disposal. We will find them using these tools in a haphazard manner for texting, you-tubing and my-spacing with their friends. The challenge is to use these forces for furthering their education. I guess we still need good teachers who can step up.

My Flickr Conundrum

Why take your own photos when you can find 1000’s that are much better and free to use already online? Richardson poses this question without really giving an opinion, seemingly trying to egg his readers on to comment to this post. The comments are quite interesting. A common thread is the emotional tie that links us with our photos because of the experience of being there. Taking the photo ourselves arouses emotions within us that create strong ties to the media that has recorded our experience. This brings our families closer together as they fondly remember the events and feelings that they experienced while “on vacation.”

This has relevance to our classrooms as we prepare lessons that can make the best of these emotions and interactions. You don’t even have to step out of the classroom to create moments such as these. Allowing your students to use various media such as photos or video within the classroom will lead to an increased sense of belonging and place that will help them become more connected to their learning and each other.

Read/Write Web

Is the nature of education changing to a more constructivist form of education as a result of all these emerging technologies?  Or, is this just a trend?  Please use the reading from the Handbook of Emerging Techologies for Learning as a guide to this response.
The information technology era that we find ourselves enveloped in is taking our world by storm. We are on the cutting edge of technology tools that are making a huge change in our educational system. The technologies that are rapidly being developed are often put to use outside of the realm of education in places like Twitter, texting, email, Netflix, YouTube, Facebook, Wikis, Flickr, Google, Podcasts and Hulu. Young and old, students are using these technologies in their everyday lives. Constructivism theory argues that humans are gaining knowledge and meaning through their experiences. Education could be more effective if these technologies can be harnessed and used to influence our students by building on them.

Two dilemmas appear. The amount of information and methods of communication that we have available is astounding and increasing rapidly. Finding the right stuff is difficult. Information overload is inescapable! Integrating these technologies into our everyday educational delivery is another challenge. We wonder how to make use of many of these marvels and worry that that they might be misused at the same time.

Trendy, maybe, but is this just another educational trend that will pass by the wayside for something else? Because of the ease of use, these technologies hardly need education to make them useful. I predict that these methods are becoming second nature to our students. Their use in education will depend on innovative instructors who must find ways to implement them effectively.

Instructional Design Models

I have selected Criterion Referenced Instruction (CRI) and the Advanced Organizer (AO) models. These models are similar in that both depend upon the instructor as the facilitator of student learning. Both are instructional strategies where the instructor guides the student toward specific outcomes of learning.

These models differ most in the subjects are that are best served by each. Criterion Referenced Instruction is better for teaching technical skills which have specific outcomes that are accomplished and tested. This model depends on self-paced learning modules which are configured to follow a strict set of predetermined goals and objectives that closely tested, usually resulting in self-paced learning modules. Various types of prepared media are common. Teaching troubleshooting skills often uses this model. The Advanced Organizer (AO) model works well in teaching a second language by linking previous knowledge to new information often guided verbally by the instructor. This is also known as scaffolding where previous experience supports the understanding of learning objectives.

Designing a technical course using the Criterion Referenced Instruction model would serve well in the A+ Certification course that I teach at Yavapai College. The audience is often younger student wanting to explore possible computer jobs. Older students who are interested in cross training into a technology related career. Some students are just interested in learning about the inner workings of computer hardware and software for their own benefit and to make themselves more marketable as an employee. About half of the students have a hobbyist or current job background and the other half have very little knowledge other than having used a computer to for entertainment or Internet access.

Web Classroom 2.0

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My Philosophy for Teaching

My philosophy of teaching asserts that students are entitled to quality instruction in an active and stimulating learning environment. Students should experience frequent and repeated opportunities to act, react, and interact with each other and the professor. Curriculum materials should be timely and relevant. Standards of excellence—high, yet attainable—should be used to facilitate optimal student learning. Finally, as teaching is a process, not an activity, my teaching philosophy offers an invaluable reflective view on “how to” strive for instructional improvement.

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