Week Four: Social Networking

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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..... :-)