Week 7-Response to readings: The many things I didn't know about Facebook

Today, thanks to Joanne and Trailfire, I have been delving more into articles and commentaries on Facebook. After reading an Educause Learning Initiative article (May 2007), "7 things you should know about Facebook II", I thought the topic worthy of a revisit.

One of my concerns about Facebook is the whole issue of privacy. This is a concern to me, not so much in my own context, but when I consider the time that my teenagers spend in this social networking realm. It appears that Facebook provides many options for users to control who accesses their page and what they see. I knew there were some safeguards, of course, but I did not appreciate how specific these could be. According to Educause, " Beginning with the profile page, users can decide which of the elements are displayed and to whom...Another setting lets users specify who is allowed to see their profile in search results-profiles can be open to anyone, to users in some or all of the user networks, or only to friends. " But, let us not get too comfortable. As the Educause article states, "being able to control access to personal information does not necessarily imply an understanding about the ways-both good and bad-that the information might be used". In other words, just because my children have the option to choose wisely when it comes to personal privacy, this doesn't mean they have the maturity or judgment to do so. I have nightmares of my daughter going to her first job interview and discovering that her prospective employer has had access to a Grade 8 pajama party video. This is, of course, where a parent must be vigilant and knowledgeable about the tool, but are we vigilant and knowledgeable enough?

Another aspect of Facebook that I had not considered was the specificity with which networks can be created. I suppose this is because, for me, Facebook has been about "friends". I have never experienced Facebook being used by colleges or universities to facilitate the building of community among its learners. As the Educause article states, " the application is still fundamentally about relationships and the always-changing networks among individuals, but these relationships are increasingly based on professional interest, political activities and other connections that are not strictly social."

I'm still not sure that, as an educator, I would use Facebook as my social networking application of choice. It was interesting to read Don Johnson's perspective on Facebook in his Blue Skunk Blog. He expresses some doubts about the educational value of Facebook and asserts that other Web 2.0 tools might fit the educational bill in a more appropriate way. He was particularly forceful in this warnings about students and teachers "friending" on Facebook, stating that it, "violated the teacher/student relationship and could lead to actual or perceived inappropriate interactions" I think that, to some degree, this would depend on the context. If a specific network was set up and the student/teacher interaction occurred within a defined educational arena, it don't think alarm bells would be sounded. This said, it seems other social networking tools might be more suited to an educational environment. A Ning, for example, might to be more conducive to creating opportunities for networking and the building of community, while providing a bit more structure and control. The NCTE article, "Social Networking: The Ning's the Thing", provided some great examples of using a Ning in teaching.

As stated in Educause, "Facebook has become a model for how communities-of learners, of workers, of any group with a common interest- can come together, define standards for interaction, and collaboratively create an environment that suits the needs of the members." Whether educators choose to use Facebook, Ning or another social networking application, it seems most critical to acknowledge the underlying need of our students to interact in this fashion and to determine how we might best harness the social networking reality to facilitate the achievement of our educational goals.