I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends! My social networking Blog.

"Hey man have you joined Facebook? You just have to, and then we can be friends."

1.) This is a comment that came from one of my best friends, a person I have known since I was in high school. A person I have been friends with for over 20 years, but apparently not officially, since I was not on Facebook! I caved to his request and eventually signed up for what I perceived was an online popularity contest! Getting starting on Facebook was very simple even for myself who a couple of years ago didn't even know the term social networking.
So when we received our materials for the EDES 544 course and Joanne asked us to join Facebook and mull around in there, I thought great I've been on there for two years this will be easy! WHOA! Wrong thought genius! Turns out when I logged on to my Facebook account in January, there were two messages from November 2009. One from a friend in Texas, and another from a friend who was in town for the evening passing through and wanted to get together, ooops! So I quickly sent back my apologies but never heard back from them, making me a cyber-snob! Promising to do better I thought I should get involved in something that would get me to log in everyday, BIG MISTAKE!!! At the time a lot of my coworkers and friends were playing Farmville, I'm sure you all have heard of this number one game on Facebook. Not being a very good follower, I started playing a different game, that will show them, so I started playing MyTown as a way to make sure I was in my Facebook account regularly. Now the plan worked and is still working, I don't have the exact numbers but I'm thinking that it is 90% MyTown, and 10% other. Its the thought that counts right?

I had heard of MySpace prior to this course but I've never been on there or used it for anything. As far as the plethora of other Social Networking sites out there I had no idea. When we were asked to explore other sites such as Ning, I thought we were supposed to sign up and create our own Ning social network. Which I did by the way, I have no followers but you can still look at it if you want. I soon realized the massive world of Social Networking sites that are out there. LinkedIn and its potential for business, and then Ning in Education, and Classroom 2.0 as sites for education, plus the plethora of Facebook/Myspace type sites that are out there. Again I realized how little I know about social networking and the sites that were available. After the past couple of weeks I have changed my initial opinion on these sites and their potential uses.

2.) So how do I see social networking from a personal perspective? I found the educational ning sites to be very beneficial to me as a learner, especially with the web 2.0 tools that we have been discussing. The greatest personal asset of this tool is the connections to distant friends and family. Distant in contact and actually geographical distance. I have been in contact with cousins from Ontario and Quebec that I would never have thought of calling two years ago. Last month I went for a beer with a friend that I have not seen in 24 years! We reunited on Facebook a little while ago and he was in Edmonton for personal reasons and we got together and caught up, it was very neat to have that chance. Without Facebook that would never have happened. There are groups on there from my graduating year of high school, as well as a group from my elementary school. We have our 20 year reunion for high school next year and the girls that are organizing it, advertised it on Facebook, and my guess is that 3/4 of our graduating class already knows about it. This task of finding people and getting letters mailed out, and getting responses back would not have been worth the hassle. Can you imagine the time saved by posting it on Facebook?!
As a father, well that changes my opinion slightly. Although there are security precautions that are available, it is difficult to weed out all the garbage. It would just be a matter of educating my children and making sure I have access to their accounts until they are 18. There are many criticisms of Facebook and many of those are quite valid, but with anything that is out there parents need to be aware and educate their children accordingly. The one thing that is a little odd is the stalker type feeling when you are peaking into the lives of people that don't know you are doing it! I had a good friend of mine, deactivate his account because this aspect troubled him. There are privacy settings that will alleviate this issue, where you only allow your friends to view your profile.
Once I was on there, the networking aspect snowballs rapidly. I have a friend and she has two friends that I know, so I invite them to be my friends, and so on. In no time there are 200 people on there and the majority of those are people I may have never spoke to again in my life. Not for any other reason then I lost track of them, and that is a huge draw of Facebook for sure.  My perceptions of Facebook changed instantly, it was not just a contest to see how many friends you can get, to me it was a tremendous tool in connecting with friends and family.

3.) The area where my opinion changed the most this week was the use of social networking for me as a professional and as an educator. Being an ultrasound professional prior to instructing I try and think how these tools would be beneficial in that arena as well as the classroom. So I didn't see any benefit to Facebook in either field. Doing the research of course I discovered the value of Nings. I had never heard of ning before, realizing that it gives people the opportunity to start their own social network with their own interests is what sets them apart from sites like Facebook. From the health care angle I came across some sites that help families cope with illness. These sites allow families to send out requests for tasks or assistance with activities. It also allows distant friends and relatives of the patient to be updated on the health of their friend or loved one. This application of social networking is wonderful, giving families and friends the opportunity to help from a distance or to just be in touch from a distance goes a long way in helping everybody handle the emotional burden of loss.
From an educators view you just can't beat the Do-It-Yourself tools like Ning. Having the ability to set up an educational site designed the way you want and allowing who you would like to follow is excellent. The two sites I concentrated on were Classroom 2.0 and Ning in Education. Fantastic sites with information on almost anything educational and web 2.0 related. Combined these sites have approximately 50,000 members which creates a huge collaboration of educational professionals to bounce ideas and questions off.
Facebook still hasn't shown me anything that makes it a valuable educational tool in the classroom. They say there are over 1600 educational applications on Facebook, but if you go and look at them (I'm not going to lie, I did not look at all 1600) not many of them are truly educational, but just fun. Things like personality tests, IQ tests, how well do you know me quizzes. There are a couple that can make secondary education life easier, courses 2.0 which helps you see who is in your courses with you, exploreU helps students choose a degree and which university is best suited for that choice, and campusbuddy similar to courses 2.0. Making the transition from one educational level to the next is the primary benefit of Facebook in education. It takes away from the awkwardness of meeting new people and joining new groups. Students have the opportunity to get to know people online and then ease their way into this new atmosphere. Some of the controversy out there revolves around blocking these types of sites from schools, before this course I agreed fully. My attitude has softened considerably, now I don't believe they should be blocked. Ning type set-ups should be allowed and used, as long as there are guidelines that come with it. Scott Habeeb posted a good starting point for such guidelines on the Ning in Education site. Facebook serves a different purpose to me, but still a valuable one in the realm of education, its always on and always gives the students a place to communicate and collaborate. Some say that if it is not blocked that it will deter the students from their studies. This could be true, there was a study done by a man named Chuck Martin, he studied 1100 students at the University of New HampshireWhittemore School of Business and Economics. He found that students grades were not affected by using social media like Facebook. I'm sure if I wanted to I could find a similar study quite easily that says it does, like all research it depends on the researcher, the place, the time, etc. The point is that social media is more beneficial versus detrimental. Social networks have the ability to improve distance learning as well. Comparing the e-class that we currently use with a class specific designed Ning is not a fair comparison to me. With the Ning you design it the way that best works for that topic, you have complete control of the look and feel of the site. Overall it is more modern and easier to navigate compared to the eclass format. (that could just be my opinion of course) 

There are so many good parodies out there about Facebook, I added a couple of my favourites that point out some of the annoying aspects.





Although both of these clips are humorous they point out that users must be educated about the social network they are using and be aware of the security settings that are offered. My feelings towards social networking tools has changed considerably, from there is no place for it in education to there is a place for it, and perhaps even a need! Whether it is for a course or just to facilitate the transition from high school to university, there is a need and a purpose. Its just another way to reach out to the modern student who has an insane ability to multitask and vast knowledge of web 2.0. I've rambled on enough, so in closing....do you want to be my friend?

Non-Linked sources:

7 Things you should know about Facebook II. Taken from http://www.educause.edu/ELI/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAboutFaceb/156828 , March 17, 2010.
Simonson, M. (2008). Social networking for distance education.Where is the research? The Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 9(2), p.vii.
Mayer, D. K., (2009). Social networking in cancer care. Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing, 14(1), p. xv.