Facebook

Facebook is no longer just for friends. Teachers are finding new ways of using facebook for the classroom. Now students and teachers can communicate about school while allowing all parties to be expressive about themselves in a format students are already familiar with. When you create a profile, it is important to let the students know some interesting things about you... favorite books, musical bands, movies... anything that you feel will make your students feel connected with you. According to [|Edumorphology.com] allowing student to know information about you in a professional manner enables students to feel more comfortable with you and may encourage class participation.
 * Description**
 * Benefits to Faculty**
 * Allows asynchronous classroom discussions and hold students accountable
 * Status updates can be used to post deadlines, reminders, and special announcements
 * Documents that would be duplicated and handed out can be saved onto Google Docs or virtual hard drives (such as iDisk for .mac users) and URLs can be shared onto Facebook status updates.
 * Faculty Produced Videos can be hosted on Youtube and shared on Facebook.
 * Other Youtube videos connected to the course content can be shared.
 * Web articles can be shared to all students
 * Privacy setting allow faculty to control security
 * Groups can be formed for each class and each group can hold discussion forums.
 * Groups can also enable better communication
 * Tips**

Facebook is a teaching tool for 21st century learners. A learning environment through Facebook enables students to feel part of a community outside of the classroom. According to the //Educause Report// [|“7 Things You should Know About Facebook:”]
 * Pedagogical Value for Higher Ed.**

Facebook’s structure encourages users to view relationships in a broad context of learning, even as affiliations change—from high school to college to graduate school to the workplace. By opening itself to virtually anyone, 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. Teachers are enabling an environment of shared learning goal in which “... students are involved in an inquiry process that produces knowledge shared with a group and made public, usually through the LMS and is available to the whole group of learners” [|(Duncan-Howell).] Therefore, the distributed learning becomes accessible to all and thus promoting distributed cognition.

Identity and impression management is part of the college experience. For many students, Facebook enables students to define a pro-file. But this can be problematic if students do not want to expose their profile to their teacher. After all, what students wants to share their private life of parties, juvenile behavior, family, lovers etc. or comments - which might be misunderstood or misinterpreted. In “ [|7 Things You should Know About Facebook] " it states, “ Although some students understand how and when to separate private from public content, **many lack** the discretion to present them- selves—and others—appropriately online.” Yet this can also be used as a teachable moment. Students must understand how to present themselves as professionals and be weary about their public impression. But here is adaptation to those student who STILL may not want to be your “friend.”
 * Possible Challenges or Setbacks**

SInce Facebook is a social network, some students may not want to participate as a friend or not even be in Facebook. It’s OK... you can have the first 10 minutes of class for students to take time to read the FB page off a shared computer. Those who do not have FB can still participate in the class discussion. Teachers can direct questions to those not participating in the FB threads, discussion forums, etc. Now for the students who do not what to be your “friend,” make sure your **privacy settings** allow EVERYONE to see your profile and wall posts. Non friends will still be able to access links and even comment on them, but they will not be able to comment on your status updates.

Facebook has expanded to include applications that work with Facebook. They are add-on programs that you can use for class. Many have educational value. For example POLLS. POLLS can be created to measure simple yes or no questions like Are you an immigrant? There is also COURSES. Courses allows you to post assignments, office hours and schedules.
 * Other Facebook Tools**

Mini feeds appear on your profile and documents your activity on Facebook. You can always control what appears by deleting actions that are not important to the class. But if you have a students as a “friend” it is a good idea to write on their wall a positive comment like “Great participation today in class.” Other students will get to see that you posted a comment on another students wall. Maybe that would encourage others to participate so they can get a personal comment on their wall. it also demonstrate that you are interested in engaging in their lives.

I teach in a lab. So many times I have had to ask students to get off Facebook and pay attention to ME. Am I missing an opportunity to use Facebook as a tool? How can I use it? I know I use it to communicate with my circle of friends who are artist, activists and educators. We use it to inspire one another. I mean forget about the random off the wall status updates that don’t really have anything to do with art, justice or education, BUT most of the time, there is a great community of shared ideas - be it from an artist perspective or a teacher’s perspective or an activists, the distributed learning occurring on my Facebook is extraordinary. Who’s to say that isn’t happening in my students Facebook pages? Who’s to say Facebook as a learning environment wont inspire the student to use their Facebook as a meaningful tool in their virtual life? Chris Dede states educational environments must improve by **“...**fostering 21st century skills and knowledge in learners so that they [students] are prepared to participate in our global, knowledge-based civilization.” As an instructor at a community college, my goal is to develop skill sets that will make them competitive in the 21st century market - the global, knowledge-based civilization. Can Facebook enable me to help my students tap into the global environment outside their our circle of friends? Can they use the knowledge of others to develop their own? I enjoyed developing my experimental Ethnic Studies Facebook for this project. I wondered if I could control the issues of privacy, use the different functions to promote discussion on issues related to the class, and explore the different applications. I learned so much about Facebook that I realized I was underusing it. I never thought about placing links to documents or use the status updates to ask questions or to create groups for each class. I particularly found the discussion forums very helpful to manage class discussions. But the most valuable lesson I learned was the email alerts I received on my email when one of my “friends” posted an answer or comment to one of my status updates and when they would respond to an email thread. My response time was quick. It kept me on top of the discussion. This is why I was interested in having alerts on for Sakai. Asking my diverse friends of my experimental Ethnic Studies Facebook for their input was very revealing. It inspired me to create a Facebook account and use its’ applications as a possible CMS (for FREE) for my Fall semester. Of course I can not use Facebook to post grades, BUT I can use it to distribute class content and as an asynchronous tool to build and maintain a community of learners outside of the classroom. I plan to monitor its strengths and weaknesses before I begin to share it with my colleagues. CMS licensing is very expensive. But our I.T. division is encouraging faculty to look for alternatives. My responsibility is to really test out Facebook with ONE of my classes - My Ethnic Studies 121 (Ethnic Minorities in the US) first. I want to learn from successful outcomes to problematic issues. I also want to encourage my students to teach me new functions and to explore more applications. Now the next time I walk into a classroom, the students will be on Facebook, but this time it will be the class page.
 * Reflection**

From Nick: It was great to be a part of the course that Fabiola set up for this project. I could really see how faculty and students could use Facebook as a course management tool. There is also something to be said for the ability to develop applications within Facebook that could benefit this type of use. Fabiola tested a polling application with a few of us, and we had some conversations about the possibility of a grade book app. The accessibility is also a benefit as students who have smart phones or iphones can access Facebook mobile when they are on the go. All of this does take some time to set up, but so do many course management systems that are currently in place. I share the concern about privacy and something that came up in my project and that Fabiola addressed was making students create profiles or join online groups to be a part of a course. I think if this is clear beforehand than there are not as many objections from students. There is also a concern about hosting this material on "the cloud" and the Facebook terms of service, which seem to change without much notice. I believe there needs to be a deeper investigation of what can be done with material that is posted to Facebook.