Thing 18

 Why is it important that educators know how social networking works? What new insights did you gain about these popular sites? What did you like or dislike about each of the sites you explored? Which site had the most useful features? Can you see a classroom or school application for any of these sites?
As a member of Facebook for nearly five years, I cannot imagine my life without the network! Keeping in touch with friends and family would be much less involved, and I would not feel as "up-to-date" with what my friends are doing throughout the day. I like that Facebook allows users to "like" fellow members' posts, pictures, comments, etc. The "like" feature is simple, and provides an easy, fun way to connect on a really casual level with any of your friends' Facebook actions that you agree with. Another fun feature of the network is its personal reminders of events and birthdays. The only aspect of Facebook that I do not appreciate is that at times spam messages from psuedo-accounts get sent to my inbox; if I were to mistakenly open one of these, my computer could be exposed to a virus or my account could be hacked.

For this assignment, I created a MySpace account in addition to my Facebook. The sites are similar in setup, with both providing fields for basic personal information as well as a blog-like "About Me" section free for editing by the user at any time. I am not yet as fond of MySpace as I am of Facebook; perhaps given time to become more familiar with its orientation, I will begin to enjoy it more. Out of the two networks, I personally feel that Facebook's features are more useful.

As a teacher, I would implement Facebook's "Groups" feature as a means of creating a sense of community in my classroom, with my students and their parents getting involved as they choose. This would be a similar concept to creating a blog such as this one for use by parents in order to keep up with classroom happenings.  

http://www.myspace.com/557313337
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=593066306