Social Networking: Facebook and Some Ning

Introduction
According to PCWorld Facebook , a social networking site, was more popular than Google last week. It is hard to imagine this when “I’ll Google it” is part of our everyday language. The Pew Research Centre finds that, “Teens continue to be avid users of social networking websites – as of September 2009, 73% of online American teens ages 12 to 17 used an online social network website, a statistic that has continued to climb upwards from 55% in November 2006 and 65% in February 2008.”

If this is so, then the majority of our students are using social networking sites and as educators we must make an effort to become familiar with these sites. For the most part my knowledge, participation and curiosity about Facebook have been relatively blasé. Dictionary.com defines blasé as indifferent to or unimpressed with. This is pretty much how I have felt towards Facebook.

However, the numbers, including the staggering number of Facebook users being over 400 million worldwide , and the fact that 73 % of teens between 12 and 17 years old use these social networks, has me convinced that we need to acknowledge this use and explore how we as educators could make use of these Web 2.0 tools with our students.

Learning About Social Networking Tools
I love Cheryl LaGuardia’s description of her profile on Facebook, “My profile in Facebook is remarkably low key, work oriented, inactive, and ... drab?” You would swear she was describing my profile in Facebook .

I have had a Facebook account for a few years but never bothered with it much other than logging on to it to read about our local elections. That would have been last March. With the beginning of this course I went back the Facebook site and began to familiarize myself with it, albeit, reluctantly. My biases towards Facebook were keeping me from using Facebook regularly; it’s for young people and why do I want to know what everybody is doing?

In my Web 2.0 notebook I keep for our course, I noted on January 12, 2010 that I was still not sure of all the buttons and gadgets on my Facebook site. Although my pages are much more familiar to me now I am still unsure what will happen when I click some of the icons and links.

January 21 I wrote in my notebook- getting more “friends”. Are they really your friends? Maybe that is why I put friends in quotation marks. The term friends sounds nicer but really the majority of them are acquaintances who I would normally just say hello to.

January 23 I had an online chat in Facebook. I didn’t even realize you could do this.
Other things I tried on Facebook were sharing links...this worked and was pretty easy to do, posting pictures...I really can’t remember if this was easy or not but I did get some pictures posted and I tried adding some apps.

Learning about Facebook has provided me with the opportunity to understand a bit about the online world that over 400 million people use.

Nings are another social networking tool. Although not as popular and well-known as Facebook, they definitely have their place in the Web 2.0. Again, this was a tool, which I had never heard of.
The first Ning I joined was Library 2.0. Unfortunately, this Ning did not seem to have much activity and so I joined another Ning. I joined TLNing, a Ning created by Joyce Valenza. I found this Ning to be a great site for teacher librarians. There are over 4,500 members and it offers and a great forum to discuss ideas, successes and challenges in the classroom and libraries.

My Personal Learning and Use of Social Networking Tools
There are a number of my family members who use Facebook and I can see the appeal for them. It allows you connect and interact and it keeps you up to date with what is happening around you. For me personally, I don’t see myself using it much in my personal life. I am just too private of a person to allow others into my personal life without really knowing them.

Professional Learning of Social Networking Tools
Much of the research I’ve read says you need to go where your learners are and if your learners are on social networking sites like Facebook than this is where you need to be (Powell, 2009) (Schwartz, 2010)(Byrne, 2009). On one hand I agree with them and on the other hand I think that there has to be some definite boundaries and specific purposes for using social networks.

I think we would all agree that the web is not going anywhere and that it is in fact a pretty important part of most people’s lives. With the web being a part of everyday lives and the lives of our students we should be looking at all the ways our students can learn, create, express and interact with each other and that includes the use of social networking sites. Will Richardson at his blog, Weblogg-ed articulates the importance of this by stating,

“Maybe we can use these as starting points for developing skills and literacies and habits in kids that they’ll need to maintain a healthy relationship with the Web, the same types of skills and habits we need to develop in ourselves.”

With this being said, I think that we as professionals need to keep that professional boundary and keep in mind that regardless of what tool we use, be it a social networking tool or any other tool, we still have a professional obligation to use these tools in a professional manner.

In this article Lenzi Hart shares ways to make that connection with students through a social networking site and tips on how to keep the interaction professional.


Conclusion
Despite my blasé for Facebook and other social networking sites, unless it is utilitarian, I do understand and agree with the arguments that these tools are a big part of our student’s lives and that we as educators should try to understand them and use them. As Ann-Louise Davidson points out,

"Kids do have access to these technologies outside school. They are powerful tools, and kids need to be taught how to use them wisely. They need to develop critical skills to select information and to make decisions about information. They also need to be critical about who they meet on the internet and what they tell them, [and] what they post."

References
Byrne, R..(2009, December). The Effect of Web 2.0 on Teaching and Learning. Teacher Librarian. 37(2), 50-53. Retrieved March 15, 2010, from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID: 1938481361).

Powell, R.S.. (2009, October). Who Is on the Other End of Facebook? The Chronicle of Higher Education,***[insert pages]***. Retrieved March 15, 2010, from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID: 1950536911).

Schwartz, H.. (2010, January). FACEBOOK: The New Classroom Commons? The Education Digest, 75(6), 39-42. Retrieved March 15, 2010, from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID: 1938715351).