Lesley Anderson

Virtual Environments and Your Cognition

Using Facebook

I joined Facebook on 20^th July 2009.

Going to the Facebook site - www.facebook.com, filling in some basic details - Name, email address etc, I created a password and voila! I had a Facebook page. It was such an easy process to complete.  I found a couple of photos of myself to upload into my “profile photos”, filled in some personal info, such as the names of my husband and children and my page was definitely up and running.  Within a few hours I had requests from 4 people to become “friends”. It appears that being friends enables you to see the photos on another person’s Facebook page, write on their “wall” - a section of the page to leave messages etc and view their personal information.  24 hours later I had 7 friends that included family, past students and colleagues. I was intrigued to see the names that turned up with requests to be added.

Nearly a month on and I have 14 friends listed on my Facebook page.  I have another 13 people who have asked me to place them on my list, but I am hesitant to just accept requests from anybody and everybody. I like the idea of being selective about who sees photos and conversations I have with others. Perhaps that is the “old fashioned” side of me. I have to admit I haven’t been one who has rushed in to take up all the opportunities for social interaction on offer on the internet. I also have to admit that there are some people I don’t feel the need to be “friends” with and believe that is my personal right.

I have found Facebook an interesting experience. I have used it to keep in contact with family members and have also managed to contact some people I haven’t seen or spoken to for a while. I do like the added dimensions that it offers such as leaving messages, invitations to events, live chat and viewing of photographs.

I performed a search for CSU students who were already members of Facebook and my search came up with over 500 members for people associated with CSU who had Facebook pages. I then started looking for the Facebook group for this subject - ITC510 - Online Communities. I didn’t have much luck - although Ken has since told me that it does exist. I did find a page from a previous group studying the subject. I decided that it would probably be a good idea to start a new one and did so. I then posted the link

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=133581984918&ref=mf#/group.php?gid=133581984918&ref=mf

to the forum and sat back and waited. I named the page ITC 510/213 2009. After a week there are 15 members to the group, 1 discussion and numerous posts to the wall.

I am now beginning to see more clearly the value Facebook might have as a collaborative tool. The whole process could be by invitation only, although ours is an open page - I figured that it would only really appeal to people interested in the subject - and that would preserve privacy etc. Project photos etc could be uploaded and shared and discussion could occur - either as discussions, wall postings or live chat.

On investigation, I have discovered that Facebook also has facility to upload Videos, so this could be useful for tutorials and that there is a possibility it may also offer Video chat facilities.  That would probably make it an all-round useful tool for collaborative work in the classroom and across classrooms. 

I am now about to invite those on the 510/213 site to become friends on my own site and see what happens.

I am warming to this!