Response

"Using Facebook as a Teaching Tool"

The writer, Elaine Childs, likes the idea of putting social networking in a college classroom setting. Childs likes the idea of an informal place, where students could post unregulated comments pertaining to class. Her hope was that students would, “create topics that asked questions or created horizontal discourse among the students, but that didn’t happen.” Childs contrasts Facebook.com with more formal online discussion places, like Blackboard, and she believes Facebook.com is a more student friendly network.

In the spring of 2009, I took a class on teaching college writing, with Professor Mark Macbeth, who like Childs, is a proponent of using social networking in classrooms. Instead of Facebook, his choice was Myspace.com, but by now he may have changed his position on networks—as Myspace seems to be dying. We students created Myspace accounts and used our Myspace page to our reading responses (or journal entries) and drafts of a narrative, which morphed into a full-length paper for most of us. At the beginning of the semester, we were really active in commenting and responding to each other’s blog posts, and Professor Macbeth was very involved. As the semester progressed, and everyone’s outside work increased, the blog comments became less frequent. However, by that time, most of us had already gotten extensive feedback from our peers on the main project.

Prof. Macbeth told us that he required all of his freshman writers to start new Myspace page, to use as a “professional” advertisement. After they made their respectful pages, he would tell them, “Now you can still keep your other pimp daddy pages, but put them on private, and put your new professional pages on public.” I liked what Professor Macbeth was trying to do with his freshman, but I haven’t required it for my students yet.

"Twouble with Twitters" & "Flutter, the New Twitter"

These two videos mock the popular electronic form of communication, Twitter.com. Twitter is a forum for microblogging, or typing a message in less than 140 characters. Twitter users post their updates from smartphones, laptops, or computers. The whole thing is pointless in my opition, and I can't wait to delete my FriendofDingos account. But, it is an important element of the digital age, so I understand why it is a requirement for this course. The Flutter video made me laugh, and the comments below it were even funnier. Some people thought Flutter was real, and one poster claimed to be ready to sign up.