Facebook Used For Teaching

Facebook, a social networking phenomena, is taking over the world. It is the seventh most visited website in the world. This means a big chunk (don't know the number) of the college student population is networking through Facebook. So...when Elaine Childs from the University of Tennessee, states that using Facebook in her class was a success, I can see why. Students are familiar with it, and when we are familiar with something, things are always easier.

Childs explains her experience with Facebook:

"I wanted to create an informal online network through which students could communicate with me and with each other in a comfortable, quick-and-easy medium; I wanted to take rhetoric out of the classroom and locate it in their space. Blackboard seemed too impersonal and “academic” for my purposes, so I created a group on Facebook.com called “English 101: The Simpsons and Postmodern America.” Facebook is the seventh most-visited website on the Internet (http://www.facebook.com/about.php), and that kind of familiarity was what I was hoping for. Many students have also told me that they check Facebook more often than their email and that they spend a lot of time there, so I expected an arena with a high degree of attendance...

I had intended to use the site primarily as a discussion board; I created a topic each week and required my students to post at least once a week."

I'm intrigued! I am going to ponder how to incorporate Facebook into my writing class.

Hasta la vista!

Reference:
"Using Facebook as a Teaching Tool - PraxisWiki." Main Page - PraxisWiki. Web. 13 Dec. 2009. .