Social Networking Sites

The Web 2.0 tool we are assigned to investigate this week is one of the only tools I feel totally comfortable with using and talking about – personally. Professionally, I have not used any Social Networking Sites in my classroom or school and I found a lot of information that highlighted the pros and cons of using SNS’s in schools.

Personal Experience:

I signed up for Facebook more than a year ago. I started taking notice of it when the school division blocked MySpace and the students started using Facebook. I also saw two different segments on CanadaAM and a CBC program that talked about Facebook as the “new internet craze”. It was thought to be more of a networking site for adults as opposed to MySpace which some felt was more popular with teens. I noticed all of these things in a one week span and I was curious, so I signed up.

I really liked the privacy controls- even though I am aware that there are some issues with privacy- and I liked the whole idea of sharing my life and interests with my friends. It would be easier to keep up-to-date with friends and family with a SNS than with traditional email, MSN, etc. I was never a very reliable letter/email writer and most of my friends aren’t either, so this has been a wonderful tool to keep in contact with everyone. I also loved the fact that I contacted people I hadn’t seen since high school or university. I quickly added many friends and I was able to see what they were doing with their lives.

I like to see photos that my friends put up and I like to share my photos with them as well. There are privacy controls that one must be aware of, but it’s pretty simple and I don’t put anything up that would allow anyone to invade my privacy. I also like “The Wall” and posting messages to the private inbox. Cindy and I organized our whole wiki using Facebook and we continue to communicate that way.

I’m sure that more than one person will complain about the silly requests that people get from their friends to add fun applications; I also find most of them very annoying, but what’s the harm in a little fun? Yes, I have some friends that have so many applications, it takes about 10 minutes to load their profile page and they send me about five requests a day, but it takes about 20-30 seconds to ignore them, so I don’t get too fussed up about them. I take longer to go through my junk mail on email. Some applications can be fun- like Scrabulous. I also like the ability to be able to personalize my profile page with things that I enjoy such as favourite television shows (with quotes and pictures) and other things that interest me. I do find that I have to “clean up” my profile every now and then because I don’t use all of the features. In my busy day, Facebook provides about 10 minutes of fun and I don’t usually have to think too hard- unless I’m playing Scrabulous with Cindy!! I don’t believe that it was ever meant to be a serious tool; it was meant to be a form of communication with entertainment. It is a just a bit of fun!