Week One: Facebooking For Credit?

This week, Group 4 worked separately to create one piece of work. This is always a challenge, but even more so for us. The majority of us are commuting students who are only on campus at specific times during the week. Along with our competing class schedules, we also all work and have many other obligations. So, the use of social networking to create our White Paper was incredibly helpful. In fact, even if using sites such as Twitter and Facebook was not a requirement, our group would have relied on some aspect of the internet anyway.

The first thing we did was exchange phone numbers. Through text messages and phone calls we were able to address any immediate issues that had come up. However, our main source of communication was through the use of Twitter. From Twitter we were able to put out information to one another that wasn’t time sensitive, such as links to different articles and general thoughts or observations. However, once our deadline was closer, we switched over to Facebook. By creating an e-mail thread, all five of us were able to communicate in one space with no limitations. We were able to see what one another was working on and were able to ask questions or share information in a space that we knew would be visible to everyone. Through the use of Facebook we shared more links, were able to divy up our work and then finally post our final products. It made our plight of not being able to get together almost inconsequential as we were still able to talk and share our progress efficiently.

The use of social networking sites for things other than pleasure has already been proven successful. Google’s network, Google Wave, is another site that has really honed in on the uses the business world has for social networking. Google Wave allows for threads, chat rooms, surveys, tables, and video chatting to be accessible to a large amount of people at once. Though still in it’s beta format, I believe that if Google Wave were more well known, it would be even better than Facebook.

However far off Google Wave is from actually being used in the class room, I think that Twitter is the least effective way to collaborate. Though it is useful to share quick tidbits, it’s character restriction acts as a large limitation and unless one wants to receive phone notifications (which can be quite annoying if the person you are notified of uses Twitter for anything other than your specific business), it is easy to miss Tweets made by group members. I think Twitter is great for celebrities, comedians and the average Joe, but I don’t think it is as successful at assisting in the White Paper as Facebook was.

Overall, as an avid user of Twitter and Facebook, I do enjoy having them as a part of the curriculum. You can learn more about a service once you are forced to use it in a way you do not normally use it in. Mostly, though, I’m glad that for once when I log onto a social networking site, I’m not procrastinating on my homework. Rather, in this case, I’m completing it. Who would have known?

-Che

Testing

Hey guys, if you can please create a google account (or let me know if you already have one) I can add you all as authors. Just comment here I guess with your e-mail address once you've done so.