Tales from the Facebook... and other horror Stories

When I started working on this particular literacy assignment back in February I spent countless hours fighting with facebook. My idea was to create a profile fully devoted to literacy skills. I wanted to explore social media under a new lense. My idea was to find application and thus justification to bring facebook culture into the classroom.

The first of my frustration came very early on in the process. I found I was constantly frusterated becuase I could never accomplish what I set out to do. I found that I would have some very grand ideas in my head about what I would want to do, and it would just never look right. The worst part was when I would waste time looking for a fuction that was not even there. I spent more time upset and trying to tweek my account then I actually did learning or adding to my profile or understanding.

In order to help understand why I changed my direction I have created a list of both positive and negative aspects of my facebook experience.

NEGATIVE

•  Limited functions and difficult to bring a wider variety of media types and ideas into the interface
• Slow to load, page constantly kept refreshing
• Subject to the patriot act and so involuntary lack of privacy was a concern
• I could not delet or change my profile page to get rid of what was not relevant. I constantly had huge gaps in my profile and was promted to fill them.
• Annoying advertisments. I found that I was constantly being overwhelmed with different adds and people who fewed my profile could be tricked into believing I endorsed these products.
• Too much fluff when attempting to find true digital literacy content I was constantly being greeted by useless or wasteful information or advertising. With my blog I had more control over the content and was able to limit the flow of information.

POSITIVE

• Pre-created template was easy to upload specific file types to
• Many people already have accounts so I could easily network and build my PLN
• Brand reputation when I refer people to facebook or make a specific reference many people will already know exactly what I am talking about.
• Facebook groups. The UOIT M.Ed had a group I joined, I was able to connect with peers easily ask questions and get answers in a way that was easy and relatively low stress.

I am glad I made the attempt to use facebook; however I am more pleased with my decision to cut ties when I did and move on to the blogspot method of collecting and sharing information. I think going through the facebook process and learning all about how things could be done was an important learning opportunity and that social media really does have it's place in the 2.0 generation classroom.