I personally don’t like everyone knowing all of my business.  I value my privacy and don’t have a need for everyone to know everything about me and my family.  Two friends of mine have a facebook and they love it.  We recently went to the beach.  I had my laptop there and they were on my laptop checking their email and working on their facebook A LOT.  I don’t think I got on the laptop hardly at all.  They said it was great to keep up with friends that they never see.  My 24 year old daughter has one and I asked her advice when I got home-Do I need one?  She said no.  She said you don’t even like checking your home email account.  I recently read an article in the paper that said some young people (20s) are finding social networking is too time consuming. 

However, I am all for whatever motivates students.  And, if social networking will encourage students to write or participate in a project or promote their learning, then let’s do it with them.

In the Classroom 2.0 Forum, I found an article How to Use Twitter in the Classroom by Sage Lewis The article found three main improvements.  “Class Chatter” was the conversations between students on Twitter.  The students were discussing things that were going on in and outside of the classroom.  “Class Communty” discussed the increased awareness of each other as students inside and outside of the classroom.  The students were more respectful of each other and learned more about each other than they may have if they hadn’t talked outside of class.  DUH! The author of this article referred to the Sixth Sense by Clive Owen which was a very interesting link, as well.  Sage Lewis, the author, also refers to Twitter giving students more of a Sense of the World, what various things people are doing throughout the world.  This blog also had a link to Academhack, which gave more Twitter tips.

 After exploring Ning and Classroom 2.0, I didn’t like the organization of the site.  It was hard to navigate, in my opinion.  I’m pretty sure I won’t be using either of these in my professional or personal learning.  My concern with Social Networking and students is, will they be able to determine between fact and opinion with the various sources they are communicating with on the social network.  I like the colloboration aspect, but not the gathering of factual information.  I would be concerned about the validity.  However, if they are going to use it, we need to help them how to determine this.