Social Networking

This chapter of The Digital Diet is all about the famous social networking website known as, you guessed it, FaceBook. This chapter walks the reader through anything and everything they will need to know about the popular networking site. At the time that it was published, I am sure the material was relevant and the most current, but as we know with technology it is constantly changing. The material in this chapter is outdated as FaceBook has changed some of the features and terms found on it's website. The book does provide a very clear and simple foundation for those that might be new to FaceBook or social networking in general, but for a more up to date guide, this chapter would not suffice.

As I have said in previous post about social networking, I believe it has a place in the classroom, but limited at that. As long as the use of such a website can be monitored and used for intentional educational value, I think teachers would have great success in student response to using it in the classroom. The only caution I would advise is the safety of the students that use it. Again, if teachers monitor it this should not be a issue. I would probably advise teachers to create a class FaceBook account so students would not be distracted by using their own account.

Using FaceBook would be a great way to allow students to incorporate technology and global studies into one focused area within the classroom. Students could use a class FaceBook account to connect with other classes all over the world. It could be a souped up level of pen pals within the classroom. I do not see a problem with teachers using Facebook within the classroom as long as it's use is structured and monitored.