Do you have a forum or wiki for development of your project? If so, let me know because I might be interested in helping with development, or giving some ideas.

It’s at tassl.com!

What I found works pretty good is to have all the students add me, the teacher, as a friend at the very beginning. Make it a 20 point assignment (change value depending on total class points) and make it mandatory. I found that students never really used the group, but I plan to use one next semester. I think it’s because students want to feel cool by being part of a group, but they don’t actually want to do the extra work required.

What you need to do though is create a system for them to use the means of communication. For example, you can’t just create a group and expect people to use it. What I am going to do next semester is have my students blog on a regular basis. I won’t being doing all that much with Facebook except posting announcements and assignments. Which is great with Facebook because it saves printing time.

Two applets you need with Facebook are My Questions and My Files. At the beginning make sure you create an assignment for them to download from your My Files and have the assignment add the My Questions applet and respond to your question you post. If you would like more specifics here let me know.

Good luck and please spread the Facebook word!

Something I found, which doesn’t really surprise me too much, is that building mediated relationships is easier on Facebook as well. This goes along the issue of bridging the communication gap that still exists between the teacher and student. Facebook helps, because you don’t seem so much like a teacher, but more of a friend they are used to communicating with at that level.

The other issue here is that no matter what you use for a classroom system, it has to be an all or none thing. Either you use one system for social networking and classroom management, or none. For instance, if you think you are still going to use Blackboard as well, then just pick one. Students won’t enjoy going to multiple systems for class content.

If you are looking into a system to get students to communicate and interact online, but you don’t necessarily care about managing the class with the same system, you may want to look into having them learn blogging. I’m not trying to steer you away from Facebook, but rather presenting mulitple options.

Next semester I will definitely be using Facebook! I am teaching a PHP and MySQL class. I will be managing the class on Facebook, but they will learn how to use blogging and social networking effectively in the classroom. For instance I want to teach students that putting positive “Public” content on the Internet is much better, than putting negative or no information on the Internet. Or putting “Private” content on the Internet. In other words, they need to have positive information visible by future employers up on the Internet.

Anyways, sorry for the ramble. But as they say, “If minds had anuses, blogging would be what your mind would do when it had to take a dump.”

I was thinking about using Facebook as a supplemental resource to help students connect and interact with each other. I’m not really that interested in using it as content delivery system.

How did this pan out for you? Did the students like the idea? Did they use the group message boards? Or were they too freaked out by the possibility of a professor seeing pictures of their drunken exploits to even join it?

Was it worth it? Will you do it next semester, or is it back to webCT for you?