social networking

The bell has gone to mark the end of the day and I am again borrowing a laptop for my attempt to get this done. If I had been smart I would have just done this in a word document and copied it into this.... (note hand smacking my forehead for just thinking of that).

I am torn about social bookmarking. For one, I feel for many sites like Facebook become about the numbers. I am apparently very unpopular as I don't have many friends nor have i sought any out. Some of my friends on the site have over 300 friends and I think I am more of number to a couple than anything. Many people, once I accepted the friendship and a token message or two have been passed have not been in contact. Part of it is me because I am not overly interested in sharing nudges, drinks and the message board drives me nuts as I am constantly deleting posts from other people. I thought it was bad getting forwards from people in my email.

There are some great things about the site. I like the fact that it helps me keep connected with a few people where i normally don't have interaction past the annual Christmas letter (which I still have to mail from this last Christmas). I play a couple application games with a couple people.

School wise I have seen a couple of good uses this past year. One of my yearbook students put out a message to a current ND group asking for photo submissions for this year's annual. Students could also share photos to be used on Facebook. I didn't like the fact that students were sharing something online which others could see and it was linked to the school. But I appreciated the communicating the message. Unfortunately the photos the student colllected were not a high enough resolution for us to actually use.

This attempt got me thinking about how a school could use Facebook. Why not have a school form a group and use it to post announcements, upcoming events, etc. Students don't listen to the daily announcements. Maybe this would be a good place to reach them.