[Air-L] Examples of Successful Uses of Facebook in the Classroom?

Michelle Everson gaddy001 at umn.edu
Thu Aug 12 12:42:49 PDT 2010


Hi Everyone,

For awhile now, I've been toying with trying to incorporate Facebook into my
courses as a way for students to talk about statistics they are seeing in
the news (I teach statistics courses).  My idea is to set up a group in
Facebook where students could go to post things they are finding in the
media related to statistics and to critique these items and comment on what
others have posted.  I would likely either set this up as an extra credit
assignment (and have other options for students who do not want to use
Facebook) or as a required assignment (again with another option for those
students who might not want to use Facebook).  I'm interested in trying
Facebook because (a) I know many of my students use it and I thought this
might engage them more, and (b) I like the layout of Facebook and the way
you can easily link to things and share videos.  I haven't found a blog
interface that I like as much as Facebook.

I do have some concerns, of course, related to privacy issues, and I would
not want students to feel that I am doing this because I want to pry into
their personal lives (my goal here is not to "friend" all my students but to
get them talking about statistics they see in everyday life and sharing
things with each other).  So, I'm wondering if anyone on this list has tried
to use Facebook and would be willing to share what was done and how it
worked, or give some tips on "best practices" for use of Facebook in an
educational context.

Thank you in advance for anything you might have to share!

Sincerely,

Michelle Everson

-- 
Michelle Everson, Ph.D.
Quantitative Methods in Education
Department of Educational Psychology
University of Minnesota
gaddy001 at umn.edu
612-624-0691
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~delma001/CATALST/



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