Like Sarah, I used to think that social media such as Facebook only had utility only as a way for far-flung friends to stay in touch, share pictures, chatter about social life One could also amuse oneself and others by developing a clever and/or self-effacing persona.
Twitter changed all that for me. It revealed the power of personal learning networks. It allowed me to connect and breathe outside of the necessarily confining walls of school building. I can literally say that without social media, I'd still be doing my old "sage on stage" routine in the classroom.
Still, when Sarah's cbl group turned to Facebook as their means of "improving our democracy through an authentic medium", I was skeptical. I privately thought that they were "dumbing down" their project. My bad! As Sarah explains, what could be more "authentic" for young voters than Facebook.
Each of my project experiences has taught me important lessons along the way!
P.S. Between Memorial Day and Labor Day the Drive-thru will have new posts twice a week.
2 comments:
Sarah is so right. And so sharp. And of course it is one of my limited areas of expertise in technology. I look forward to being whatever kind of reference I can be for M-hub. I even love recommending books via amazon which of course is now linked to facebook, as is virtually everything. 500 million members and counting.
Update on M-Hub for WillKnott and other project enthusiasts. Our data collection team had a great meeting this week with Chris Blitz. He helped us appreciate the challenge and importance of the right format for collecting information from people. How we do that --through Google forms or some other format will be very important. He's going to continue to help us, and we have a great team.
So far, quite a few alumnae have expressed an interest to be involved. And almost all of them have found out about M-Hub through Facebook.
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