and now about Twitter and Facebook

Not much to say for this week but it seems things in my virtual classroom are getting smoother: deadlines clear, discussion questions clearly defined (last week's two questions, one on Twitter and one on Facebook were excellent and very thought provoking), assignments... well not so much...

My students were very hesitant to add me as their Facebook friend. Or at least I felt they were more hesitant to add me as their FB friend than to follow me on Twitter. I wonder if there is some sense of privacy they feel it will be lost when friending their teacher on Facebook. It is amazing to observe how they work through different social media tools and how they react to each of them (though the week and in their blogs). After a strenuous week of figuring out how to navigate their wikis, this past week was a break for them. Some of them tweeted for the whole week as I asked in their initial assignment, some just registered their account and started following me. None of them, which is a good thing, "over-tweeted." One, max of two tweets a day.

What I loved about their tweets is that students seemed more comfortable to comment on each other's tweets and be themselves. I was a passive reader of how they interacted and was mesmerized of how real they are in comparison with when they are in class. I mentioned this in my previous blog but tweets go a step above blogs.

Well, with Facebook was a little different. I was surprised about the hesitation to add me as their friends on Facebook (they do not have to worry, they can delete me after the end of the course:) ). I wonder how they differentiate the meaning of the two social media: do they perceive their tweets more as directed to others, for the broader public, while Facebook is more about their immediate circle of friends (immediate circle of 300 friends? :) )? Eventually, after I encouraged them to add me as their FB friend, about half of the active students added me and one of them even created a facebook group with the name of the course.

The bottom line is: I am more excited about my experience with Twitter than with Facebook. I wonder, if that is a sign that maybe Facebook soon will be the new myspace... and go downhill? If it wasn't for Facebook, I would not know that two of my students had birthday last week...

Reading, commenting, and following blogs

I truly enjoy reading my students blogs. Not enjoy in a "hahahaha" way, but in an enriching, learning, discovering way. Every blog is so different: different backgrounds, different fonts, different gadgets, different layout and most of all, individual style of blogging. Even though, I can see the same emerging problems with the websites (following in the case of Blogger and creating new pages and adding info to them in the case of Wikispaces), everyone has a different style of expressing. I realize that with the blogs, I learn much more about my students than I would have a chance to learn in the classroom.
Students in the classroom are just students to me and that is how I look at them for the 55 or 85 minutes of the class. What happens with them, what they do, how they feel about the class and the rest of their life... I can't know by just being in the same room with them for this short period of time. It is different w: students are not only students to me anymore.
The more I read their blogs, the more I realize that blogging is the new form of academic writing: informed and well-though but without the rigor of academic papers. I think I am going to switch to blogging instead of mid-term papers... Final papers still will be on wikis from now on.