Welcome to Modern Educator

Here on this blog I hope to get a conversation going amongst students, teachers, administrators, and parents about who, what, when, why, and where we should teach technology skills for the 21st century. I am technology teacher at Truckee High School in Truckee, CA and currently teach classes like digital media, e-learning, applications, and keyboarding -- yes...still important! :) Please Join the Conversation!

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Facebook and our Social World - Online and Offline

My wife and I debate Facebook and its relevancy in our lives on a regular basis.  We both have Facebook accounts (along with 1 out of every 10 people in the world) but only I use this social media site on a regular basis.  I enjoy connecting with friends on a daily basis online from close by and with those who live far away.  My wife on the other hand seems to still want that face to face contact with her friends and is not interested, nor necessarily comfortable with sharing her life with them online.  Needless to say, it provides for some interesting and passionate conversations at the dinner table.  Even more interesting when my 12 year old daughter joins in the conversation. 

Some say Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, had a simple but revolutionary idea that resulted in 600 million people signing up for his companies web site, http://www.facebook.com/ - "where others saw the Internet as a network of computers, Zuckerberg saw it as a network of people."  Time Magazine

He is reshaping the Internet into a system based on gathering information from trusted social connections versus random data providers.  He is connecting people together to continue their daily lives online versus the Internet of the past where users were living virtual lives hidden behind screen names and avatars. 

As I reflect on the recent article in Time Magazine, Person of the Year: Mark Zuckerbeg I find this social concept of the web quite enlightening.  One of my students told me after reading the article in my web 2.0 class that; "it makes perfect sense Mr. Halvorsen, I don't buy clothes that the fashion experts tell me to wear, I buy what my friends are wearing."  Looking at that, I guess the fashion as well as all industries now have to move quicker and embrace this online social networking phenomenon because they can not wait for word of their products to spread from trade show, to the big city stores, and then to the stores in neighborhoods across the U.S. or the world for that matter.  These companies who first have "our" friends talking about their products on Facebook and other social media sites are the ones who are most likely to succeed since Zuckerberg seems to have proven that three "likes" by our trusted connections online is worth more than a thousand recommendations by experts and corporations.  I think we still want to know what the experts think; we just seem to want to hear that source of information through our friends network.  Today, users of the Internet are expecting, possibly demanding, that the news come to them via social networks versus requiring them to go out and research it on their own.  This transformation taking place, lead by Facebook and other sites like Google, is creating an entirely new set of skills and knowledge for today's workforce.  Students today should be aware of this and be exploring what it is that they need to learn in school to be successful in this new tech-social era.  All kinds of new jobs are popping up like social media management and programming web 2.0 applications.

Not convinced that this concept is a powerful one?  Watch what takes place each minute on Facebook 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year all across the globe!

13 comments:

  1. I don't have a facebook and I dont plan on using one. My couins are on it all they time and they try to convince me to make one. I started one a year ago but lost interest quickly. What is the point of it? They say it is to talk to your friends but you can do that with a phone or in person. Then there is people who say it is to meet new people or people from a different country but why would anyone want to talk to a stranger. Whats with putting personal information on your profile? If you go on it to talk with your friends shouldnt they already know this stuff about you?
    Rosston B

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  2. when i first started useing faccebook i thaugh of it as a place for teens to talk and goof around. but then as i reasearched more i found that many of my family and family friends where useing facebook. i even found some of my familys buisness having a page on facebook. it was shocking to me to find out that even adults where useing facebook as a place for buisness aswell. its a lot diffrent than myspace in that way. myspace was never a place for buisness. but facebook just seems more profesional in a way just for the reason of being able to be useing it for a buisness purpose. i think that facebook is going to get more popular as the year goes on. more and more people are going to start useing facebook instead of thier email. mabey they might have to us e it for there job. their boss might need them to be on facebook to comunicate with them. all in all it is a good thing. people can be personal and profesional on facebook when they need to.

    troy

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  3. It's an interesting thing to think about. Like cell phones I am sure it will reach nearly everyone in the world. If Facebook has grown this fast, and like from the article, it seems to be a snowball effect. People will not want to join in on it but after more and more people do they get sucked into it as well. This I would assume is because if everyone is useing it then it must be the best thing to use to talk to other people when your not directly next to them or something of the sort, and even more so with all the new things you are able to use to speak your mind more personally with the ability to post videos, links, pictures, and everything else you are capable of doing on it. There may be a lot of people who do not trust the personal level that is taken with the openess of Zuckerberg in Facebook, but I believe that will die out eventually when all the people who had gone through all the trust issues with the government with Nixon and after and other trust issues once everything is more secure. I believe this will happen because we are constintly getting better with out technology and becoming more and more protected. Then it will not be such a bad thing sharing some information because people will grow out of their paranoia state with a more trusting internet and people of the nation. I feel the same way as Zuckerberg when he says that why be afraid to not be so private unless your hiding something and therefore have a double identity, one for your real life, and another for your internet use.

    Katherine

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  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  5. I think facebook is, for the most part, a very successful company. But like all things people abuse it. I currently have a facebook account but rarely use it. It seems to me to be the most boring thing. Basicly all you do is get on facebook, check your messages, make a post, and then getting off. The next day you talk about what you talked about at school. You could of bypassed the whole facebook thing and called them on your cell phone. Or you could just text them. facebook is just a big word for TEXTING. I'm not saying ots a bad thing, but it seems like people just want something more new and inventive everyday. People can do what they want to but im going to stick to the basics.

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  6. I personaly think that as more people start to see all these cool things about facebook then they want to get a facebook. As all these people start to get more into face book the more it begins to grow and the more that it start to get very popular.Also the more they put new things about this site the more they get othe people to get a facebook account and they get more and more people to joing facebook.

    ~Melissa

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  7. After reading both this blog and the Time Magazine article, I now have a more developed understanding for Facebook. Facebook is truely our daily lives at work or at school carried on into the online world. Through facebook you can express thoughts, share links, or comment of a friend's uploaded video. All of these things catch you interest more than other sites because IT IS YOUR FRIENDS POSTING! The average person would rather take advice from a friend about a product to buy or a CD ablumn to purchase rather than the expert advice of someone else. Facebook is a truely remarkable tool and I believe that Mark Zuckerberg is the rigtful winner of the 'Time Magazine: Person of the Year.'

    After reading the full article in the Time Magazine, I have learned alot about Zuckerberg and Facebook. For instance, the color of Facebook is blue because Mark Zuckerberg is partially color blind and blue is a color he is able to see. Also, Facebook was orginally created after the 19 year-old Zuckerberg drop out of Harvard his sophmore year. At that time Facebook was actually called thefacebook.com.

    There are many things that make facebook so successful and I believe that facebook does so well because it is at a personal level. You aren't talking to random people through a made-up screen name on YouTube, but you actually know the people you are talking and communicating with. I believe that facebook will continue to stay very popular and with contiue to shape the world in it's own way.
    -Nash

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  8. I currently have a facebook acount just like 1 in 10 people in the world do. I think that facebook is going to change the world. I enjoy connecting to my friends that are moved away and gone as well as connecting to my friends that I see everyday. Facebook is going to change the world. I think its very interesting that it is competing with google. Google has taken so long and so much to get where it is at now. Facebook is going to be very succesfull. Many new users are joing everyday to join the new era of facebook. This is the new Web 2.0

    Zach

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  9. Facebook is a useful tool, anybody that has access to the Internet will be able to find friends that moved or just lost contact with,
    they could find information on anything just by clicking like on a subject, then the company or fan page could send you messages or updates about a new product or song. I use facebook to keep in contact with family and Friends that I'm not able to see everyday, and to see whats going on in other peoples lives.
    - Tanya

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  10. I think facebook is, for the most part, a very successful company. But like all things people abuse it. I currently have a facebook account but rarely use it. It seems to me to be the most boring thing. Basicly all you do is get on facebook, check your messages, make a post, and then getting off. The next day you talk about what you talked about at school. You could of bypassed the whole facebook thing and called them on your cell phone. Or you could just text them. facebook is just a big word for TEXTING. I'm not saying ots a bad thing, but it seems like people just want something more new and inventive everyday. People can do what they want to but im going to stick to the basics.

    austin

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  11. My first post was lost so to sum up what I posted about was that I started to realise that Facebook was a oppertunity. A oppertunity in life and in business. That Facebook isn't just social networking it's a tool that helps you find oppertunity so you can make something of yourself and find people to help you do it. Some may use it to mess around, but I think that when Facebook is used correctly it can help you achieve your greatest goals. Grayson.

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  12. I lost my post when I pressed post. To sum up what I wrote is that I dont think Facebook is around to stay because other companies like Google could come up with something even better than facebook. This I think is pretty likely because at the rate technology is going it is only a matter of time before facebook its surpassed and outdated.
    -Max

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  13. Facebook has to be the most popular and successful company of all time. I rarely ever need to check my e-mail anymore or call my friends to get homework help. It can all be done through Facebook. You can find practically anyone in the world on Facebook who you haven’t seen in years just by searching them in your search bar. I keep in touch with family that lives far away, find out when my friend's birthdays are in advance, chat live with any one of my friends who are online, and get information about new products about different companies that have a Facebook link. It's a powerful source. Some people complain about how their private information isn't safe on Facebook, but if you don't want something personal for the whole world to know, then don't put it on Facebook in the first place. If you don't abuse it, then Facebook can be considered the greatest invention ever. In the future, Facebook will be the main source of communication (if it isn't already) and practically everyone will have an account all over the world.
    Zoe-

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