(I wonder if blogspot is ever going to make it easy to use trackback/pinging features…?

I love the irony in being “groomed” given how unkempt I often am -perhaps that’s the rub that will sell it to the masses! Convert, ye clean-cut, khaki-short, sneaker wearing sinners.

@Barabra -You darned provincial slow-bloggers! Always bloggity this and bloggity that I guess to echo what I said above, I think this post really traces my own complete disregard for Facebook to a more genuine appreciate of its possibilities as a social space wherein we don’t necessarily teach, but have fun, socialize, keep in touch with graduates, and generally “network.” How man y of your students (and you being the blog master teacher extraordinaire) keep blogging after graduation. I’m sure a number, but there is also an equal number whom may not -and that is not necessarily a sign of their disaffection, but life, liberty and the pursuit of cunsumptivness. Facebook is one space, amongst many, where you can touch base, keep track (in a good way of course), and have some fun with them (even if it is slow fun). I am gonna reproduce a comment I made on a recent blog post by Jerry that suggests a different kind of order that my emerge from Facebook:

I noticed in my mini-feed today that a student I was friends with in Facebook, on her own initiative, was starting a Virginia Woolf reading group using a Facebook group, So, I decided to join it to see what would happen. I have been made a group officer of tech support & honorary faculty ! Which is kind of exciting for me, I can’t wait to help them create a distributed book club -I was built for this! So, I think you’re right, let the students frame their own experiences on Facebook, but at the same time don’t be too afraid to join in and have fun with them.

But, all this to say that Facebook will probably never make a convincing formalized learning environment, but it can trace the beginnings of more protracted, thoughtful learning experiences beyond and in addition to the more formalized logic of the classroom.

* You are switching camps: Facebook Fanboy? Say it ain’t so.

* You have decided to fully commit yourself to the CoG (Cult of Groom).

BTW, I have plans to “Google-ize” the proper noun “Groom.” As in “You’ve just been Groomed!”

But I remain a steadfast blogger (alright, slow-blogging fangirl)–not just for my own learning practice but for the classroom. I want to make sure we also get excited about the slow bubbling up of ideas, the revisions to our thinking, the linking out and back around like those letter-writing thought communities of old. I worry that GenMe will not have ample opportunity to explore the delights of ongoing, deep connections if we all take to Facebook in the classroom. Indeed, I plan to resist it becuase I KNOW they understand the beauty of that tool, of that practice without any help from me whatsoever. I like the fact that a blog needs feeding to blossom into something interesting and valuable to the group.

So there.

I am with you entirely on this. I resisted Facebook for so long because I believed it was a simple tool to poke friends or leave messages. I think my own simplification fo the tool has been guided by my own love of the blog and status as fanboy. But as you argued so eloquently with twitter, Facebook is just another space for networking with a variety of great folks who may not have the time or inclination to blog. Additionally, it’s potential to “fold time” makes it a really powerful force in the understanding of creating and maintaining a community of learners.

But I am always thinking about blogging and other distributed ways for this to happen, while the more focused and intense possibilities of something like Facebook to achieve that same end have gone unnoticed. It’s still not a place I spend a *lot* of time in– it doesn’t replace blogging or del.icio.us etc… but I can see a bit more of a vision regarding its importance and possibility now.