Thing 18

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=622500235&ref=tn_tnmn

Here is the link to my facebook profile page. 

I see that many older generations already have a facebook.  Which to me is a great thing.  I believe that educators should know how social networking sites work because they need to understand their students.  I know that sounds weird, but it is true.  They have to understand that now-a-days everything a child is thinking can be updated within 15 seconds through the "update status" bar.  Through this simple thing, their thoughts are updated on their profile.

I really did not gain any new insights.  I have explored facebook many times and I also have explored Twitter because I have an account with them also.  I love them both.  Twitter has intrigued me a little more lately because you don't just "befriend" people and then read paragraph long statements about their lives.  You just simply type in a sentence or two (because that is all the characters you really can have) and then you get your point across and people understand.  Facebook users for some odd reason think that using hashtags(#) on facebook will trend topics like they do on Twitter.....IT DOES NOT TREND ANYTHING!  That has become one of my biggest pet peeves.

I believe they both have useful features.  If you are looking for photo searching, small games playing, invitation sending type application, then facebook is the place for you.  If you are looking for trending topics, celebrity updates, worldly views, and limited resources then twitter is for you.

I do not see these being useful for classroom activities, just for the simple fact that these sites will soon be over run by things that children probably do not need to be surrounded with anyway.