U8A1 Using Facebook in an English class

I was immediately interested when I came across a literature activity using the social bookmarking site: Facebook.  Mr. Featherstone, an English teacher from Canada, had his students create a facebook page as if they were their favorite character from a novel they read in class. Students were prompted to create the page, as if they were the character including pictures, likes, dislikes and any links that would apply. 

As a teacher of language arts, I have seen this activity completed in numerous traditional ways such as writing a letter as the character to the readers, creating a character map, new book cover with information from the character, or even writing a poem as the character. 

With using the social networking, or other traditional ways, students are implementing active learning and higher order thinking skills. However, I believe high school students would be very motivated to complete this assignment using facebook as it is a very creative and unique assignment.  Students enjoy using technology and are already very savvy when it comes to facebook, so I think the finished projects would be very thorough. I also think it provides opportunities to share and peer review each other’s work rather than the traditional method of standing in front of the classroom. This could be intimidating for some students.

It is important to note, that Mr. Featherstone writes in bold, that students using facebook need to be appropriate and report something to him if it is inappropriate for a classroom setting.  He encourages students to leave messages for each other.  Although, Mr. Featherstone didn’t mention this, I think it would be very interesting for students to use the status option provided on facebook as the character they chose for their page.

Although, I think this is a very creative way to get students thinking about a novel they read, I find that this would be difficult to implement in the typical classroom.  Although, I believe students would really enjoy this assignment, the risks may outweigh the benefits. This includes inappropriate messages/comments, disapproval by parents and administrators.  I also think this is a heavy task for the teacher to take on as he or she immediately becomes a “monitor.”

I believe this activity could be modified using a blog instead of facebook. Students could create a blog as their favorite character, where they could add pictures, bios, and links that apply. I believe this activity may be more acceptable for the school setting, because students view facebook as a social opportunity. A blog may help students still become interested and motivated in the task at hand, but also provide more reasoning to take it seriously and remain appropriate. Students could still reply to each other’s work like they were able to do using facebook.

I also believe using a blog would allow this activity to be geared towards elementary students as well, where as the facebook activity just applied to high school students. Teachers could actually implement this activity on a classroom blog. This is how I would use this activity in my classroom.