Multi-culturalism in the socially networked classroom

Last week we had Prieto Loreto on campus to help us think about how we might review online courses for infusion of multiculturalism. (That sentence seems incomplete, and not structured right, but after the cold weekend, I can't figure out why.)

Anyway, during the program, I dug around a bit trying to figure out the demographic information of those who use social networks. I came across a review that Facebook did of their users last year at this time. It's interesting reading (and their comments are too, but the comments make you wonder the demographic information of those people as well.)

Not sure what we can pull from this, but it's an interesting place to start the conversation about the digital divide and incorporation of Web 2.0 and social networking into the digital classroom.

Scanner for Facebook Privacy

The website ReclaimPrivacy.org offers an interesting tool that will scan your Facebook settings and give you a report concerning what information you have made publicly available and how to change your settings if you are so compelled. If you use Facebook as an educator and are wary of the information about you do make available to your students, this might be a useful tool for keeping informed about the information you do share and who can see it.

Integrating Facebook into D2L

Facebook has recently implemented a "Like" button that can be put on various websites. Fill in the wizard, and out pops the code to embed the button into a webpage (or news item, or discussion question, or whatever). This is kind of neat as it puts using facebook for a class only a click away for students, where before it might be several clicks away.

Still haven't tried it, but from what I can tell, it should work pretty easily. Set-up a group on Facebook for your class, get the button, and see what happens.