From the Chronicle of Higher Education. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised but faculty really should be smarter than this.
The value of facebook: Reuniting old friends
My wife is a relative newcomer to facebook (I have been on since 2005). She has been drawn in by the fact that over the last three months or so many of our former high school friends have been joining up. As more friends have joined you of course find it actually working as a social network (those who promote “social networking” often forget that it helps to have “real” friends on the network in the first place). In the last two weeks Elizabeth began to read reports about a high school classmate who was in his final battle with brain cancer. What transpired was a remarkable and truly communal memorialization, aided in part by facebook. Elizabeth has written about it on her blog and, of course, in her notes on facebook.
Facebook: Where our Personal History Comes Alive
I had not spoken to or seen John since our 1985 graduation from Robinson High School in Fairfax, Virginia. In the past couple months many of us have reconnected through Facebook and have enjoyed seeing photos of kids and catching up on news from many of the 900+ classmates from that year.
Recently a mutual friend posted John’s link to a daily journal of his battle with brain cancer. He was fighting hard, in good Navy SEAL spirit. Hundreds of friends wrote him words of encouragement everyday and his wife tapped away at the computer in the dead of night when all was quiet to update his status. John lost his battle on January 18. His obituary ran today in the Virginia Pilot linked here .
Read more: Facebook: Where our Personal History Comes Alive
On Facebook beware of imitations
This story was first forwarded to me by my brother and can be found at Squaredpeg.com which is a blog about higher ed recruitment. This afternoon the Chronicle of Higher Ed has picked up the story. Here is the gist of the story:
Company Created Official-Looking ‘Class of 2013’ Facebook Groups for Hundreds of Colleges
Anyone can create a Facebook group and make it appear to be something it’s not.
Brad J. Ward reminded admissions officials about that simple fact on Thursday after examining hundreds of “Class of 2013” groups that have popped up on the popular social-networking site. Typically, students who plan to enroll at a particular college create such groups to start communicating with their future classmates. Some colleges establish the groups or encourage admitted students to do so.
But Mr. Ward, coordinator for electronic communication in Butler University’s admissions office, found that dozens of the 2013 Facebook groups had been created — or were being maintained — by the same handful of people. Who were they?
On his blog, SquaredPeg.com, Mr. Ward wrote early this morning that, with the help of other admissions officials, he had traced several of the names to College Prowler, a Pittsburgh company that publishes student-written guidebooks about colleges and universities.
These folks are doing this so that they can eventually promote and advertise their own products and potentially others. Those in the group can still control the content, but it is a distasteful development. I usually prefer to allow students to create their own virtual community and I don’t believe that Prowler has yet created a group for the SHC Class of 2013, but I went ahead and created an “official” group. Just search for “Schreyer Honors College, Penn State – Class of 2013″
