Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Social Networking For Social Change: Reflective Post #1

When this project was first introduced, I liked it alot. As a preface to the project, we read two articles in which two different authors discussed at length issues concerning technology in today's society, social networking sites, and the effects all of these are having on young people in our country. One main point both authors made that I agree with is that social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Ning, are not being used to their full potential. These sites on which billions of people worldwide present themselves truly do have the potential to serve as a platform for social change, progress, and the mobilization of people towards a common goal. However, young people tend to disreguard or do not embrace these uses, and use Facebook primarily to fulfill social desires, and jump at the oppurtunity to customize a personality as they like in this forum.

For these reasons, I was excited for this project. I recognize the power social networking sites have as a vehicle for social causes and social change, and I looked foward to using this project as an oppurtunity to learn how to successfully do this.

Next we were put into groups. Each group would choose their cause that would be the focal point of the groups Ning page. My group decided our cause would be scams of al sort. This was not one of my ideas that we had thought of on our own prior to the project, but I liked the idea as I agree that scams are a major problem in our society that millions of Americans fall victim to each year. At this point in the project I was looking foward to researching and learning about scams, and furthermore contributing to my groups page in ways that would be helpful for anyone looking to learn about and protect themselves against different scams.

The layout of Ning initially confused me, however the "Ning tutorial" that was posted on the Sakai page, as well as help from Ms. Portman helped me understand the way Ning works much better.

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