Uptime (a server rating that represents the percentage of time that your site is online) is one of the most important factors in determining the viability of a web platform, particularly a new (and vulnerable) one like Blogs@Baruch. Our uptime rating took a hit early in the semester when too much demand was put on our server… that problem was resolved when BCTC performed a memory upgrade in early February.

Over a month later, the class decided to use Facebook for their communications, which was the prerogative of the faculty member. By then Blogs@Baruch had been up for about 50 days without interruption, and, in fact, the students had been using it quite effectively. Some of them convinced their faculty member that they would prefer Facebook, however, which was more integrated into their daily lives.

Since the decision wasn’t motivated by the server troubles, which had been resolved, the name implied a rationale behind the switch which wasn’t valid. This was a public group on Facebook… any searches of Baruch or Baruch Blogs would yield this group page as a return. I’m certainly no entrepreneur or brand manager; but I do know enough that I don’t want negative or, more precisely, inaccurate representations out there about a project I’ve built. I welcome criticisms that will help us improve our service; snark doesn’t do that.

And, finally… all of this was done after I spent time supporting the class, setting up feeds for the student blogs to filter into one space, and answering student questions through February. I didn’t take the switch personally (because I still think that what I built was more pedagogically sound), but felt that the manner in which it happened and how it was named needed to be addressed.

I agree with Boone’s point that there’s nothing at all that would preclude good teaching and learning from happening on FB. Good teaching and learning can happen independent of medium. But they require thought and reflection and planning; some media are more conducive to encouraging that approach than others. Doesn’t mean that other media can’t be made to work, and the faculty member may find that FB does all he needs. My reaction in this incident evolved at least as much from my feeling that too little consideration was given to the implications of choosing a particular medium in this process as from the sense that we got dissed.

That said, I think it’s interesting that Mikhail points out that moving to Facebook, in the case in question, meant not only giving up the fight for the better tech, but also the fight for reflection. If this observation is true, then indeed both battles were lost. Yet I want to cast doubt on the suggestion that moving to FB *necessitates* a movement away from reflection. While there might be structural reasons why FB is not well suited to academic reflection (off the top of my head, I might point to the fact that rhetoric of the Profile and the Status Update are inherently more focused on the non-intellectual aspects of the individual than the idea-space of a blog), my hunch is that the vapidity of FB content is, like so many other classroom problems, an inertial issue. In other words, FB content tends to be non-reflective because it’s always been that way, not because it *has* to be that way. (I beat this horse to death in – plug! – a blog post from a while back: http://teleogistic.net/2008/12/does-facebook-promote-bad-rhetorical-skills/).

In the end, for some of the reasons that Luke mentions in the OP – especially the intellectual property issues – I feel uneasy about Facebook as an academic space. (And, for those same reasons, very good about WPMu and Blogs@Baruch!) But I remain open to the possibility that FB could have some role in some classrooms, if properly conceived by the students and faculty.

But this is the real Hillary, standing up. And I second Zohra/Hillary: Nicely said, Luke. And I do agree that part of what this incident reveals seems to be indicative of a lack of patience towards any/all technological “tools” thanks to past (negative) experiences. As you said, if you approach Blogs@Baruch the same was as you do the broken VC escalators, it won’t be a working relationship but full-on combat. As another example, the WordPress forums are famously friendly and helpful; if you’re a new WordPress user who assumes that seeking help will be as infuriating as a call to your cell phone company, you’re missing out.

Logging off/out.

PS: glad you didn’t let them get away with sullying our good name…