I am just sampling some apps in FaceBook to see, if they could be used to support classes as a CSCW tool or a mini Learning Environment. Here are my observations so far:

Notes (a FaceBook app)

Description: This is an obvious app because it is a Facebook app. You can post and tag notes, you can import RSS feeds (but it is not meant as an aggregator) and you can share your notes with friends. You cannot attach other documents than photos, but today with online office apps this may not a big problem.
The Good: Tightly integrated into Facebook, fast, easy.
The Bad: No support for teaching, groupwork or course structure. No support to structure lots of notes besides tags. Users have to micromanage tool if they want to subscribe to the other users tools (only friends). Very basic tool.
Bottom line: This tools is usable for sharing some notes between friends.

Wikimono

Description: A Wiki inside your FaceBook account. Create private, shared (to friends) and public wikis.
The Good: It’s a Wiki. You can create pages by will, the access rights can be switched on and off by Facebook user groups (friends and networks).
The Bad: It’s a Wiki. Can be technically daunting to “normal” users. No upload of documents, only links.
Bottom line: That’s a very nice integration of the Wiki technology into FaceBook. If you are looking for a Wiki within FaceBook, don’t look further.

Study Groups

Description: a complete mini groupware app: share Files, have Discussions, online scheduler, define tasks, and create and admin study groups.
The Good: This is basically what all bread and butter Learning Content Management environments have provided from the start: asynchronous groupware. Fairly complete for organizing a study group.
The Bad: some group shoutbox is missing, but you can always use skype for that. No support for peer assessments or E-Portfolios, though. No workflows. No course authoring for students or teachers (but you could use WikiMono for that).
Bottom line: As you can see, to find bad I really needed to expect a full blown Learning Content Management System. Together with FaceBook this app can do what yesteryears Blackboard could do from a student perspective.

Zoho Online Office

Description: Zoho is one of the better online office webapps with a full array of tools (basically, they have anything you could think of plus one). In their facebook app, they give you only access to text documents, presentations, spreadsheets and database apps.
The Good: Very feature rich set of four web apps.
The Bad: You can only share with friends, no networks or groups. No integration of the editor into FaceBook, editing opens up a new tab with the Zoho app.
Bottom line: Zoho has the potential to become a very important contender for , because they have this unbelievable swiss army knife collection of tools. Right now the integration is not tight enough. Nevertheless, You can just use Zoho as your Web Office Suite and then use some other FaceBook apps to share their links.

Notecentric Courses and Notes

Description: A Notes application built around courses, notes, rosters and discussions.
The Good: Flexible setup of courses for note taking. Easy to use, discussions thrown in.
The Bad: No attachments, rosters are tedious to build up because no tight integration into FaceBook. Just Notes and Discussions.
Bottom line: Study Groups (see above) seems more complete.

Share Homework (Scribd)

Description: Share Homework is the Scribd FaceBook app (Scribd is a PDF-Document sharing community). Users can upload their PDF-documents for others to read and download.
The Good: Very well integrated into FaceBook (no extra login etc.). Nice browsing and searching experience. Works great with a lot of different formats (it is also a good tool to convert documents you are getting, if you don’t have the right programm, btw). Very easy to use.
The Bad: No tagging, no group management of access rights, no annotations, most users don’t use the classification scheme, app shameless adverties its use as a way to save time and homework.
Bottom line: Very nice app to publish your documents (for presentations I stilll like SlideShare more (see below). It is very interesting and a good lesson for FaceBook App marketing, that Scribd has chosen to name the app “Share Homework” and not “Scribd”. While Scribd is a perfectly valid Web 2.0 name, Share Homework just plainly describes the main use of it in FaceBook. And because it is nicely open, also the Plagiarism-detection systems can access it 🙂 Still, there is no real support of annotations, so it is just a distribution app.

Courses (MyCourseList)

Description: App to create a timetable and a workplace for your courses. You can setup your own courses. Within the course you have class notes, discussion boards, advices from former students and a course wall. The notes are given a date for the lecture, so this makes it easier to find relevant stuff.
The Good: Quick and easy way to share coursecentric notes and do discussions. Nice timetable.
The Bad: No file attachments. No wiki.
Bottom line: It’s a solid app, but I still like “Study Groups” more. Probably we need to use it for a longer time to see which is better.

Courses (CourseList)

Description:Uh, another app with the same name? Nope, it is another one, and it slightly different. So this is another app to create a timetable and a workplace for your courses.
The Good: Has Discussion view for all courses you are enrolled in (no need to switch back and forth). Upload of files, too.
The Bad: No graphical timetable. No wiki. No notes.
Bottom line:Tough decision which to take (MyCourseList vs. CourseList)

Courses (FaceBook App)

Description: Maybe the decision is not so tough. Just use this one 🙂 This is the real deal from FaceBook themselves (makes you wonder as an application developer if it is wise to compete in the core centre of FaceBook usage with FaceBook itself). This app has all of the above, much slicker experience and support for the instructor role!
The Good: This app has everything as the two other Courses app (see above) + Videochat and support for instructor (announcements, instructor files).
The Bad: Still no Wiki or other editor for course materials. No way to integrate outside material by RSS feeds. No student portfolios and no self- or peer-assessments. No way to do evaluations or tests.
Bottom line: As you can see, this app is very good for supporting document-centric courses. Start with this app if you are new to teaching with FaceBook.

Other apps to mention

• There is PodClass, but this app is not tightly integrated into FaceBook. They offer courses offered by other people and try to be a market place for courses. Interesting concept, but there are not many courses yet and the editing and e-learning tools are not very convincing for setting up a full fledged course yet.
• Another tool is OurNotes – they try to “coursify” the Notes application. It is not available for all networks yet, so I couldn’t check it out.
• KnowledgeBook let’s you define the areas of knowledge you have and you are looking for. It is a kind of matching service for knowledge. Well, sort of.
• FlashCards is an app to do rote learning with cards. You can also exchange your cards. Could be a supplement for memory intensive exams. The app itself is not very polished, though. And you can only create text cards.
• BookShare is a kind of virtual bookshelf and book reviewing community. You can look up books and share your comments. It is very dependent on the user base, which is rather small right now. Also there is no tie-in into the local lib-system, which would make it much more useful. Also teachers cannot create “Reading-Lists”, which would be very nice, too. So while it has the potential to be useful, right now you an Amazon list is more flexible.
• Visual Bookshelf is another virtual bookshelf app which ties directly into Amazon. You can also organize other media such as DVD. The same critique goes for this just as for BookShare (see above):no tagging, no lists, so while this app is much more AJAXified (no reloads of the whole page for adding books to bookshelf), it still is not very useful in a course setting.
• MyQuestions is an app to pose questions and send them to your friends. It is a bit like a friend-centric discussion board with push instead of pull. Good for getting discussions started within your friend community.
• LookABee is an assignment & course management system I couldn’t sample because I am living in Europe. It’s targeted at public school teachers (K12) and it looks rather easy to use. Feel free to report.
• Slates is some kind of online Web-Editor I am currently checking out. So far not too different from WikiMono.
• More to check out:: Currently I am also looking at theClassConnection. They have a lot of tools to tutor and run courses on their main website, but I couldn’t setup a new account from within FaceBook.

The Final Verdict

All in all I liked the Courses app by FaceBook and WikiMono the best, but I also liked Study Groups. You should mix in your share of SlideShare. Scribd and del.icio.us into your app mix as well as a RSS-feed aggregator (there are too many to review them here) and you should be well equipped. So far, FaceBook can only provide a rather old school class support environment. What I like about FaceBook is, that FB does all the heavy lifting of user admin and social networking, so you can sit on top of it.

If you look at the current FB App scene 6 months after opening, most of the apps are in the area of “Just for Fun” (2158) followed by Sports (640). Education (389) is at number five after Utilities, Gaming, and Chat. So this shows what is important in College life after all 🙂 (external validation). In the Education app category I have sampled all apps as well as in File Sharing. I have to do more sampling in the Chat and Messaging categories.

And remember: You always can browse and sample new applications at the FaceBook application directory.

Der Beitrag wurde am Tuesday, den 9. October 2007 um 12:49 Uhr veröffentlicht und wurde unter authoring, elearning, english, international abgelegt. Du kannst die Kommentare zu diesen Eintrag durch den RSS 2.0 Feed verfolgen. Du kannst einen Kommentar schreiben, oder einen Trackback auf deiner Seite einrichten.