Nursing Education 2.0: Social networking and the WOTY.

Abstract

SOCIAL MEDIA - TOOLS SUCH AS FACEBOOK, PODCASTING, YOUTUBE, TWITTERING, AND BLOGGING -ARE IMPACTING ALL FACETS OF OUR LIVES. You need look no further than our federal government and its masterful use of all forms of social media pertaining to the HiNi flu epidemic (www.cdc.gov/H1N1FLU/). Pew Internet and America Life Studies (www.pewinternet.org/topics/Social-Networking.aspx), as well as the California Health Foundation (www.chcf.org/topics/chronicdisease/index.cfmPitemlD= 133977), have issued several reports on the use of social media by health care consumers. * Validating the cultural impact of social networking on our society is the selection by Oxford University Press of unfriend, a common social networking term, as its Word of the Year (WOTY). Unfriend, a verb denoting deletion or elimination as a friend on a social network, was one of 24 candidates for the honor of WOTY (the competition included hashtag, intexticated, netbook, and sexting). According to the senior lexicographer at Oxford's United States Dictionary Program, unfriend is an excellent choice because of its "currency and potential longevity"; it also represents an unconventional use of the un- prefix (Paul, 2.009), which is typically associated with adjectives. Let's look at the meaning of this word. AS YOU WILL RECALL, social networking is all about creating a community to share information, ideas, and updates with friends. You must confirm someone as your friend, allowing the individual to interact with your community and maybe even create some mutual friends. A confirmed friend will have access to profile information and can leave messages on your message wall. Your friends may be family members, your students, colleagues, people from your past, and even strangers who search through friend finder. You must decide if someone really is your friend and if you really want that person to be part of your current network. If you make a grave error in judgment or if your social network friend crosses over some boundary, you can unfriend this person. Perhaps you will want to unfriend a mutual friend in the case of divorce, or if that person is no longer part of your community. A faculty member told me how devastated her son was when his girlfriend broke up with him. He lost half of his friends on MySpace. A key question to ask oneself is: Are social networks the new classroom commons? Schwartz (2009) examined this question in an editorial in the Chronicle of Higher Education. She wanted to know "if Facebook is useful in the context of academic relationships given the student's discretionary time on campus and increased enrollments in flexible and accessible online or hybrid programs." Or is it "just another example of technology trumping substance?" Schwartz refers to Facebook as a cyberhallway, stating that "if we want to be appropriately accessible to students in the cyberhallways they frequent... Facebook is worth considering as a communal space, albeit one that requires discretion" (p. B 1 2). In her examination, Schwartz raises several questions: * Are my students my friends? (Do you want students in the same area where your family, friends, and people from the past are?) * Are posts public or private? For example, if a student posts on her wall that she is having a hard time with anatomy, should the instructor respond or wait until the student specifically tells her? * Should one interact differently with a student in a cyberhallway versus a physical hallway? Basically, what are the boundaries? * Can you provide mentoring on Facebook? This question is examined within the context of a model called relational mentoring. Schwartz does set up a Facebook page, concluding as follows: "I now see Facebook as apart of a larger commons, a space in which we stay connected. Facebook, instant messaging and the like keep my metaphorical office door open. And that increases the potential for real-time, face-to-face conversations that are rich with connection, depth, risk-taking and growth. …