Tuesday, April 26, 2011

What is Facebook?

Hello!

Yesterday we indulged Lisa in her lesson idea. She wanted us to bring up the Windsor Star newspaper website and then discuss one or more of the articles. You chose the story about baby Joseph. At the end of the lunch period, June asked what you could do if you wanted to show your support to the family of baby Joseph. I said you could join the Save Baby Joseph group on Facebook. Then someone asked, "What is Facebook?"

Today's activity centred around that question: what is Facebook?

For the first half hour, we ate our lunches and read print-outs from Wikipedia in our first languages. Jun, Zhen, Bernie, Lisa and Wen read in Chinese while Svitlana and Lena read in Russian. Mihaela brought Mary down to introduce her to us. Fortunately, I happened to have printed out the Facebook article in Arabic, too!

After eating and reading in our first languages, we talked about the Facebook phenomenon in English. I asked you a few questions:

  1. What is Facebook?
  2. Who invented it?
  3. When?
  4. What does it do?
  5. How many people in the world use it?
  6. What do they use it for?
  7. Do you have a Facebook account?
Lena told us that Facebook is a social network. We talked about both of those words.

Bernie said that "social" means having to do with people and society. June said that a network means connections. That's exactly right!

Lena, Svitlana and Mary all said they have Facebook accounts. Lisa said that Chinese people don't like Facebook.

We talked about the many uses of Facebook: to connect with friends, to chat, to share ideas and photographs. Also, Facebook is being used to organize revolts against repressive regimes in the Middle East. Mary told us that Facebook is not allowed in Iran for this reason.

After covering all of this, we took a peek at my Facebook account. Lisa said that Chinese people really like QQ. Actually QQ is a chat and instant messaging application. Facebook is much more than that. I told you that through Facebook, I can get updates from my church and notices about special sales from my favourite stores. I also can see what all my friends are doing and thinking all through the day.

We posted a message to my Facebook page that said, "I am teaching my lunch and learn class about Facebook." We got one reply from a friend of mine! She said, "Hello, Kelly's students!"

How fun was that, eh?

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