This has been a great conversation to follow. I wanted to chime in with a couple of comments one on the use of social media during class discussion and the other a blog assignment I am testing out this semester. I'm teaching an upper level seminar on social media and we have the luxury of working in a computer lab. We've been experimenting with using social media inside the classroom during discussion. Students work in small groups discussing a particular concept or set of questions and instead of writing down a summary of their ideas, they type as they talk (and often incorporate on-line research), making their conversation visible to other groups in the class in real time. The tools we have used are our university system Collab<https://collab.itc.virginia.edu/portal>, which has a wiki and blogger function, Google Docs<http://www.google.com/docs>, and Drop.io <http://drop.io/>. I recently wrote a blog post <http://careysargent.wordpress.com/2009/10/20/social-media-as-teaching-tools/>about how well they work and what is I think is useful about using social media this way. If you don't feel like looking at my blog post, the bottom line is that I found using social media in class discussion helped students to engage each others ideas more fully without that initial self-censorship that arises from fear of the teacher's approval or peer approval. The course aims to get students to think critically about how information is produced and distributed on line and to consider which information becomes visible and how. They are assigned to create public blogs on a topic of their choosing (which is not about course content, so the blogs are about things like crafts, news and photography). They then have a series of written reflections and in class discussion about the challenges they face in creating content and gaining and audience for the content that asks them to think about course concepts like the digital divide, privacy, the commercialization of on-line content, net neutrality etc. as they practice producing their own content. So far it seems to be working, but, like others have said, I've found the students knew far less about the technical side of blogging and constructing a public voice than I anticipated. This has slowed down how far we can advance the conceptual/sociological side of the project. However, being able to go through this process actively with them does seem to make particular sociological concepts stick like glue - particularly issues about the authority of on-line content, issues of privacy and copyright, the role of "connectors," and the relationships between traditional media institutions and blogging. I'm happy to share the assignment with anyone who is interested. Thanks for everyone's input! -- Carey Sargent http://careysargent.wordpress.com University of Virginia PhD Candidate Sociology