“Poke” - Get it?

Well until about 3 weeks ago - no I didn’t. That’s when I began to use Facebook. When you “poke” someone in Facebook it’s the equivalent of waving at them when you pass them on the street or in the hall. No words are exchanged - just a quick acknowledgement.

And it took a bit of poking of another kind, by my mushroom eating colleague Keira McPhee, to get me on to Facebook in the first place. Those first few times were really unpleasant. A webpage full of sections and features that I didn’t understand and yet you’re supposed to able to teach yourself how to use it - no “facebook for dummies” required. My process of learning was one login at a time - each time learning one more feature and finally, after 8 - 10 times, getting to the point where I knew what the page was going to look like before it loaded. Feeling impatient rather than overwhelmed.

And yet, Keira’s poking continues. It’s not enough that I personally feel like a competent user of Facebook, now she wants me to expand my thinking about how we could use Facebook and other social networking tools to improve our services to students. Sheeeesh. First stop - the blogosphere to find out what others more advanced than I are thinking.

Darren Barefoot is a web commentator who recently posted: How Facebook Folds Time. Experienced facebookers (like myself) are aware that it is common for facebook users to join groups based on where they previously worked, volunteered, went to school etc. What Darren sees is the potential for past members to serve in somewhat of a mentoring capacity to the newcomers.

This stuff happens in the real world, but it’s rare, formalized and time-consuming. I see far more potential for informal, low impact and possibly fleeting relationships to form on a site like Facebook. Mentor programs are great, but few professionals have the time to devote to them. Those same professionals probably have 10 minutes a week to answer a question about which specialities a nursing student should consider.

Connecting our students with a network of people in the workplace who are engaged in careers of interest is something that all Career Centres imagine - or perhaps “dream of” is more accurate. Getting students to actively engage in this kind of networking throughout their university experience is never easy. But I wonder - with social networking tools like Facebook - perhaps it’s never been easier?

Next step - getting my colleagues excited by these kinds of possibilities. According to Joanne Berg, Lori Berquam, and Kathy Christoph from the University of Wisconson - they’ll likely need a poke as well. In their article Social Networking Technologies: A “Poke” for Campus Services they list some great conversation starters to get staff thinking and this “tested recipe for generating ideas:

…take a favorite social networking technology, add the college/university culture, the budget, and a few creative thinkers, and pour everything on top of current practices and IT services. Then listen carefully.