Facebook is a big part of many students’ lives now. When I first came back to college I was astonished by the fact that, for all intents and purposes, I had to setup a Facebook account. (Feel free to add me, I’m the only Gideon Addington about). Almost every party was planned through it, my friends eschewed email or IMs in favor of a message on Facebook, and if I needed to find someone in one of my classes - this is how I did it.
When Russ and I first began discussing “Student Productivity” week, Facebook was a big part of that discussion. Getting students to even think about being productive is hard enough, much less getting them to use a webservice to (heaven forbid) make their lives easier. Facebook, however, students are already using. They’re already there, which is half the battle.
And fortunately, since Facebook allowed outside applications, there has been a lot of work done to accomplish this Herculean task. The best, it seems, has generally came from established web apps (such as Notely.net or Stu.dicio.us.
Russ already covered a lot of the fine examples of scholastically inclined Facebook apps, and here I shall finish the job and end our Student Productivity Week.
Stu.dicio.us - This disappointed me a great deal. Stu. was one of the first social note taking sites I became aware of, and still does a really nice job with the arising competition. However, their Facebook integration seems to be limited to making it easy to invite your friends. Now… don’t get me wrong, this is important - social note-taking only works if your classmates use the service, too. But ick.
I Am Hungry - I admit, this isn’t the most scholarly of applications, but I really like it. So many of the best times I’ve had in college have been random lunch and dinner dates with friends. This helps this along.
Notecentric Courses and Notes - Not a lot distinguishes Notecenter from similar apps (Notely, etc.) but it is an alternative allowing you to share class and note information with others.
MyNoteIt - This is very similar to Notely, but all self-contained within Facebook. The setup allows for class organization, note storage and sharing, groups, assignments with reminders and mobile access. A very nice package, all in all.
Files - The Facebook version of Box.net, this is a great way of sharing files. Box.net allows free accounts to upload files 10mbs or less and either keep them private or archive them, the Facebook app just makes it easier to access these files from the site, and share them. 10mb may not seem like a lot, but most files a student will be moving around is significantly less than this.
Pick-a-Prof - Bane and blessing of students and professors alike, Pick-A-Prof gives you that valuable knowledge about a professor that may help save you a lot of trouble. As much as many like to think, academia is hardly objective most the time, add that to some professors who are simply better researchers than instructors, or whom can barely speak the language or are just plain mean. The problem here is that a few spiteful students can really sour the results. Still, it’s often worth a look if your friends can’t give you first hand knowledge about a professor - but I’ve known it to be wrong occasionally. Some of my best professors have gotten rather bad ranks here.
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