

Facebook is now mission-critical - for high schoolers doing homework, anyway - waderoush
http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2010/11/16/facebook-is-mission-critical/

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ams6110
Students collaborating on homework is as old as school itself. And it in fact
is the way the "real world" work. Nobody gets accused of "cheating" at work if
you ask a co-worker for help or input on a problem. In fact, "pair
programming" is often cited as a best practice.

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pzxc
There is asking for help, and still trying to learn it yourself, and then
there is simply getting the answers from someone else. When it comes to
"collaborative education", most kids are all too eager to accept the latter,
because it finishes the assignment the quickest and allows them to return to
what they'd rather be doing, playing xbox or whatever.

And then that trend continues into the workplace. It's not "cheating" if you
get somebody else to do your job for you, it's "efficient delegation". Promote
that guy, he's got management written all over him.

And unfortunately there are all too many suckers out there who won't stand up
for themselves and say, "that's your job, not mine." Instead they do it and
wonder why they don't get promoted when they're working their tail off.

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wallflower
I remember logging into IRC once and going to the #C channel and asking some
tough questions from my take home exam. Felt dirty. I'm so glad I got out of
school before the Internet really took off. Old enough to have had a
'Introduction to the Card Catalog' as an orientation session at college.

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jbail
Sharing homework. Great idea. Except that's called copying or cheating. At
least it was in all of the academic institutions I went to.

I do like the idea of being able to place a banner ad for a paper writing
service right next to the soon to be developed MS Word killer text editor in
Facebook. I'm assuming Facebook will give me access to read the contents of
the editor so I can suggest pre-written papers in my banner ad that match the
paper the student is currently attempting to write.

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tomjen3
Really? Asking somebody to tell you how a formula works, or helping you
remember the name of that guy who was the first to sign the Declaration of
Independence is cheating?

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jiganti
No, and buying a gun for protection isn't murder. But each can be easily used
for unscrupulous purposes, which is cause for concern.

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aik
In any place other than school it would be called collaboration. In school
it's punished. Funny system we have.

There needs to be some serious eye-opening in this world when it comes to
education.

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icegreentea
I think MSN (or whatever IM program) has been filling this niche for a
while...

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wdewind
sample size 5 students. gtfo.

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phlux
This is where the nail comes... if FB can become an integral part of the
learning process (e.g. providing homework/study collaboration tools) they will
really be disruptive within 5 years.

Partner with Kno (or BUY them) and the game is on.

