Welcome back to school....an adventure begins...

So for our first few classes, we talked a bit about our own social media memories. A lot of students remembered Myspace as their first experience with social media, with other students recalling Xanga. We talked a little bit about popularity on these sites.

We tried a social media deprivation test, and for those students who could handle it, the test was a good way of gauging just how intense social media is in our lives. Some students found that they were completely cut off from news--but SOCIAL NEWS. In class, we explored ideas about offline and online networks, and talked about the definition of social media across a variety of platforms.

One of the things that I think will be challenging to me as a professor will be to try to incorporate all of the great ideas students have for this class and bring it into discussion with some of the broader theory and thinking about social media. I think we did a good job this first week talking about Web 2.0, for instance. But now I'm rethinking some of the reading with regard to social media deprivation and technology deprivation as a whole. Here's the results, by the way, of a college that tried a social media blackout.Looking forward to seeing how you all keep up with your blogging.

/your lovely prof