To explain Facebook to an older crowd (40-60 year olds), we would need to introduce it in familiar terms so as to not confuse or intimidate them. This is why Orlikowski uses the concept of frameworks in his paper, as they introduce new technologies in terms of existing concepts. As I've learned in another class, the fastest and most effective way of learning something is to draw analogies with familiar concepts. Thus, Facebook should be introduced as another communication tool, that adults can use to keep in touch with one another, like e-mail. However, I would elaborate it as an community, like an offline club that one can become a member of. Once you join Facebook, you can easily communicate with other members, make friends, and keep tabs on existing ones. By befriending or "Friending" other members, you are building a social network, and using Facebook's tools such as messaging, posting photos, and updating your status, you can let everyone in your group know what is going on with your life at once.
In technological terms, I would describe Facebook as a melding of e-mail and a personal homepage, both concepts that older adults are familiar with. It is like e-mail because it allows you to communicate with others, but it is also like a personal homepage because you are given a personal profile to fill out with custom information and a space to display photographs. Essentially, Facebook is a network of mini homepages, set up with tools that allow you to leave messages on each other's pages.
Because it melds the functionality of e-mail and a webpage into one, I would say that Facebook makes a great return on the time investment it takes to learn it. It allows you to keep up with all your friends on one site, without having to contact them individually as with e-mail. It allows others to see what you're up to on their free time.
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Good idea. However, you might want to leave some room for allowing the older users to conceptualize Facebook for themselves beyond the concepts they're familiar with. There are some (almost) completely new concepts in Facebook, such as applications (bumper stickers, etc). If they start to think of Facebook strictly as an e-mail service or way to share pictures, they might miss out on other huge parts of the site. For example, they might completely ignore groups.
ReplyDeleteI agree, in terms of framing Facebook in Orlikowski's frameworks idea. However, you might want to be careful - some older adults would not really know what a 'personal homepage' entails. In fact, some of our peers also don't know what one does with a personal homepage, and some people who have personal hosting still don't do anything other than use it as virtual storage space. In that regard, you might want to break down "personal homepage" even further, and describe it as space to store and share photos, as well as talking about yourself, etc.
ReplyDeleteI agree with enduro, some adults would probably want to avoid a personal homepage because they may see it as an invasion of privacy. I think that they may want to know about the privacy settings and stress that it can be as private as they would like it to be.
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