TUTORIAL 6

We are now looking at online communities.The online community I have chosen is Facebook.This community allows you to get to know people or find old friends and interact with them. Facebook allows you to "join networks organised by city, workplace , school, and region to connect and interact with other people". Retrieved 17 May, 2009, from, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook.
Facebook is a very interactive site as you can have online discussions with others. People can contribute to this site by posting comments on other peoples pages, can create profiles including photos, interests, exchange private or public messages and join groups o friends. I think people join facebook for all sorts of reasons. According to Peter Kollock (1999) people join online communities for a sense of community, increased recognition and a sense of efficacy.For instance some people it may be a way to meet new people for either friendship or a relationship, it may increase someones meaning or self esteem if they are a member of some of the groups on facebook.
All sorts of topics are being discussed on Facebook, an example in relation to Occupational therapy is about a student looking for ideas of computer games.

Hi, I'm an OT student doing my first practice.I'm looking for computer games, that are free on the web , so I can use them in the clinic and my client can use the same games at home. We are working on memory, attention, organization ext. I found some but most of the games don’t have direct links for easy accesses and are too "busy".If anyone has an idea ill be very grateful.tammy
Reply to TammyReport

Post #2
Gail Blom (Dallas / Fort Worth, TX) replied to Tammy's poston August 5, 2008 at 8:55am
There is one called "poppit" (because you pop strings of balloons) that I used to play with a free download. It might be spelled "popit"


There are heaps and heaps of topics being discussed on Facebook, just depends on what your into.

Some of the ethical issues that may arise due to being a member of Facebook are lack of identity,how can you be sure unless you know the person that the photo of them or the information they share is real?. Also lack of privacy/informed consent..some people may put photos of other people without their consent on Facebook.

During one of our lectures we discussed the benefits and disadvantages of online communities, I think the benefits that Facebook has compared to real life communities are that it can compliment real life communities as it can provide a lot of information, it can provide connections over great distances easily, you have the ability to connect with people of similar interests/ needs without having to leave your house.
However what Facebook cannot provide where real communities can is the validity of the information being shared as its physically there, also it allows people work on their interpersonal and social skills at a more in depth level as they are right there with you.