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With parents, middle schoolers, Barack Obama and even your dog on Facebook these days, it should be no surprise that your teacher is on it too.

But rather than being on Facebook for the sake of it, PennDesign Architecture lecturer Andrew Phillips is using the social networking site as an extension of his classroom.

By creating and utilizing a Facebook group for his classes, Phillips is taking a step to further the integration of classroom and technology.

Hoping to provide an online forum for engaged students in his Visualization II class - as well as anyone who has been through the Architecture 200 curriculum or beyond - Phillips joined Facebook and started the group a few weeks ago.

"I was talking with my brother-in-law about Facebook and was looking for a place for students to ask each other questions and trade materials," he said.

For Phillips, Facebook was attractive because of its bottom-up interface. Students can generate content by posting and sharing information about supplies, images, drawings and more in the group.

Although Blackboard currently has an application on Facebook that aims to link the two sites together, reviews have been poor, with users calling it "totally useless" and saying it simply "doesn't work."

Phillips also pointed out that Blackboard is more of a top-down interface with only modest interaction.

"When you are a student of architecture you are also a student of culture, so it's great that there's a dynamic interface students can use to exchange info and ideas around a particular subject," he said. "Facebook has a polished look. It's going to be like electricity; it's just like a utility."

Although some Penn professors are on Facebook, the concept of a class group appears to be new and has drawn mixed reactions from Penn students.

"I'm not the biggest fan of Facebook, but I think it has inevitably become one of the most accessed portals of information by our generation," said Wharton junior Nathalie Zogbi.

"Because of this, Phillips' idea might turn out to be incredibly successful in attracting and retaining students' attention to his course materials," she added. "But, it is definitely a stretch of the traditional academic boundaries, so it'll be interesting to see what happens."

While College sophomores Jane Shim and Anna Fountaine seemed interested in the concept, they had some reservations.

"I think Facebook is a personal Web site and while it has recently been used for networking, the main purpose is socialization," said Shim. "I'm not sure it's conducive to getting academic work done."

Fountaine added that she thinks "it's an attempt for professors to get their students to look at classes at not just a purely academic standpoint. It's a less academic setting, but it's still just like Blackboard."

While Phillips said he had not mapped out any definite plans for the group, he did point out how well Facebook serves as an archive for any and all material posted to the group.

"Teaching is a lot more fluid than it was when I was in school and [Facebook] helps that fluidity," he said.

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