From Facebook to instant lesson plan for AP Euro

Do you have a Facebook

With 17 million accounts, and 30 billion page views a month, Facebook is quickly surpassing MySpace as the social network of choice among college and high school students.

This four minute presentation exposes the details of the privacy (and lack thereof) policies of Facebook. It also traces the corporate structure of the company, suggesting a conspiracy designed to collect personal information for the government in a slightly paranoid, “illuminatiphobic” video.

We can share this with our students to begin a discussion about internet safety, or better yet, take this as inspiration for the type of current event projects that have relevance and impact. Are the links suggested in this video necessarily mean that the information is shifted by the government – who knows?

I used this in an AP European History course by starting with the question, “Would Metternich like Facebook?” This prompted a five minute discussion focusing on the Austrian prime minister of the early 19th century who is known for his efforts to suppress dissent with secret police and laws limiting free speech. After watching the video, we took the linking idea of the video and used it to connect people and events ranging from Mazzini, Bismarck and Alexander III to socialism, sweatshops and social Darwinism.

Using the visual thesaurus idea, we created webs of interconnections and argued about which were the most creative and which were the most valid. The moral of the story here is that you never know how the stuff you catch on popurls can be intergrated into a decent lesson plan.

If you are interested in the privacy issue of facebook, it is discussed at Saint Mary’s Journal. In addition, the information in the presentation is documented. The New Yorker magazine just did a feature that suggests that the lack of privacy may not bother this generation much.

While you may wonder about the implications of this apparent change in the idea of privacy, it is difficult to deny that when teachers expand their frame of reference by making the internet part of their daily life, they will stumble on ideas for lesson plans that engage students in ways they did not think possible. I started the day looking at a video regarding Facebook, then spent a class period with thoroughly absorbed students. Social studies teachers have often used the morning newspaper for inspiration, but how many newspapers had the length and breadth of the internet?