Facebook Sucks

By Chris A. Heidelberg, III, PhD. Publisher
 If you are one  of my former 1600 Facebook friends, don't even bother trying to contact me because you can't! I don't exist! I am officially disabled which really means excommunicated!  I guess the YouTube video to the left describes how I feel right now. One of the biggest problems of dealing with many online companies is knowing what the terms of your agreement. Like Internet veteran Rob Scobie I recently had my Facebook account disabled after receiving a warning email that I might be disabled. I think that there is a huge difference between getting a warning email and being straight up cut off by the powers that be at Facebook. My "warning" from Facebook turned into being banished from Facebook in a manner that would have made Charlton Heston's Moses look like he was still included in the Egyptian Royal Family. I was kicked out, thrown out, and literally made an example of because I betrayed the terms of my agreement.

Here is a quick quiz: how many of you really understand the terms of the agreement when you signed up for Facebook

Stanford Facebook Class on NBC11

Facebook Sucks A LOT...

My point here is that I love the Facebook platform, but in their zeal to prevent spam they are persecuting amateurs like me who have no intention of spamming and only intentions of networking. Maybe they should borrow from LinkedIn and allow people to network who belong to the same groups. In my case I was experimenting with teaching a class in South Africa and here simultaneously before taking a trip. So I networked through one of my friends and that was considered a violation because I was adding too many friends too fast.

Facebook: The Scrooge of 2007?

I have written Facebook several times and I have only received an initial response and after that I have received no response email from Facebook. This is disturbing to me that a company of this size would treat its customers like this and not even both to respond to email with at least a form letter. Hey, I work with the government and even they send you a form email to respond to your email. I realize that I will probably not get my account restored for writing this post but after trying to correspond with them and promising to reform from my "wicked ways" that I did not know I had. All I want to do is network with my academic, technology, media and student friends. I am so disappointed because I feel that the heavy handedness of Facebook is a shame because I think it has the potential to become the platform. I have always liked it better than MySpace but it appears that they don't want me.

My real problem with Facebook is that when you try to find out how many friends that you can add they cannot tell

The Truth about Facebook!

So here are my questions: what does one do when they run afoul of the undisputed king of social networking? What would you do? In the meantime, if you want to contact me by Facebook you may be eligible for retirement by the time I even get a response, so don't hold your breath waiting. Come on Facebook give me one more chance and loosen up because you are starting to act like Microsoft used to act before they re-discovered customer service.

Facebook Off

If you're reading this and you are on Facebook, I hope you learned what I did: Facebook can do whatever they want to do; Facebook will cut you from the squad quick and then tell you to read the vague rules that they wrote to protect themselves legally; Facebook will not give you specifics in plain English on how to stay out of trouble once you have run afoul; Facebook will not give you real due process and you will be punished with a snowball's chance in hell of being reinstated with all of your existing friends; Facebook will not respond to your requests for reinstatement even when you promise to change; Facebook has created rules similar to the credit card companies and you know you can't win appeals with them unless you are F. Lee Bailey or loaded; and Facebook has the best social networking site in the world that will make you an addict as I am finding

Facebook-MoveOn Privacy controversy

Hey I have already lost my privacy, due process, and right to protection against self-incrimination with Facebook. So I better use my First Amendment right while I still have it! I guess I feel like the guy getting lectured to by Clint Eastwood as Clint is holding the gun to him and promising this gentleman to, "Go ahead make my day!" You never get a straight answer when the person holding the gun is holding all of the cards, has cut you off of Facebook, and has already shot at you quite accurately. Don't bet on me getting reinstated, especially after this post!

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By Chris A. Heidelberg III, PhD., Publisher & Producer

Kara-sidebar-picture-1

As I was reading All Things Digital on The Wall Street Journal online portal, I noticed that my Facebook friend Rafat Ali had sold the popular digital news site paidContent for approximately $25-$30 million dollars to English publishing conglomerate Guardian Media. Under the terms of the deal Guardian will take a hands off approach and let Ali and his team do what they do best: keep us informed on the latest technology news. What a concept! Guardian Media is a UK firm and they appear to get it: if it is not broke, don't fix it, buy it and get paid. Here is the link to the interview with Kara Swisher of All Things Digital  and I also added a snipet of Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates together at  the D6 Conference before Gates retired from Microsoft, but you have to read further down to get to it. Speaking of getting it, I have to give  to give credit to The Wall Street Journal for a similar approach to All Things Digital and this is why Swisher and Walt Moss produce such great work and are not afraid to be transparent about their industry ties and investments. Great job Kara and Walt!

Normally, I am not a fan of media consolidation; however, my concerns are usually when big companies merge. I actually am more of a fan of deals like this when social media pioneers and gurus like Ali are financially rewarded. Why? First, it will encourage more blogging teams to produce quality content that draws eyeballs if they want the same financial rewards. Second, it brings new players into the media game with new ideas and approaches to reporting that is sorely needed. Third, it demonstrates that the big companies are willing to pay real dollars to become real players in the digital media world.

Media consolidation is not always evil; however, it has to be regulated. Now I know that this may not be popular with

D6: Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer Condensed Chat 2

To be sure, the media conglomerates are finally beginning to understand that social media is different and cannot be controlled and manipulated as easily as traditional media because of the democratizing effect of the Internet and social media. Politicians and big business are just beginning to learn these lessons, but the Google mantra of "do no evil" is a start. Even though, Google and these companies are far from perfect, the idea of dealing with the public in a forthright and transparent manner is what is driving the web. I guess the moral of the story is don't hate, congratulate and one day your day will come to get paid. I sure would not turn down $25-$30 million for this family of publications right now LOL!

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By  Chris A. Heidelberg, III, Ph.D., Publisher & Producer

I was sitting around enjoying the holiday when I realized that because of convergence technology like my cell phone,

Marshall McLuhan on YouTube

Facebook Mini-Feeds with Steve!

As I sat here for a moment after being busted by Facebook for unknowingly adding too many friends too fast. Hey, I am a popular guy with a huge family and friends and they ought to set a limit and make it transparent. Yet I digress!
My good friend Jack Yan in New Zealand and I may live worlds apart physically, but we are definitely of the same mind. Jack recently wrote a scathing post about the practices of large bank in New Zealand. After reading Jack's post on Facebook, I was instantly re-routed to Vox where we are also friends and wrote a comment.

Facebook Sucks

Think about that, I sent a message across the globe to comment on an article by a person who has become a friend all through the global village of the Internet as McLuhan (1968) predicted. Yes, the medium is the message, but I also believe that people are increasingly becoming the message. Jack's stance against the bank, and my current problem with Facebook, illustrates the power of the web for one to voice one's satisfaction or dissatisfaction with goods and services. While I have an issue with Facebook's policy, I wish when you receive a warning that it told you what the limit is. This is what I like about Apple, they give you the limits for computers upfront so that you can make an informed decision. Microsoft has a similar policy, so does Google, and so does Amazon.

BOOTED FROM COMCAST

Where am I going with this argument? The point that I am making is that ordinary people, even those of us with PhDs,  do not fully understand all the agreements that we have to sign in order to use online services. I am a Facebook fan and they are by far not the biggest offender when it comes to being transparent, listening to your customers, and communicating with customer in non-legal language. What bothers me is that the law is supposed to interpret against the drafter of an agreement when there is a dispute according to my old contracts teacher Professor Korzack. The rationale is that when you draft an agreement, you know exactly what you want, but the other side may not understand the totality of this want.            

Cell phones suck AT&T cingular verizon nextel sprint

So I guess I will serve out my punishment like a good cyber bad boy, but I want you to consider how the magic of the Internet has enabled us to literally have a freedom that was totally unimagined, yet hoped for by the Founding Fathers as we celebrate the Fourth of July holiday weekend. The Internet has provided us with wonderful freedoms, but if we are not careful to insist that the companies that we do business with are held to a high standard of transparency.

SPRINT SUCKS ASS I WANT MY 200 BUCKS BACK

Facebook Sucks A LOT...

If we do not make our voices heard through cyberspace, we risk becoming victims of the same type of tyranny that the Founding Fathers did anticipate that is why we have a Bill of Rights. Even though the Constitution has been diminished in recent years by both corporate and government interests, often acting in concert together, we still have the right to question authority en masse to protect our privacy, our sense of fairness and our basic sense of human dignity. Which is why the embedded videos on this post are all people questioning authority and the policies of big companies. Some of these videos are classic! This will become a regular feature on Edutainment & Convergence so send me links or your video protest here or on my Facebook page.

vista sucks

In final analysis, when you deal with online companies it is a lot like the large bug trying to talk its way into your home  from the extermination company ad: you never know what you are letting into your life and how much pain they can you once you let them into your life. Remember, freedom is not free, and it is not for free or for wimps! So while I am serving digital timeout based on no due process, you just remember that freedom is not free. Enjoy your holiday and never give up the right to protest or peaceably assemble for the redress of grievances! Fight back! Unless you love Facebook like me! If you like this post make it viral and send it out!

Now that's edutainment!

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Dr. Barbara McCombs, Director The Center For Human Motivation, Learning And Development

By Chris A. Heidelberg, III, PhD

For the past five years I have been researching, writing about and speaking about edutainment and convergence. Somewhere around 2005, I began to find that edutainment and convergence is all about creating a learner-centered environment (Heidelberg, 2007, 2008; McCombs, 2003, 2005). I may sound like my colleagues Dr. Bill Spady (2001), Dr. Barbara McCombs (2003, 2005) and Dr. Reid Cornwell (2008) but they are absolutely correct in their assessments that the currrent educational system from K-20 is n ot learner-centered. 

Dr. William "Bill" Spady

As a point of fact, I would suggest that the current education is primarily based on a top-down model that has been a teacher-centered model and is gradually becoming a political, corporate and administrative model. McCombs (2003, 2005) made the case to me for the learner-centered environment during my dissertation research when I read her books. However, it was when I met Dr. McCombs that her message resonated with total clarity. Dr. McCombs has spent an academic lifetime in the field demonstrating the effectiveness of her theories in some of the most challenging urban academic environments. 

Pink Floyd - Another Brick in the Wall

One would think that the learner centered principles advocated by her and others (Stark & Lattuca, 1997) would have been adopted by most of the great teaching institutions of higher education. However, the Academy is still wedded to 13th and 14th century traditions while young people are entering adult life and the digital economy ill-equipped in too many cases to compete against our competitors despite having the best system and resources.

Stand For Children - A Day on the Hill

This is a form of educational malpractice. When administrators and faculty have access to the tools that make education relevant and create a relationship with the knowledge so that the built in rigor can occur in a learner-centered environment, and there is no fundamental change in the learning environment en masse this is a form of negligence known as educational malpractice. However, this nation has been fallen under the seductive spell of high stakes standardized tests as assessment tools (Spady, 2001). The four obvious culprits are the corporate testing companies, pandering politicians who should know better, the educational community that should have objected to high stakes testing and began teaching the test to survive, and the American public. The one group that has not been called to task is the corporate media that has simply parroted industry and political spin with little public resistance. As a media professional, a researcher and an educator, I feel ashamed about what has happened; however, I am optimistic about the future for learning because of my research on edutainment and convergence.

James Gee on games and learning

  Personally, I would take the military option! What I mean by the military option is that I would utilize tools such as video games as one of my assessment tools of choice. Why utilize video games? Video games have been effectively utilized for more than thirty years by the military for defense purposes and space exploration (Halter, 2006; Wisher, 2000). Video games  are a form of simulation that is blurring the line between reality and fantasy because of tools like Nintendo's Wii and its Wii Fit program which may provide health and fitness benefits for millions and is being used by medical professionals for rehabilitation purposes.

Wii Fit

Why does the military utilize gaming? Because they are relevant to young people and they work! Video games are relevant to young people because the y are interactive, exploratory, competitive and fun. Young people are digital natives with a natural affinity for all things digital (Gee, 2004, 2005; Prensky, 2001, 2006). Video games create relationships between the players, the game and the knowledge embedded in the game (Gee, 2004, 2005, 2007; Prensky, 2001, 2006). Finally, video games are full of the rigor that increases as the learner advances through the game, and video games can be played online and updated for the gifted students (Gee, 2001, 2006; Prensky, 2001, 2006). Video games of every stripe have the ability to digitally access students (Wisher, 2000).
There are other convergence tools with edutainment capabilities that can also be utilized by learners. For example, i

UC Davis on iTunesU

iTunesU is now being used by Ivy League, flagship institutions, honors colleges and other institutions of higher learning. What makes iTunesU effective for students is that it is asynchronous and it enables students to download automatically or on demand once the instructor loads the podcast recording of the class  to iTunes. This enables any student with a computer, laptop, iPod or cell phone to download the course and even burn copies of the lecture with a

Henry Jenkins on digital media and learning

personal computer. This is learner-centered activity in the world of edutainment and convergence is the Twenty-first century learning and economic environment. So the question becomes this: will learning become student centered or become a political and industry centered tool that fails to teach critical thinking that may sometimes run counter to status quo. In the final analysis, education and learners will have their liberty through learner-centered principles and edutainment and convergence, or education and learners will gradually experience a death due to learning through the status quo.  Remember, the learner is the reason  for education and edutainment makes it fun! Learning should be fun and challenging too!

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As unbelievable as this story from  MSNBC and a Washington Post  story that was reported earlier on our sister site Edutainment & Convergence Today sounds, the truth is even worse. If you check posts from this site and our sister sites Edutainment & Convergence Today and our You Tube site Edutainment Today, you will notice that I frequently have posts that focus on the use of propaganda in our media by individuals, business interests, non-profit interests, media interests, academic interests, defense-based interests and government organizations have often been part of this problem too. It is a no-brainer  from Public Relations 101 that one should never, ever, hold a fake press conference in Washington D.C. and allow the Washington Post only 15 minutes notice;  give only one network that is viewed as a corporate surrogate rightly or wrongly, Fox News,  the exclusive story; and have your government employees pose as legitimate reporters, especially when your agency, FEMA, still has a little publications problem from the Katrina disaster from a few years ago when the truth was treated with reckless disregard by politicians and agencies from across the board. This story should be filed in two places: please never try this at home or at work and you can't make this stuff up because the truth is stranger than fiction. Needless to say Secretary Chertoff was not happy and heads are already starting to roll here in the nation's capitol with good reason. When the most successful government marketers in the art of spin call out one of their own for this episode of public relations professionals behaving badly, you know somebody was getting the axe. Here is the bottom line: every professor at every communications, business, and journalism program should assign this as a homework assignment with an essay that has each student write 100 times, " I will never fake a news conference because it will probably be career suicide." This is why edutainment is so important in the age of convergence. Stories like this never die and they never truly fade away either!

http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&brand=msnbc&vid=7a0c92ca-4fb4-4c9d-8231-8218d12501fa" target="_new" title="FEMA fake foiled"

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