I have watched my students spend hours on FaceBook and MySpace writing large messages and blog postings with enthusiasm and care. But assign a simple two-paragraph assignment in the online discussion forums on the Blackboard Course Management System and I get substandard work after a lot of groaning and complaining. I believe the difference is that FaceBook and MySpace allow the students to construct identities from which they can interact from while Blackboard strips away the chance for being unique online. On the Blackboard forum, you are just another school-assigned username while on FaceBook, you can be SuperCardFan or GreatLadyofKY.

I attended my first Graduate Student meeting in Second Life last night. Frankly, you could have conducted the meeting by email or through an online forum but I think the appeal here was that each participant was able to express their identity (through an avatar) while interacting with each other. This is more of the scattering of identity that Mr. Siemens talks about.