There have been a number of "Facebook emulators" that allowed you to create profile pages and posts for a fictional or historical person, but ClassTools.net's Fakebook, seems to be the easiest to use, and I am also glad to see that it has stuck around (some of these have been a bit ethereal). Kids are obviously "into" Facebook, and even elementary students would be excited to create a fake profile, having seen siblings and parents use the site. What you create with Fakebook, to be clear, is a static page with text, images and links- it is not a page that others can post on and interact with, i.e. not a real social networking profile. So don't be scared. Take Fakebook for what it is:
-An opportunity to use an exciting, motivating, and 21st century communication context to target language skills.
-A place to sequence/describe the events of a character's life and associate image and video links.
-A context to explore character perspectives (and multiple perspectives, as you can have other characters' respond).
You could use Fakebook to make a profile for a book character or figure from classroom content (maybe even an inanimate object such as a tree?) It's really quite easy to use (especially if you know your way around Facebook), and there is a video tutorial here! The site has a save/edit function, so that you can return to your fake profile later and continue to work on it (you enter in a password when you save, and the site gives you a special URL where the profile is located).
I made this mini-profile of the Pigeon in just a few minutes:
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
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I love this idea for my history classes! Thank you for sharing.
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