In response to Collaboration Technology

This blog entry is in response to Bryan Mortenson's blog entry about collaboration technology used in the classroom. I thought the entry was well written and explained a lot of the applications
that are currently used when we talk about collaboration technology. Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, are several among an entire sea of social media applications. When they are used for good, they can be powerful tools in allowing team members and classmates to coordinate tasks and complete projects from different locations. The "dark side" to these applications of collaboration technology is that when used irresponsibly, can be the cause of many hours of wasted time that could have been better spent elsewhere. As I write this, I have fallen victim to the grasp of facebook which has enthralled me for the past hour. Have I spent my time wisely on facebook? Yes and no. It is extremely useful in contacting friends and associates, but because I had a little bit of free time on my hands I spent more time "collaborating" than I should have. New technologies have enabled students to collaborate and work more effectively now more than ever, however with the good is also the bad. The bad being the increased amount of distractions that take away from study time.