I have started using www.edmodo.com to facilitate online language practice that can be used to give assignments, polls, and general discussion. It is a free, private network for your students to communicate with each other. I would encourage you to give it a try as my students enjoyed using it a lot.

I think, as for participation, being active on it as the "teacher/contributor" and giving them assignments will keep them active on the site. If we just put it out there and don't make it a part of the class, then some students will only do the minimum amount of activity. Require zero and that is what you will get.

http://www.edumodo.com

It's true that many younger learners do not seem very comfortable with online forums, so using online resources with which they are more familiar seems to make sense intuitively.

However, in my experience at least, learners tend to view Facebook as a place for socialising rather than working. Some colleagues of mine have experimented with Facebook pages for their courses, where they posted announcements, assingment reminders and other information that they thought would be useful. The feedback they received was lukewarm at best: most students tended to view these pages as an incursion into their private social space. On the other hand, most of my students seem keener to contact me through the Facebook message service rather than through the email address listed in their syllabus.

Obviously, one cannot generalise from such anecdotal evidence. However, it seems to me that attempt to capitalise on the affordances of new media will be most successful when they are implemented in response to a demand from the students themselves, rather than being attempts to keep up with the newest technological fashions.

I have started using www.edmodo.com to facilitate online language practice that can be used to give assignments, polls, and general discussion. It is a free, private network for your students to communicate with each other. I would encourage you to give it a try as my students enjoyed using it a lot.

I think, as for participation, being active on it as the "teacher/contributor" and giving them assignments will keep them active on the site. If we just put it out there and don't make it a part of the class, then some students will only do the minimum amount of activity. Require zero and that is what you will get.

http://www.edumodo.com

As far as I see, the main objective of Facebook is kind of socialization. Someone is able to find their friends that bring memories or meet other people for various reasons. And this is the real objective of this social network. Practically, Facebook has not been designed for language learning or teaching; a couple of foreign language posts on a wall could not be considered an online teaching approach. Distance learning approaches are based on specific platforms which facilitate online-immediate access to knowledge and encourage learners to participate in the foreign language learning process. Therefore, Facebook or any other social network could not substitute any traditional or modern language teaching/learning approach.

I may be off-topic but Facebook is a great language learning tool without necessarily requiring students' participation through discussions. Some have launched their educational pages using FB as a communication channel, e.g. Alba Learning (https://www.facebook.com/pages/AlbaLearning/346741467392) is a great free service for Spanish language learners; the group Best Links for Learning Japanese (https://www.facebook.com/BestLinksForLearningJapanese/info)

has gathered some links, and here are some more suggestions for FB Japanese resources: http://jlptbootcamp.com/2011/10/can-you-use-facebook-to-learn-japanese/.

Sometimes a ''neutral'' type of educational services, be it librarians or peer-to-peer groups, may have a positive effect on learners. Although FB was probably not intended for that objective, who says we can't benefit from such initiatives and influence our connections by simply liking and following educational pages.

Kind of like the idea of using FB to stimulate discussion but could there more opportunities for learners to engage in deep learning?

I consider social networking, facebook and twitter as good and innovative opportunities for the pupils and students to practice and advance their English communication skills under the supervision of their teachers.

For instance, the teacher could create a facebook page and starting posting small texts in non-English language and invite students to translate the text in English and then start tweeting internally in English language with their class group initially.

This exercise, under the supervision of their teacher, can be later on combined with You Tube accounts, pictures of prompt cards, post-it notes or even objects, where the students could upload their record video blogs on various topics, opinions, stories only in English language until they become quite proficient in foreign language application…

This exercise would increase their confidence and inspire them later on to start posting and tweeting for the whole world in English language