Facebook has been fantastically successful and, whatever you may hear from the New Labour Safeguarding Nannies, it is the first place most students check whenever they go on-line. Lots of tutors are now doing the same too!

It is a very familiar environment and makes sharing notes, photos, links and the like very simple. If you think about it, that's exactly what you may well be wanting to publish for a course and Facebook has a whole range of facilities for doing just that. You don't have to share all your personal stuff either, nor do students.

As an experiment I set up a web tools page a year or two ago. It's nothing great but maybe it will show another side of the much-maligned application.