Submitted by sciguy75 on August 1, 2008 - 10:28am.
Besides pushing the Savvy Daddies fantasy football Facebook league (please join), I figure I should chime in on the more general topic of social networks.
How kids use social networks is now creating a lot of discussion in our school. It was also a hot topic at a learning communities in education conference I attended this past month. The dilemma of understanding kids' social networks, experienced by both teachers and parents, is the fact that by entering and exploring kids' networks, adults alter the behavior of the kids in the network and therefor don't truly see what's happening inside. Thus the "creepy tree house" effect. (For you physicists out there, I've called it the "youth social network uncertainty principle". Yeah, creepy tree house is better.) Point is, kids love social networks because parents are not there. Facebook may have replaced the burger joint hang out spot. I'm not sure how to handle this dilemma as a teacher. What I'm planning to do this year is have my homework assignments as an RSS feed, and encourage students to add the feed to places where they "hang out" online. Not sure how well this will work.....
Another thought I have involves Internet safety. I completely agree about being cautious when putting material on the web. Everything I put online, even in my "friends only" Facebook site, I assume could be seen by anyone. After I created a blog documenting my thoughts over the birth of my son, my father asked if I was concerned that the information was open to the public. He went as far as to warn about the risk of baby snatchers seeing the site. I told him I was conscientious of the fact that the site was public, and that I was careful about the information I put on the blog (no addresses, select pics etc). His concern made me wonder if the relationship between: one - crimes instigated by someone finding personal information on the web, two - crimes instigated by a two-way Internet relationship (chat room etc), and three - crimes instigated by face-to-face relationship, has changed over the last few years. It seems to me that most crimes involve some sort of initial relationship. Point is, I think people need to be more wary of their relationships, whether they be online or face-to-face, much more than they need to be about a criminal acting directly off of one's personal information on the web.
Creepy Tree House
Besides pushing the Savvy Daddies fantasy football Facebook league (please join), I figure I should chime in on the more general topic of social networks.
How kids use social networks is now creating a lot of discussion in our school. It was also a hot topic at a learning communities in education conference I attended this past month. The dilemma of understanding kids' social networks, experienced by both teachers and parents, is the fact that by entering and exploring kids' networks, adults alter the behavior of the kids in the network and therefor don't truly see what's happening inside. Thus the "creepy tree house" effect. (For you physicists out there, I've called it the "youth social network uncertainty principle". Yeah, creepy tree house is better.) Point is, kids love social networks because parents are not there. Facebook may have replaced the burger joint hang out spot. I'm not sure how to handle this dilemma as a teacher. What I'm planning to do this year is have my homework assignments as an RSS feed, and encourage students to add the feed to places where they "hang out" online. Not sure how well this will work.....
Another thought I have involves Internet safety. I completely agree about being cautious when putting material on the web. Everything I put online, even in my "friends only" Facebook site, I assume could be seen by anyone. After I created a blog documenting my thoughts over the birth of my son, my father asked if I was concerned that the information was open to the public. He went as far as to warn about the risk of baby snatchers seeing the site. I told him I was conscientious of the fact that the site was public, and that I was careful about the information I put on the blog (no addresses, select pics etc). His concern made me wonder if the relationship between: one - crimes instigated by someone finding personal information on the web, two - crimes instigated by a two-way Internet relationship (chat room etc), and three - crimes instigated by face-to-face relationship, has changed over the last few years. It seems to me that most crimes involve some sort of initial relationship. Point is, I think people need to be more wary of their relationships, whether they be online or face-to-face, much more than they need to be about a criminal acting directly off of one's personal information on the web.