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April 5, 2007
New Internet Safety Wrinkles
This week, I'm updating my presentation called "Social Networking, Internet Safety and the Collision called MySpace" to present at the Delaware Instructional Technology Conference 2007. Since last March, I have been delivering versions of this presentation to various faculty and parent groups. With last year's news blitz of scare stories, many of them true and many of them staged, I tended to emphasize safety over networking. But this was hard for me since I really believe in the value of networking for authentic learning. Hopefully, I hit a balance.
As more study has gone on, it seems that, just like in real life, kids that engage in risky or promiscuous behavior are the ones that are most likely to get approached by predators. What that really means is that parents should incorporate a digital version of "don't talk to strangers" into the usual repertoire. What it also means is that kids who use the social networking sites intelligently can do so intelligently.
Okay, so now that we've got MySpace and FaceBook pretty much under control, two new sites may give some pause. Right now there are two big deals in the tech community. Twitter.com allows anyone to do real-time blogging from their computer or cellphone. Each "tweet" is limited to 140 characters. What is interesting is the frequency that these come at you. There are also new mashups that incorporate tweets in realtime. The most famous of these is twittervision.com.
The second one is justin.tv. This fellow has committed to wearing a camera and microphone 24-7 for the rest of his life! Currently the tech community is wondering about his prospects for marriage and dating.
Posted by Pat on April 5, 2007 10:17 AM
