Garry’s Rambles

danah boyd spoke at the education.au seminar today about the rise of social networks. danah spoke of the profiles that students develop and make public on their myspace site. She says this is equivalent to your contact list on the phone, that we often don’t make public. Kids today do, and this is important to their reputation in the onlne world.

danah also spoke of the invisible audience. Online, you often don’t know who is listening, those who will intentionally break the rules and those who know how to behave in this space. Mediated environments have been complicated by not knowing the context.

She also spoke of the age segregation issue where young people have been written out of civic spaces where teenagers could be politically active. She spoke aout how 700,000 users in Facebook were able to influence the owners about privacy features which were imposed on the Facebook community.

The internet mirrors and magnifies issues in the physical space. danah says that the opportunity for educators is to help student to engage in learning which is collaborative and educationally sound. This doesn’t necessarily mean you simply use social networking tools to engage in the space that students use for socialising. They often avoid going to spaces where people in authority might be lurking. 

danah says that if kids need to choose between school and friends they’ll choose friends? There is a need to obtain a balance between school and friends. Awareness and open communication is important for parents here!! There is no easy answer.

A podcast of the Melbourne event will be made available later this week. Look at the events section on our website.