Sometimes I feel like somebody's watching me...

I have been actively using facebook since my sophomore year of college, and with the massive amount of content (pictures, wall posts, profile information) that my friends and I have posted since then, privacy considerations are a very real concern for me. It is interesting that social networking sites, which were originally meant for connecting with friends and acquaintances, have become a public space. I remember that when I was in college, a group of students who were members of the cross country team were kicked off the team as a result of photos of them drinking that were posted on facebook. Situations like this make me think about how I am represented on social networking sites, and who might be watching. Especially with the idea of the "invisible audience" that Dana Boyd wrote about (or what my friends and I call facebook-stalking) it's easy to forget that an SNS is not necessarily private.
I know that there are photos of me from college on facebook that I would probably not want an employer to see. This makes me wonder about the privacy settings for facebook and other social networking sites. Ideally I could limit my profile to be viewed only by my friends and trust that would be security enough. However, you have to consider who your friends are friends with, and who else might be able to see content that concerns me. Also, you have to consider that a "facebook friend" may not be an actual friend, but more of an acquaintance or coworker who I might not want to have access to my profile. When I was in college, facebook was only for college students, and originally only available to certain colleges. And the default privacy settings allowed your profile to be viewed by your friends and members of you college network, which seemed pretty safe. However, I remember that a girl that I had class with was interning with a major corporation in Denver, and part of her job was to use her facebook account to show the company the profiles of college kids who were applying for jobs. You never know who's going to see something that you put up. It became routine for seniors at my school to take down all the content off their profiles as they were applying for jobs, just in case.
I have recently been thinking that when I finish grad school and am really working in a career, I will delete my facebook account. Of course, all of the content that I have ever created will still exist, and I can't control what my friends put online. So perhaps a better tactic would be to not allow myself to be photographed doing anything stupid. Also, the prospect of quitting facebook means that I would instantly lose contact with a couple hundred people. I have been accruing "friends" since I was 19, I have my high school friends, college friends, study abroad friends, work friends, and now grad school friends. I can immediately get in touch with any one of them, where as without facebook, I would have probably lost their contact information years ago. There was an interesting article on the class wiki about SNS being the new email, an idea that I somewhat agree with. A few years ago I joined myspace at the behest of my coworkers at my summer job. I use it solely for keeping in touch with those people, using the messaging feature like email, and I don't have to keep track of everyone's email address.
During the last class, with my small group I looked at Twitter, something I had never really seen in action, but seem to be hearing about everywhere these days. I had vaguely heard that it consisted of sort of mini blogs of short answers to the question "what are you doing?", and to me this sounded miserable. Like the absolute worst part of facebook, inane status updates, and nothing else. After poking around the website, I could see the draw a little more, and I could see how it could be used by a library, sort of like a listserve as a way of directing people to points of interest on the website. I actually joined because I was interested in following some comedians and bloggers that I like. I even have 3 followers, but they are all people that I don't know, and I've never written a "tweet", so that's kind of weird.

Media for expression

So, as I don't have a lesson plan topic in mind at the moment, I'll use this post to respond to the readings for this week. I thought that the Beilke and Stuve article brought up some really interesting points about different categories of uses of educational technology as media. And more specifically I was struck by how, although the idea of media literacy and what acutally constitutes literacy is expanding to include video, the internet, video games, etc., there are still those that see traditional forms of literacy as canon, and think of mediums such as digital video to be merely entertainment. This article discusses the values of using digital video in an educational setting, and how it has been used effectively with inner-city youth, to both encourage visual literacy and technology skills as well as relate literacy to culture in a way that urban youth does not often find in textbooks.
I do think, however, that while the merits of using video as an educational tool are valid, librarians and educators must consistently demonstrate that video can and is being used to promote literacy and encourage higher-order thinking, not just something to occupy the time of students who have not done well with more traditional educational tools. When I was in high school I took a video productions class my last semester, as an easy A and to get my last few elective credits. The instruction was purely how to use the equipment, which we covered in the first few classes, and then were pretty much allowed to just walk around the school and tape whatever we wanted. There was very little instruction or discussion regarding real literacy issues and school wide the class was seen as something of a joke.
In the past, as technology and video classes were introduced into urban schools, the focus was on what is categorized in the article as "media for construction," how to fix computers rather than use them to create new content. The educational process described in the article, where urban middle school students were given digital video as a outlet to express themselves, is known as "media for expression," and actually has been shown to promote critical literacy, visual literacy, and representational literacy. So, in my opinion, digital video and other form of technology absolutely have a place in educational settings, provided that they are used in a manner that promotes discussion, critical thinking, and original thought. And hopefully, as more schools utilize these technologies in this way, past stereotypes and practices of technology in education will begin to be fazed out.

Patron Participation

Ok, after taking last week off from blogging, I'm back for this week to talk about user participation, and specifically how web 2.0 is affecting that.
In September the public library where I was working in my hometown of Darien, CT, launched a new website designed by our head of technology, with idea of social networking and library 2.0 in mind. The website consists of an online catalog that is being called SOPAC 2.0, which stands for "social OPAC." The SOPAC centers on user generated content, and allows library patrons and staff to interact with eachother about materials, in the same way that websites like Librarything.com allow, while using the catalog to see what is available at Darien Library. Features include blogs, ratings, reviews, tags, and other aspects common to web 2.0 and social networking. The idea behind this is great, patrons can find items that they are interested in by using tags from book they like, or follow the reviews of other users that they agree with. However, there are questions to be asked, regarding how patrons will respond to this ability to be heard in a public forum.

When implementing a website that is very focused on user content and participation, you can't guarantee that patrons will participate, and to the level that you had hoped. I think that it becomes the responsibility of the librarians to attempt to get students or patrons involved, if that is the program's intent. Librarians also have to take a role as early adopters and create user content themselves, to provide examples for others. There are concerns about allowing users to provide content that other patrons could be relying on. Librarians cannot guarantee that users' reviews or tags are accurate or will be helpful, and patrons may expect too much. I think that this is even more of an issue when dealing with children. I know that the Follett catalog software that is used by the majority of public schools in the city allows for user reviews, and with this librarians have an added responsibility to keep an eye on what is being posted.

I was interested by the chapter in Convergence Culture about participation with Harry Potter fanlit. I think that this concept of a fanlit forum could be implemented into a library setting, as a way of getting readers involved and promoting media literacy. However, the issues that the creator of "The Daily Prophet" faced, would be faced by librarians, and there would be definite legal as well as ethical issues.