Discussion
Helping students make distinctions
The distinction between a private you and a public profile is something that many of my students struggle with. Several Faccebook related issues spilled over to school this past year. Students and teachers can have productive conversations about how much should be shared, whom it should be shared with, and how to make those choices. Helping students negotiate social media by explicitly stating how we make those decisions can help them assemble their own "Thanksgiving dinner" guestlist.
Comments
Elyse Eidman-Aadahl (Admin ...
on Jul 15 2011
at 13:29
Critical difference in Google+
Good points above and in the piece. This issue is one of the things that Google is betting on with Google+ and its slightly different approach to privacy and 'friending'. It will be different to see how this shakes out. In both cases, of course, what each company wants is simply for all of us to use their services so that we feed them information about ourselves and direct our attention to their advertisers. So if one or the other earns mass use and loyalty, it will prevail. It does seem to me, though, that the 'circles' option in Google+ is closer to the way we make distinctions in social life more broadly. It doesn't take the issue away, but it provides a more sophisticated set of options for the issue...and off-line life, alas, has many sophisticated options that either do or don't solve these dilemmas. (But then, where would situation comedy be without these snafus.)