Sunday, October 18, 2009

MySpace thoughts

MySpace is an incredibly addictive social space with amazing potential to expand people's use of technology resources.
My main contact with Myspace is as a source of sleep-deprivation for mid-to-late-teen girls who are often unable to function capably in the school classroom. We've had issues with cyber-bullying via MySpace, also, and have to be pro-active in teaching face-to-face communication skills and responsibility for actions in utilising MySpace as a social contact tool.
Some barely verbal boys with poor social skills also seem to get hooked on MySpace without developing "real-world relationship" skills. (Links to virtual worlds such as Second Life don't seem to teach these students about connecting to the real world.) We do see some mental Health issues.
My main focus in the school environment is on developing literacy/numeracy and social skills and I mainly have to advise students to limit their time on MySpace and organise a weekly plan to allow for school work and activities away from the computer.

The use of MySpace to connect students to their libraries and community services is brilliant.
Drupal looks to be an amazing service provider; will take some time to investigate it.

2 comments:

  1. You raise some very important points about MySpace and social interaction. Do you teach responsible online use as well as encouraging students to interact in person and schedule study time? Fiona

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  2. Yes! I'm not part of the ICT staff, which bears main responsibility for teaching responsible online use, but all our school staff are kept in the loop about monitoring computer use in school. With at least 5 classrooms full of computers, monitoring on-task behaviour can be tricky in the classroom but our IT technician has closed some sites such as MySace and Facebook from Intranet access. The main problem is home use, when some students are not monitored by parents or parents have not the computing skills to monitor computer use or have given up on confronting their children re. inappropriate usage.
    Many students use the sites appropropriately but there seems to be a regular percentage consumed by cyber-life ...at least for a significant period of time in their school years.

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