When I first started reading this article, I became instantly annoyed. Honestly, I would completely fine with never hearing about the history of facebook again, but this article was different. The main focus was neither facebook nor Zuckenberg, this article focused on the "ambient awareness" of social networking sites. This article added a very different perspective of the reasons people use social networking sites and its positive effects. This article paints a clear picture of what ambient awareness is and what it entails. Clive Thompson writes, "It is, they say, very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye." Tools like Twitter and Facebook have become some sort of microblogging, through status updates, users are able to stay connected with their friends while never having face to face interaction. While younger users view this as an advantage, many older users see this as a problem for society. This has been a common downfall amongst older users, they believe people no longer have to interact face to face and consequently generations are missing out on real social interactions. I thought that this would be the focus of the article, but instead Thompson focused on the positive aspects of these social interactions online. Furthermore he wrote, "This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting." Thompson believes Twitter can help one know more about their friends than they would have learned normally.
I began to ask myself, "How can I use Twitter in my classroom?" In the article, Thompson shared his own anecdote about one of his Twitter followers, Shannon Seery. Seery explained that she used Twitter to get immediate feedback from her followers. She would ask questions about her taxes and accountants. Through Twitter, Seery was able to communicate with people who offered her a broad spectrum of information that was not available when she limited herself to her circle of friends and family. This portion of the article really stood out to me because I can begin to use Twitter to network with other teachers all over the world. I would be able to find other strategies of teaching and incorporate others' ideas into my lesson plan. I never viewed Twitter as a way for teachers or any other professionals to network, but this article birthed new ideas within me.
In all honestly after reading You're Leaving a Digital Trail, I instantly became extremely paranoid. I always knew the dangers of sharing information on the internet, but I never took it that seriously. I can truly say that nothing I put on the internet is in any way shameful if it did come up years later, but just know that there is a lack of privacy is quite alarming. While I know that even after reading this article, I will still keep my facebook and twitter account active, but it makes me think about my future students. Kids are not always the most responsible when it comes to censorship and know what is appropriate and what is not, so it makes me scared to think of how the things they place online today will impact their future. Also, as a future educator this always raises concern when it comes to different forms of technology that I want to use in my classroom. Before reading this article, I already was thinking about how parents would react to a teacher using social networking as an educational tool, but after reading this it drastically raises my concerns. And by all means parents would have valid points if they did not want their children to be members of these sites. I recently found some other educational sites that could be used in place of social networking sites that gives teachers more control of what is actually published by their students. Some of these sites are Glogster EDU and Penzu.
In all honestly after reading You're Leaving a Digital Trail, I instantly became extremely paranoid. I always knew the dangers of sharing information on the internet, but I never took it that seriously. I can truly say that nothing I put on the internet is in any way shameful if it did come up years later, but just know that there is a lack of privacy is quite alarming. While I know that even after reading this article, I will still keep my facebook and twitter account active, but it makes me think about my future students. Kids are not always the most responsible when it comes to censorship and know what is appropriate and what is not, so it makes me scared to think of how the things they place online today will impact their future. Also, as a future educator this always raises concern when it comes to different forms of technology that I want to use in my classroom. Before reading this article, I already was thinking about how parents would react to a teacher using social networking as an educational tool, but after reading this it drastically raises my concerns. And by all means parents would have valid points if they did not want their children to be members of these sites. I recently found some other educational sites that could be used in place of social networking sites that gives teachers more control of what is actually published by their students. Some of these sites are Glogster EDU and Penzu.
Although I am not much of a twitter fan, I know professors on campus have huge (and I mean HUGE) list-serves and blogs that go out to other colleges asking questions about what type of lesson plans they can do with a certain type of material. Every class my professor comes in with a "This came through the list-serve this week, what do you think about it?" It's a great way for us to really start thinking about how to think on our feet and work around problems that cannot be planned with writing out lesson plans. Clearly the internet, blogging, twitter etc are being great resources for teachers. But this is just another thing you might want to look into after graduation.
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