As I watched the Frontline video, "Growing Up On Line," on Joanne's trail link (http://trailfire.com/joannedegroot/trailview/62027) there were two comments that resonated for me.
1. There is no privacy. Everything is out there.
2. It is like the wild west. No one is in control.
The students who put up photos of themselves without thought; who publish pictures showing behaviours that are less than acceptable in any other social situation clearly need some type of guidelines. What are they thinking? or are they thinking at all? Is it so much the norm that things that would have previously embarrassed them are now deemed o.k.? The second statement ties directly into that. Who is guiding? How do we regulate or control something that is so readily available and easy to use? One hopes that as the use of these tools becomes more widespread, codes of behaviour for what is or is not acceptable will also grow.
Having to put pictures of myself and my family 'out there' was an assignment that I approached with some trepidation. I am still not entirely clear on all of the 'protection' that exists for one's privacy.
I began by looking at the Flickr site (Flickr.com) and also checked out the Flickr blog (blog.flickr.net/en) Flickr appealed to me because I had read an article by Andrew A. Duffy (aduffy@tc.canwest.com) in the Victoria Times Colonist entitled "Flickr co-founder makes it big with an arts degree." The article discussed how Stewart Butterfield had succeeded after achieving a degree in philosophy from U. Vic. I liked that it was created in Canada by someone who graduated from the same university as myself, even though it was bought out by Yahoo in 2005.
The Flickr site appears very user friendly. The first page is extremely easy to understand and navigate through. I learned Flickr connects to Yahoo sources and is also integrated with Twitter. They have a blogging service and their blog has interesting pictures from around the globe. I particularly enjoyed the Canada day photos. As a new 'learner' I was pleased to see a Help Forum, as well as, for my privacy and security conscious mind, an area to report abuse based on community guidelines.
In spite of the appeal of the Flickr site, I decided to post my pictures on Facebook. My reasoning: it is better to face your fears and overcome them than hope they go away, or as Miguel Gruhlin states in his article "The CTO Challenge: Building Your Personal Learning Network," (http://trailfire.com/joannedegroot/trailview/62027) "It is the acts of use that cast out our fear of change."
So I am using to try to cast out my fears. I found Facebook to be a far more daunting and less user friendly site than Flickr. Luckily, my daughter was on hand to guide me through the process. I managed to put a picture of myself on my profile, although I've kept my personal information to a minimum. I created an album of pictures from our family's trip to Mexico at Christmas, which I'm looking forward to sharing with my aunt and uncle in Florida who keep asking for recent photos. I just have to get him as a 'friend.' The highlight for me was having a 'chat' with my nephew as I tried to work through my Facebook pages. I also enjoyed looking at recent photos of him on his site, although I could have done without the ones of him kissing his girlfriend. (Where are those guidelines?)
The pedagogical uses for photo sharing sites are different than those for blogs. At first, I was stymied because I could not see how we could put pictures of students on line, but then it hit me. I could see myself creating photo albums of settings, characters, or situations to help inspire students in their creative writing. When I was a student, my library had vertical files of pictures for us to use for research. How much better would it be to have these photo files online? In the B.C. curriculum, students are required to extrapolate information from non-print materials. In my Social Studies class last year, another teacher and I shared photos of his trip to India while students were studying Hinduism. The amount of information they managed to pull out of the photographs was astounding. With all of the photos available on line, imagine the types of albums you could create for different areas of study.
As I explore all of these different sites on the web, I am constantly astounded by the interconnectedness of everything. Nothing stands alone, everything leads you to something else. The possibilities are infinite. As I overcome my fears and explore all of the different methods of communicating and sharing, I'm going to have to learn which of these tools will best suit my needs and those of the educational community I work in.
You're not alone in your privacy concerns. That appears to be a common topic on our photo sharing blogs posts, and I'm sure it will come up again for many other topics.
ReplyDeleteThe benefit of using facebook is that you can control your privacy options. You can set different photo albums to different privacy levels (everyone, only friends, no one etc). I've found that helpful because I only want people to see certain photos, but I have used facebook for private archiving of photos as well.
I appreciated that you chose to use privacy as your 'theme' for this blog entry--I think it is a common concern for teachers/librarians and parents and you have raised some good questions. I would be interested in knowing more about how you would incorporate some of these privacy concerns into your own teaching--e.g. how do you teach your students to be good digital citizens and make good decisions about the kinds of information they share online.
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