EDUC 628-Spring-08

This interview brought about so many familiarities in my life, given that my 15 year old spends quite a bit of time on MySpace.  The core structure that Boyd spoke about, being the profile, the friends, and the comments (private ones as well) was right on the money in our situation.  My daughter has friends and talks to only them—-all the time.

As a matter of fact, my daughter told me not IM on Yahoo because she thought it was dangerous.  I don’t IM much anyway, but I just thought it was an irony.

Also, I thought I would join MySpace one day, and after joining, I got this “friend” suddenly, and it scared me.  His name was Tom(I think).  After I cancelled my membership and told a few people, I found out quickly that everyone new this guy.  He was the owner they said.

Back to the interview with Danah Boyd, I thought it was interesting when she was asked how these types of skills would help high-school students in the workforce, and I don’t think she gave a specific answer to that.  I do know that she spoke of the upcoming communication on cell phones being a different type of entity that kids are mainstreaming to—if they can afford it.  The other day, i finally called my carrier to put the media package on my daughter’s cell phone for unlimited Internet, Text, sending pictures….whatever, and that is much cheaper than paying for 4000 more text messages over the 1000 free ones we started out with on her original plan.  This is the reality at my house, and the child does see it as much less of an intrusion that calling.  One day I said, why don’t you just call them, and her reply was —what…not when I can text…