EDUC 628-Spring-08

I will have to admit that I had to look up the word when I first found out about the assignment from my EDUC 628 class, and from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnography, it gives the following definition:

Ethnography (Greek ἔθνος ethnos = people and γράφειν graphein = writing) is a genre of writing that uses fieldwork to provide a descriptive study of human societies. Ethnography presents the results of a holistic research method founded on the idea that a system’s properties cannot necessarily be accurately understood independently of each other. The genre has both formal and historical connections to travel writing and colonial office reports. Several academic traditions, in particular the constructivist and relativist paradigms, employ ethnographic research as a crucial research method. Many cultural anthropologists consider ethnography the essence of the discipline.^{[citation needed]}

I chose to do my ethnography on MySpace.  There is so much controversy about this SNS, and about many of them, and so since I have a 15 year old daughter who spends a huge amount of time on the site, I initially thought I would check up on her by having my own page, which is located at http://www.myspace.com/elvis412.

When I first designed the page, I enlisted her, and my niece’s help, and if it weren’t for them, I would not have a home skin or a song, and I would have about 9 out of my total 14 friends less showing up under my FRIENDS category.  I do have 5 friends from my class, and the 9 others that my daughter Paige helped me get-either by me just knowing them, or them thinking it was cool that I had a MySpace page.

And to the defense of MySpace, and what it stands for to my daughter, her friends, and myself, I now can and will always stand up for her and her circle of friends—plus myself -in the social networking that occurs from this site.  She was my first friend, so what can I say to that that is anything negative.  Her profile is private, as is mine, and I hope all of her friends, and as far as her activity on the space, she mainly just converses with her little network.  No, she doesn’t do much about school on it, except for maybe asking about an assignment through her IM, but as far as her safety and education, as long as she is on MySpace and not out drinking and driving, or doing all the other things that teenagers can engage in, then I’m okay with her on the SNS.  If she is safe, she can get her education, and I believe that one day one her teachers will have a MySpace and it will have more of an educational meaning to her.

There are many activities, and things about MySpace that she and her circle of friends utilize more so than me, and some of my friends from EDUC 628 utilize the options as well.

Privacy: 

I hope that all have they’re profile set to private, and NOT talk to people you don’t know.  I don’t.  Paige doesn’t, and anyone with any sense shouldn’t.  When I first joined MySpace, TOM was my first friend, and since I didn’t know him, I took myself off of the site because it scared me a little, only to find out from EVRYONE that he owned the space.

 Profile:

My profile has stayed pretty much the same since I acquired a space, but I think many people change there’s all of the time.  It is part of the fun.  Getting a new home skin about once a week happens a lot with my daughter and here circle of friends, and with this comes different songs, and for those of her friends her are really good at their profile presentation, slideshows are available as well as –slide TV-any many more applications.

The mood is important for some in the profile scheme of MySpace.  Some people update it daily, every 12 hours, I am not sure, but I never did anything with the mood. 

TOP FRIENDS:

This seems to be the most important for my daughter.  I set my friends to the top 24, and I have 14 friends, and I didn’t randomize it, so Paige would always show up first.  When I get more than 24 friends, I will set it to the TOP 50 friends.  I don’t want to get into this hype, but others utilize this feature a lot and this can stir up a lot of friction on people’s circles of friends.

Songs:

Changing songs happens a lot.  It is part of the fun too.

Pictures:

My friends add and update their pictures it seems like everyday.  I could never leave the house, and ask them to take pictures that day, and I would be able to see them that day.  Digital cameras are making a ton of money, and film developing probably isn’t now-a-days.

Bulletins:

 I posted a bulletin once, and got 1 response. (I can’t complain thought because I didn’t respond to posted bulletins at all.)Here is what I posted, and got a response to…  Thank you to the one who responded.

1.Why do you use MySpace? I use MySpace to keep in touch with my friends from high school and college mostly. We are scattered all over the place, and busy with our own lives, so it’s nice to be able to talk to them through MySpace.

2.How many hours a week do you spend on MySpace? maybe 3 hours
A day? about half an hour

3. Do you access MySpace from your phone? No my phone doesn’t have internet on it.

4. Is your profile private? Yes 5.How many friends do you have? 126 I think6.How many of them are YOUR friends? I’m not sure what this means… but I know all of them.7.How many of them are your good (not top) friends? Maybe 10-15 actual friends, the rest are just people that I know.

has a  post with excerpts from Danah Boyd’s observations of the site.

When MySpace launched in 2003, it was primarily used by 20/30-somethings The bands began populating the site by early 2004 and throughout 2004, the average age slowly declined. It wasn’t until late 2004 that teens really started appearing en masse on MySpace and 2005 was the year that MySpace became the “in thing” for teens.

While I may refer to the history as being a good reference, the observations about socio-economic divisions seem to me to be either old or wrong, or based on a certain pool of students surveyed.  Unspoken rule—what is written is not written in gold—it is an opinion.

 Observations: socio-economic divisions“good” kids are now going to Facebook: These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college. They are primarily white, but not exclusively. They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities.

• MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, “burnouts,” “alternative kids,” “art fags,” punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn’t play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn’t go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. These are the teens who plan to go into the military immediately after schools. Teens who are really into music or in a band are also on MySpace. MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers…..

Written in June of 2007, I think that her observations about socio-econnomic status—while then MAY have been true, I think that the culture of MySpace users is not that they are ostracized……  Her essay is about the pros and cons of MySpace and Facebook and fore further interest in her essay, at http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html, one could read here.

I am just for the space, so I will advocate for it primarily in this ethnography, and the culture to me of the space is not a social-economic division but can be considered a bridge instead….a bridge of cultures, education and technology.

Well, as far as my MySpace, I need to put the blogs that are here into a category, and link this blog to that space–or the other way around—somehow.  I will figure it out.

I have 12 friends, 4 of whom are in my EDUC 628 class, and most of the others are my daughter, and her friends—her circle.  I will have to say that her group of friends spend a lot of time on the site.  The update it daily with pictures, comments, their TOP friends, bulletins, their mood, and anything else that has to with letting others in their group know how they are feeling, what they like, etc.    As far as the pictures, on of Paige’s friends went to Maysville one night to take pictures of George Clooney because he premiered his movie Leatherheads there, and she had pictures of him posted that night on her MySpace. I thought that was pretty neat.

As far as me spending time there, I plan to do a final project for my other class at the beginning of next week, and then spend the rest of the remaining time during this semester on this clas, blogging, reading High -Tech Heretic, and being on–and writing about the values that I am finding out about MySpace.

Well, I have eleven friends now, and my daughter and her friends make up most of them, which is pretty neat because it allows me to see what they do with the site.  They update everything all the time, to say the least, with new pictures, comments, songs—and the mood thing.  They tag photos, which I have to figure out from my daughter what that’s all about, plus check out the bulletin board space also.  Their main thing is their top friends and who is in them.  I just put myself as having a top 20–and I only have 11 friends—to eliminate any of that stuff  for me to think about.  I plan to search out some more friends, and send out requests, and really work on the site during these last few weeks of school.

I will have to say that I have not been a very Internet savvy mood today, so if my posts seem like whinging it, they were.  I will say that on my MySpace page that I now have 11 friends and I am stating to get comments, photo comments, I downloaded slideshare (I haven’t done it yet), and Martin Scorcese is one of my friends (he’s probably go as many friends as Tom), but anyway, I thought that was cool.

I am going for now, and will probably stay away for a day or two, and come back when I have something useful to say.  I will work on my MySpace for a few days to make up for not being here.

Well, I’m having too much fun with this.  I only have 8 friends, but soon will be more.  I realize that Twitter of Facebook might be more my style, but for the ethnography, I am continuing with MySpace, which began as me checking up on my daughter.  She may need to check up on me soon.  ;0]

Well, I have 6 friends now, but have’t really tried very hard to get more of them. I am going to do more with the site, since I am going to use it for the final activity for this class.  I will have to tag my sns posts, etc., etc., and much more.

Well, I have gone back and forth about if I should use MySpace or Twitter for an assessment in this class, and I think I am going to keep MySpace as the one of focus, instead of Twitter, which I previously said I would use.  I have 6 friends now, and they are trickling in, so I figure my network has started, even thought I signed up originally to check up on my daughter.  What else could be any better to study, than how MySpace, as a SNS, is used by my daughter, and how it is used by me, and how it relates to technology, education, and culture.

I had joined Twitter in a hurry one day, and I never really did much with it.  Then I joined MySpace, and I thought I was going to use the MySpace account for the grading of this class.  I really don’t know which one I am going to sink my teeth into just yet….probably Twitter because I was merely joining MySpace to see what my 15 year old liked so much about it.  She was more than happy to allow me to be her friend—an her friends were too—although I haven’t added them yet.  So after my daughter and her network of friends didn’t mind if I saw there profiles (I really don’t want to follow their comments and IMs…I trust them), I fell like I can defend MySpace to others.  I did just yesterday.  I will probably keep the space, and add to it when I get a chance—or have a good picture—but I believe, for this class, I am going to move over to Twitter for my own interests.  I am going on vacation for the week of Spring Break–so I will follow, and get followers the week after Easter.

Well, I’ve been a MySpace member now for about 5 days.  I have 4 friends.  My daughter, my niece, Tom, and 1 person from the class, Angel—thanks.  I am wondering if I change my picture on my profile—then will this change automatically on everyone else’s space where I am their friend.  I plan to go out in the snow today and take some pics for my space.

Well, I have joined Twitter—to catch up with Dr. Lowell.  Actually, I had already joined—just forgot I had because I haven’t been going to that social space.  I am now a follower, and I am being followed.  I think I am going to join MySpace too (I said I would and haven’t yet(…but now that we have to for part of the class, I know for a fact I am joining both. I don’t know which one I will write about—the ethnography.  Maybe both.

I try to stay Tapped-In, follow the blogs, follow the assignments and it is quite hard to keep up with it all given that it takes me I think, longer than the average bear. 

I have to go and read several blogs and if I don’t get to all of them, the thing I like about this class, and about blogs is that I can catch up—for my own knowledge—when I get the time—that is if the people leave their blogs up.

While messing around on Twitter, I found this and thought it was interesting.  Short and sweet, but informative (now I know why the little numbers are up in the corner for blog replies)—you’ll see what I mean if you join Twitter and comment to Dr. Lowell

http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=1430064531

Also, just wanted to mention that I have become a strong advocate for digital equity and find myself repeating things we have discussed in our forums and blogs.  I will more than likely go into the profession of educational technology.  I’d like to take a “build a computer” 101 class though, just to know more of the ins and outs of the hardware.  I wonder if a person can possess educational technology knowledge without being able to build computers and still be considered an asset to a company.

 I think this class is a great class to learn and become aware of all the ICT and all.  For me, it is my first of the sort, and whatever I don’t —or can’t spend time on now, I will keep with me—in my little media toolbox—to use for myself, and for the next class I take in this field.