Reversal of TOS for Facebook

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/02/18/facebook.privacy/index.html

While a quick reversal could be seen as small victory for user privacy, this is the second time Facebook has had to back away from invasive practices. After the complaints about the Beacon marketing software last year and the recent reversal of the TOS, it seems more like social networking sites are testing their uses privacy boundries rather than simply experimenting with a new business model. With such fluctuations in the approach to user data, users should take a more conservative approach to all digital communication or personal postings.

New Facebok terms of service and possible implications

http://consumerist.com/5150175/facebooks-new-terms-of-service-we-can-do-anything-we-want-with-your-content-forever

This article summarizes the new terms of service and their implications. Basically, anything posted on Facebook is instantly the proparty of Facebook even if you close your account. All material can be resold or recontextualized by Facebook.

While excessive commercial use of user content would be bad publicity for Facebook, the new language must have been crafted with specific goals or scenarios in mind. There was a publicized case several years ago of a girl from the US who's image was taken off Flickr and used in an Australian cell phone ad. When it came to her attention she tried to sue and lost because of a similar TOS agreement.

Besides LinkedIn, which I use for professional purposes I would never recreationally use a social networking site or post photos or personal other content online. Obviously, this blog and participation on the class's site is obligatory. While I assume nothing will come of this (still 0 hits), the idea of using a commercial product to essentially brand an individuals social/intellectual identity seems corrosive to individuality. With 160,000,000 users, it seems to me that it would be impossible for each of those pages to reflect the uniqueness or individuality of the users.
- While I'm sure there are many holes in this idea, it was my initial gut reaction to Friendster and I haven't had a change of heart even though every single one of my friends is on Facebook. I still feel that if I want to share something with a friend I can call/email/text/visit them, and the way I choose to represent the information will differ slightly depending on my relationship with the recipient. Therefore, I would effectively need a different Facebook page for every person I know, which would negate the value-added efficiency a product like Facebook brings to one's social life.

Student work

An example of student work I used in a presentation to parents. My point had to do with using technology as a tool for expression, not as an independent skill. For this project, the fifth grade's, Newspaper of the Future, some students created images using dozens of source files, though the most powerful were often those that made simple, thoughtful choices. Because we use technology to represent ideals stemming from literacy, students quickly learned that technical skill did not always translate into clear communication. This experience was a boost for novice users because their work was often less cluttered than the students who were more technologically savvy. Essentially, this exercises provided a concrete example of how literacy and expression dictate technology use in the classroom.

thoughts on 2/2 class

Having heard versions of this debate in many setting, grade level meetings, grad school classes, conversations with parents, I feel (as a non- linguists) that we already live with a general compromise. The autonomous model serves as a foundation and mediator between the ever growing number of ideologically recognised literacies. removing the autonomous model in complete favor of the ideological model would fail to recognise that standardised grammar, and language allow for the many permutations that we are now welcoming into the sphere of literacy. While a word like "Work" mean very different activities when used by a lawyer or physicist (Example taken from Gee) having a set spelling and basic definition is necessary for an ideological group to expanded or customized. Without that fundamental definition of the word "work" or basic rules for communication, the fluid code switching we do as we move between ideological groups would be exceedingly difficult.

Returning to education, it is necessary to work with students in different ideological environments so they can expand their range of communication skills. Also, because I'm assuming that all ideological literacies have overlapping areas with other groups, the values of autonomous literacy allow for students to make the connections necessary to move between groups.

While I'm not refuting the more complex, inclusive and dynamic concept of literacy represented by the ideological literacies, I am saying that among the various literacies there is an inherent foundation routed in the autonomous model.