LukeWalker.org

Facebook has been catching a lot of crap lately. Some of it is inevitable–users who have been around longer getting tense/up in arms about the evolution that occurs as the community grows, etc etc.

But I’ve also seen quite a few stories lately about Facebook trying to assert its Facebook-ness, namely:

1. Limiting the number of users you can e-mail via a group (the story of Baratunde Thurston, via Danah Boyd’s post on facebook confusion. Rationale: Facebook is not Myspace (barely even paraphrasing-see Baratunde’s post.)

2. Censoring images of women breastfeeding and deleting the poster’s accounts with the note that “We will not be able to reactivate your account for any reason” (See the article in today’s Toronto Star). Rationale: It’s obscene, and Facebook is not the rest of the Internet (I am paraphrasing there).

This is where the social web becomes really interesting and problematic. It used to be the case that (for me, anyway), when one of the free services I used online did something that rubbed me the wrong way, I’d say “whatever, it’s free.” But Facebook, Flickr, and countless other services have become so ubiquitous and essential that you can no longer just shrug the weird or intrusive policies off. These are really key pieces of our identities and how we present ourselves to the world–but we don’t own them.
In the end, we’re just users, and we’re subject to their whims, and their terms of service. These aren’t organic, grassroots, populist movements that grow with their communities. Giving users ownership of the community is something that some organizations do well, and others… don’t do at all. Rather than just putting a tool out there and letting the users shape it, Facebook is taking a somewhat more authoritarian tact, trying to control the entire environment. They have their reasons for this: probably partially trying to guard against the often negative views of social network, which stem from Myspace; and partially because they have advertisers to worry about.

But in the end, they have users to worry about too. They have millions of them, and only a few ‘lactivists,’ and they may be content in saying that they don’t cater to entrepreneurs like Baratunde, so it may not seem like a big deal. But eventually, people have got to start caring… Just like they’re slowly catching on to the concepts of public vs. private on the web, concepts like proprietary vs. open, mine vs. ours will be a big deal, and if Facebook and others can’t evolve, they’ll be screwed.

Blogged with Flock

Articles like this one always interest me, not only because I’m from PEI (this article could easily have come from any school board in North America), but because it never ceases to amaze me how far off the mark people are.

The decisions we make about technology use in our classrooms fascinate me. Apparently, I once wrote a letter that ended up being read on TV about cell phone use in schools… I don’t really remember writing it, but I keep running into people who remember its readying. But that’s just how much these kinds of things catch my eye. Anyway, today’s tragedy:

“As of Thursday, the first day of the new school year, students [in PEI's Western School Board, where I went to school] won’t beallowed to use cellphones, cameras, palm pilots or MP3 players in anyclassroom.”

Know what they do use quite a bit in the classroom, though? TVs. It’s really easy to control what’s going on with a TV. Much easier than trying to control what kids are doing with their MP3 players. It’s easy to see how the newly banned technologies can become problematic–kids love them way more than any tool in the typical classroom. But why aren’t we jumping on that? Why aren’t we finding ways to use phones and MP3 players constructively in classes?

If we focus on MP3 players for a second, what about all the valuable podcasts that are out there? And now that even cheap nanos have video… Couldn’t that be pretty neat and useful? And doesn’t giving kids the chance to learn about the issues they’re passionate about using the media they’re most comfortable with make sense?

Cellphones are a more complex argument. In my mind, they’re about 90% distraction with a 10% chance for good, right now, and the potential for good is made more complex than necessary by Canada’s strange cell phone pricing schemes.

Then we come to cameras. That just straight up confuses me. There are so many cool ways to engage kids with photography… I know, I know, I’m basing this all off a very short and vague article, and the actual policy is probably very complex with all sorts of sanctioned exceptions to the ban… but the concept that cameras aren’t welcome in the classroom just shocks me.

And then we have palm pilots… In my mind, this is akin to banning laptops. And rather than getting into all the problems I have with that, I’ll just leave it lie (but point to the next paragraph on distractions that kids will have to learn to deal with anyway)…

There are some big issues there–well, two. Equity and distraction. Gadgets are a big distraction, for everyone. And kids will eventually be adults who need to know how to deal with the blackberries and cell phones and other various beeping doo-dads and whatnots that will be thrown at them. Banning them, while definitely easier, seems like a pretty black-and-white solution to a situation that is quite a bit more complex.

Equity is a bigger issue. If MP3 players or any other gadget were to become an integral part of the classroom, everyone would need access, and the price points are still too high for a lot of people (and schools). But banning them seems like a good way of nipping the equitable access talk in the bud.

In fairness, I’m almost always opposed to banning anything, anytime. And the integration of technology into the classroom is the basis of my livelihood. But I just don’t see how banning technology is making learning better for students.

Love it… I’m at a global ed conference today, in an unnamed school board office, and everyone is in a plenary. I wanted to check a Facebook message, and blamo:

Web Page Blocked

You have tried to access a web page which is not accessible under the Peel District School Board’s Internet usage policy.

URL: www.facebook.com/login.php
Category: Master Deny List

Which is fine… cuz school boards block stuff. Pretty standard. Even the City of Toronto is now blocking Facebook for its employees (but not councillors… of course). So, just to see what else they were blocking, and the obvious suspects are out… myspace, friendster, orkut, linkedin, games.yahoo.com… basically the big social networking (but not blog, cuz i’m able to log into LJ??) sites and big game sites.

But guess what’s not blocked? Twitter, Plazes, upcoming.org, flickr… all the ‘little’ sites that haven’t been caught yet, but are just as ‘risky’ and ‘un-educational’. So students can still freely give away all their personal information to strangers, and use the intertubes for non-productive purposes.

Why don’t we just teach kids, you know… what you put on the internet is public, and you should be careful. It’s really pretty simple. And why can’t we recognize and take advantage of the educational potential (or at least attention-catching potential) of using some of these ‘inappropriate’ sites in schools? It seems way more effective than sorta half-assedly blocking the sites that could put them ‘at risk.’