The blur

I saw one of my students facebook post “my father joined facebook today - and the answer is no” on their wall.

Hilarious, and a perfect example of how things have changed with regards to privacy, private-space, and the idea of public space. I call this the blur. The standard definitions and understandings of privacy aren’t the same as they were in 1990. In schools, we normally encounter the blur when a student writes something inappropriate at home about something in school. But as we craft AUP’s, and think about how kids use technology, we need to remember things aren’t the same as they once were.

As I think about how kids communicate, and the transparent, interconnected, and ever-linked nature of their connections, I realize how the blur touches everything. Things stick around, media is easy to share, hard to forget, and also strangely impermanent.

I will write more on this later.

On 06 May 2009, RebeccaDwyer inscribed the following thoughts about this post:

I found your blog on the blur to be very interesting. I can easily relate to your worries. I am a teacher in a Middle School. I am often asked about my facebook and myspace by students looking to find or contact me. I squirm everytime that I am asked these questions. I then explain and even illustrate on the board the line that divides student and teacher. A professional should take all precautions possible to ensure that his our her community of students stay on their side of the line.
It is just so dangerous to allow students to invade or break the professional relationship that an educator has with his or her students.