Blog #21

Today in class, we watched a video and had a discussion about it. The name of the video is called Danah Boyd Handheld Learning Conference 2008. This video talks about how education is bringing in new technology and using the technology in todays education system. Many teachers around the world are using facebook, myspace, and blogging into their classrooms and using this for assignments. Many people around the world are asking should we use technology in our classrooms? These people believe that we do not need technology in the classroom. We have done without it in our classrooms before why do we need technology in our classrooms now? Danah not talks about how technology is useful in our classrooms, but also how people are using these networking sites for personal use. People nowadays are using myspace or facebook as a metaphorical owning of a personal space. Teenagers today like to separate themselves from their parents or guardians to provide a space for which they can be themselves or independently show their view of the world in these technological spaces we have. Technology has grown and it is good that teachers are using these new technologies into the curriculum. Technology nowadays is part of everyday life and culture. People use these sites just to be social. Dana stated that most young teenage males use these sites to see how many hot girls they can befriend. The Older group tend to try to use these sites to get more publicity to get people to vote, buy, or get viewers attention. In general these sites are friendship driven. For example she states that people like to keep in touch with friends, gossip, flirting, joking around. She did a study and asked kids "why do you get on these sites so much?" Most of the kids reported that their parents would not let them out the house. It is funny because most of the parents were asking why their kids did not get out of the house. Teenagers are using these sites for a place to hang out. More and more kids are using these sites because their parents keep them busy and they have no time to go socialize in the outside world so they use the technology they have at hand in order to keep up with their peers. Most people as they grow up get a different perspective in life and look back to what they wrote ten years back and might find it embarrassing. She also states that you need to be careful what you wrote because in the future it might come and bite you in the rear.