Discussion: MySpace and Deleting Online Predators Act This afternoon I am meeting with a district IT director and a local police captain about an “Internet Awareness” program we are putting together for teachers and parents. I suspect I will be referring to the work of UC Berkeley’s Danah Boyd in the final presentations. In the article linked above she and Henry Jenkins of MIT (who I often quote for his work on video games in education) respond to questions about social networking sites (such as MySpace and Facebook) and the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA). It is a very detailed discussion of many issues surrounding these technologies and this legislation.
I’m curious why they end the article this way:
Henry and danah: We welcome further questions from parents. Our feeling is that there should be more public discussion of the opportunities and risks represented by MySpace and other social networks. Please send your questions to myspaceissues@mit.edu and we will do our best to respond.
Why not use the read/write web for this discussion… and model a beneficial use for the technology while they’re at it?
I also want to throw this out there… the edubloggers have been rather universally condemning this legislation. The more I learn about organizational and system wide change (and school change), the more I re-discover that disenting voices must be respected. Now, one can hope that legislators choose to listen to edubloggers… but what is it edubloggers could be learning from the authors and supporters of this legislation? How can we address their concerns and needs? Perhaps the answers to these things are rather self-evident and/or discussed indirectly, but this seemed to be the one thought I had about DOPA worth adding to what’s already been written. More on this later…