research-y
My undergrads are in the midst of doing presentations to the Joint Subcommittee on Teenagers and Technology to convince legislators that technologies like MySpace and Facebook are not the threats the media make them out to be. OK, I made up the assignment as an opportunity to work on rhetorical and argumentative strategies as well as comprehending and analyzing information found online, but the presentations are good and the students are serious about the topic. I told them that a government subcommittee is considering restricting access to sites like Facebook and MySpace to ages 21 and up and that they needed to come up with a counter-argument. (I did, later, tell them it was a hypothetical situation — I just needed to get them fired up first. Motivation is hard to come by this late in April. Frightening your audience is a trick I learned from my father and boy, is it effective if used only sparingly).
As they worked on their presentations and then presented them, I have gotten a glimpse into their lives and MySpace pages, as well as the running joke Tom (the founder of MySpace) has become. These sites are increasingly essential to students — one has over 800 friends linked to hers and told me that losing it would make her want to “kill myself.” Another showed me his and then changed his background to show his gang allegiance, connecting to a discussion we had earlier this month about gangs and the music industry and helping me clarify which gangs were more active in this area. Their sincerity, passion, and the sheer amount of work some of them put into their pages was astounding and interesting, by far the most active I had seen some of them at that time in the morning over the course of the semester. It reminded me why I want to study things from their perspective as well as how different their literacy practices are from the practices most classes require of them. As I come up with more ways to bridge those practices, I think I see more success and more buy-in from marginalized, or disinterested students. Lots to think about here.
Also to think about –
Their choices to make a profile hidden (by pretending to be under 15) or not
The ongoing joke Tom the founder has become, and how some of the students took him and others off their friends list whereas other students never removed anyone from their friends section
Creating pages to honor a person’s passing, or an event
Now companies and advertisers creating pseudo-pages to link to a product or person. Example: pages for characters for Clerks 2
April 29th, 2006 at 4:41 pm
Love this idea!
May 2nd, 2006 at 1:21 am
what would frighten me is if there were such a thing as the “Joint Subcommittee on Teenagers and Technology” - which would be like groups of teens everywhere electing members for a joint myspace account on “Middle-aged people and elective surgery”… hmmmm….