Web 2.0 and Privacy concerns...
Referring to the Zimmer article from Monday’s class, this whole notion of Web 2.0 appears to be making a scene everywhere. And when I say scene, I’m just being overly dramatic… kind of. What I really mean is that people are actually becoming very where of its presence today, especially in terms of an individual’s own web presence (AKA social media). I’m not going to lie, I have so made so many social media accounts throughout the years… but I was “smart” (you could kind of say) because I use a pseudonym for the majority of my online presence. I only use my real name on Facebook because apparently that’s what you’re supposed to do. And because I’ve used my real name, everyone can locate my profile if they know where to look. Luckily, I have an incredibly common name, so I mean…there are, like, at least 300 other people with the same name from Canada with a Facebook profile. Mind you, because you can search friends using email, all of my contacts (yes, parents included) have found me on Facebook. So looking back to 2006 when I got Facebook (back when you actually had to have a university email address to be accepted to the network) and comparing it to now, I have changed so much information on my profile to purposely exclude personal information so as to keep my information private. Zimmer’s article had me interested in further researching Web 2.0 and issues of privacy, so obviously I Googled it and came across quite an interesting article titled “7 Things You Should Know About Privacy in Web 2.0 Learning Environments” by the EDUCAUSE Association (http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCoQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnet.educause.edu%2Fir%2Flibrary%2Fpdf%2FELI7064.pdf&ei=DzE_U4CoFuOs2gXH_4GABQ&usg=AFQjCNEo2XLrhiNCq3UEo-_rC8B5TXsURA&bvm=bv.64367178,d.b2I&cad=rja). (sorry, the article is in a .pdf format - only download it if you want to!)
In this article, the organization gives a scenario about a “Dr. Schorr” who had been using a blog tool through the university (so, like the OWL platform, I guess) to allow for discussion posts in his class. However, he wanted to change things around and ask his students to use a public blog platform in order for his students to receive feedback from anyone, not just those within the program. The scenario goes on to talk about privacy issue regarding the students’ grades and privacy, blah blah blah, you get it. The article then goes on to discuss what you should know about privacy and an online web 2.0 presence in the case of education. I thought this article was interesting because we have a similar situation going on in our class using tumblr! While we, as graduate students in MLIS know that we shouldn’t reveal all of our personal details online, and may develop alternative ways of participating (such as the majority of us have with these tumblr names we’ve created for this class) it is interesting that there are many people (*ahem* undergrads and high schoolers) who are not aware of these privacy concerns that may come back to haunt them in the future. This article talks about how teachers/professors can teach their students how to participate safely on public web 2.0 social media in a way that they can keep their personal information private. While this specifically pertains to an educational point of view, I feel like elements of this article are applicable to all those who are concerned about privacy with Web 2.0, and suggests ways that we can censor ourselves to ensure the safe practices and privacy of others on the internet. Check it out if you’re interested!
