Prompt# 9: safety and security

Imagine you have a 10 year old relative (sibling, cousin, niece/nephew) that sends you a Facebook friend request. This takes you by surprise, but you bite, and accept the Friend request. You immediately send them a message about being safe and secure on Facebook. What do you tell them to do? What do you tell them not to do?

Your assignment is to write this letter to your young family member. After you have written this letter. Debrief me and tell me why you wrote what you did.

Prompt #8: no prompt

No prompt for today.

Prompt #7: April 22 FINAL PROJECT

Hello!

Please be in contact here if you would like to work with someone or a group for the final project.

So for this prompt, please respond with the idea you are thinking about so we do not go into the individual meetings blind. This way I can have an idea of what you would like to do. Consider this prompt a proposal for the final project. What would you like to do? How does it relate to class?

You should all read each others ideas, perhaps some of you can work together.

I am going to set up time slots for our meetings on Wednesday. Let me know if you are working with a group because I will need more time for those.

So here are the times:

4:15pm
4:25pm
4:35pm
4:45pm
4:55pm
5:05pm
5:15pm

Sign up for these in a comment whenever you figure out what works for you. The rest of your "proposal" is due by 1pm on Wednesday.

Prompt #7: April 20

Today's prompt is all about privacy. Before you read the FB privacy statement, think about what online privacy means to you. Tell me a bit about it. What do you consider to be privacy online?

Then look at Facebook's privacy statements. http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/policy.php?ref=pf

What are your reactions? Anything upset you? Anything make you feel better? Is FB in line with what you think privacy online should be?

Remember this, and last Wednesday's prompt are due tomorrow by 1pm.

Journal #3: Dan Smith

I logged on to Facebook today and saw the ominous "What's on your mind?" field at the top of my home screen. I've been stretched so thin lately with projects in class and work I haven't had time to think about it. Honestly right now the only thing on my mind is thinking about getting through this week. I've been feeling artistic lately, so i've decided to enlighten people on cool things you can do with your Facebook profile picture. I'm going to suggest you first click on this link and read it: http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/02/facebook-profile-photo-hacks/

I find they are pretty cool and I espeically like using the blank background to toy with my profile pic.

Also, I highly reccomend you scroll down to the bottom of your profile and change your display language to English (Pirate). It makes for a good laugh.

Prompt #6: April 15

Tax day! Better have those done :)

On to class material...

As I said in class today I want you to create a fake profile on Facebook. Go nuts, completely make someone up, add a fake photo(s), etc. Make sure your fakester is different than you in either gender or race. Interact with people. Get people to friend you. Be as mysterious and wacky as you want to be...nothing illegal please (e.g., no threats to public safety).

When you are done with this please blog about your experience.
Who did you decide to be? Why? What are they all about? What kind of feedback did you receive? Did you feel creepy doing this, why? Etc.

MAKE SURE YOUR NEW FRIEND SENDS ME A FRIEND REQUEST!!! I need to see the finished product!

Journal #3- Jonathan

So as I wrote my response to the prompt it reminded me of two experiences that I had with facebook that almost made me get rid of mine. My first bad experience was when my older brother found out I had a facebook. He had made one, but had no information on it and told me all the time how stupid facebook was and how unsafe it was to post information on it. I decided to make one anyways and not tell him about it. I had all the privacy setting on as high as they go so no one could search me or even know I existed (on facebook) unless I friended them. Also at the same time I had a girlfriend that no one in my family really knew about. They knew I was good friends with this girl and that I hung out with her a lot, but they didn't know anything else. Anyone who looked at my facebook though would clearly know that we were dating. One day I got a call from my older brother asking about her and I did not know he had seen my facebook, so I just denied dating her. Then he told me he saw my facebook and I was so confused how. Then I found out that one of my friend's older sisters had made a facebook for my friend and I was facebook friends with him. The older sister became friends with my older brother in college and happened to be hanging out when she went on her brothers facebook and it came up that I was friends with him. I know it sounds complicated, but thats what I thought too!? I thought I could hide my facebook, but clearly no matter how many privacy settings I put there are still ways around it. The second bad facebook experience I had was when i got a request from one of my best friends, who I thought was very against facebook. I accepted it only to see that the status was "I am gay and wanted to tell everyone through facebook". I knew right away that something was not right so i called my friend and he had no clue that he had a facebook page. We found out the next day that some kid thought it would be funny to make a facebook page for him and pretend to be him. Not only did he make the facebook page but he went and friended over 400 people. After some school and parent intervention he took the facebook page down and made lots of apologizes. But it showed me how easy it is to make a facebook page and pretend to be someone you are not. And for that reason I am very cautious in accepting friend requests usually. 

Prompt #5: April 13

Take a look at your profile. Think about the information you wish to portray to your network of friends on Facebook. What does this tell us about you? Does this help us to understand who you are? Why or why not?

Clearly you make decisions about what to post in your profile about yourself. Besides issues of privacy, how do you decide what to include? What to exclude?

Journal #2 - Roger Hong

The new layout and design of facebook is hit or miss. While I do appreciate the highlights bar on the right side as a good way to keep up with pictures and videos my friends have posted up. Why is it necessary when it was just as easy to keep it on the mini feed? It was far easier to keep up with the pictures when they were staring at you in the middle of the screen instead of shrunken down and put off to the side. And this new ticker thing. I think it's waaaay to detailed. Status updates and friends writing on friends wall is great. But I definitely do not need to know what everyone has been doing on their applications. There are so many of the things that everyone is using a different one and I don't really care what your favorite countries are. Also with the ticker, is it really necessary to tell me what I write on a friends wall? I think I would know, I just wrote it. I think the new facebook design isn't as drastic and bad as people made it out to be, but they took a step back and lost functionality and accesibility.

Journal #2: Dan Smith

The Events feature is something I can get behind. Without it, I probably wouldn't know about/go to half of my friends events. It makes remembering parties and dates so much easier than it normally would be having to write it in my planner. For example, I was able to go to an International dinner at the YMCA on campus a few weeks ago that I otherwise wouldn't have known about. It also helps you stay connected with weak-tie friends. Another example of something I was invited to recently is a Saturday Morning Cartoon party that sounds really fun. The person who invited me is someone I wouldn't normally talk to about hanging out outside of school, but because of Facebook I am now planning on going and having a good time. Apparently their roommates, whom I've never met, invited about 7 of my close friends...what a small world :)

Prompt #4: April 8 - playing catch-up

You all need to catch up on some writing!

Week One

• Prompt #1: everyone has completed
• Journal #1 (what you love/hate about FB): Dan, Jonathan, Marlisha and Roger completed - 2 missing

Week Two

• Prompt #2: everyone has completed
• Prompt #3 (Al Gore speech): Dan, Jonathan, and Marlisha completed - 3 missing responses
• Journal #2: Jonathan has completed, missing 5 responses

When I taught this last semester, things were a little more self-evident because it was only one meeting per week, meaning one prompt, and one journal per week. So I do understand that this is a little tricky to get down. Just know that you have to answer one prompt question for every class period. So there will ALWAYS be something due by 1pm on days we have class. Also there is one journal per week, due by 1pm on Wednesday. Bookmark this blog, send it to yourself in an email, do what ever you have to do to remind yourself that all of the homework for this class is online.

See you all at 4:30!

Journal #2- Jonathan

Something about facebook that has been really annoying me recently is facebook chat. I used to use aim a lot more than I probably should have, but now I just use facebook chat because it is more convenient. I know that using these instant messaging services it is reducing the amount I actually talk to people in person. But they are so much easier to use and faster than having to make a phone call. I wish I did not use them though because it is way less personal than actually calling someone. In the same way that wishing someone happy birthday on their facebook is nice, but if they received a phone call from each of the people that wished them happy birthday on their facebook wall they would be much happier. I have been trying to stop using facebook chat as much, but facebook is making it easier for me than I expected because facebook chat does not work half the time. And that is what really annoys me about it; if facebook is going to offer the chat service, it should make sure it works all the time. Another thing about facebook that has been upsetting me is the new layout. I really dislike that the events were moved to the bottom of the right hand side. One of the main reasons I use facebook is to find out about events, but where there used to be the events nice and clear, facebook now puts advertisements. 

Prompt #3: April 6

For this week's prompt please read the following speech presented by Al Gore:

http://w2.eff.org/Infrastructure/Govt_docs/gii_gore_buenos_aires.speech

Please review your initial reactions about the speech. Do you think he has a valid point? Is it realistic or too rosy? How do you feel about our progress as a globe knowing this speech was delivered almost 15 years ago? Do you think that social networking helps or hinders a "global information infrastructure?"

If this concept interests you, feel free to find out more information at:
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_8/borgman/#b12

Do note this is probably the only reading I will assign all semester. Although it may seem long it really isn't. It is a speech. Please spend the 20 minutes reading it and reflecting upon it as we will be discussing your reactions in class.

Journal #1

What I hate about facebook is its recent additions of basically everything it can cram into itself. What appealled to me originally about facebook was the simplicity of it all. It was just a profile page, a way to send messages back and forth between friends so you can keep in touch with everyone, and maybe looking at a couple of pictures. Now with the introduction of applications, there's just a ridiculous amount of useless crap on facebook. Every day I constantly get spammed with invites to install this, install that, this friend super poked you, do you want to go bowling. NO! I don't need any of these things. I hate how cluttered it all has gotten. Before this recent update, when you looked at some peoples facebook page all it was was a wall of applications. That's what I hate about facebook, how bloated it has gotten.