Social Software

E-learning Toolkit Reflection

For this E-learning Toolkit Activity, I have decided to focus on four Social Software sites that I use personally.  The main sites that I use most frequently are Delicious and Twitter, and I have explored Digg and Flickr.

1.  Who “owns” materials posted by members?

Delicious

By posting content, you are granting permission to Delicious and others to access and use it in connection with Delicious and otherwise in connections with its affiliates’ businesses.

Digg

By creating and posting Content to Digg, you warrant that you own all rights to the Content, agree that the Content will be dedicated to the public domain under the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication, available at http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ and that you will not object to the use of the Content by Digg in any context.

Twitter

Twitter claims no intellectual property rights over the material you provide to the Twitter service.  Your profile and materials uploaded remain yours.  You can remove your profile at any time by deleting your account.  This will also remove any text and images you have stored in the system.

Flickr

You understand that all materials, including without limitation, information, data, text, software, music, sound, photographs, graphics, video, and email messages or other kinds of messages (“Content“), whether publicly posted or privately transmitted, are the sole responsibility of the person from which such Content originated. This means that you, and not Yahoo!, are entirely responsible for all Content that you upload, post, email, transmit, or otherwise make available via the Service. Yahoo! does not control the Content posted via the Service and, as such, does not guarantee the accuracy, integrity or quality of such Content. You understand that by using the Service, you may be exposed to Content that is offensive, indecent or objectionable. Under no circumstances will Yahoo! be liable in any way for any Content, including, but not limited to, for any

errors or omissions in any Content, or for any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of the use of or reliance upon any Content posted, emailed, transmitted, or otherwise made available via the Service.

2.  For what purposes can these materials be used?

Delicious

Delicious is explicitly not responsible for the manner or circumstances by which third parties access or use public content and is under no obligation to disable or otherwise restrict this access. Delicious provides you with the ability to retrieve and remove your posted content and your personal information from Delicious. This ability does not extend to copies that others may have made or to copies that Delicious may have made for backup purposes.

Digg

Social sharing of data: Digg allows other users to browse stories that you have Dugg, submitted or commented on. This information is made available publicly via your User Profile, on Digg Labs (labs.digg.com), via the public API (services.digg.com), or within the permalink URL of the story on which you performed the action. Digg may choose to post this data on other site features.

Twitter

The Twitter service makes it possible to post images and text hosted on Twitter to outside websites. This use is accepted (and even encouraged!). However, pages on other websites which display data hosted on Twitter.com must provide a link back to Twitter.

Flickr

Yahoo! does not claim ownership of Content you submit or make available for inclusion on the Service. However, with respect to Content you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Service, you grant Yahoo! the following worldwide, royalty free and non-exclusive license(s), as applicable:

• With respect to Content you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of Yahoo! Groups, the license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform, and publicly display such Content on the Service solely for the purposes of providing and promoting the specific Yahoo! Group to which such Content was submitted or made available. This licence exists only for as long as you elect to continue to include such Content on the Service and will terminate at the time you remove or Yahoo! removes such Content from the Service.

• With respect to photos, graphics, audio, or video you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Service other than Yahoo! Groups, the license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform and publicly display such Content on the Service solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available. This licence exists only for as long as you elect to continue to include such Content on the Service and will terminate at the time you remove or Yahoo! removes such Content from the Service.

• With respect to Content other than photos, graphics, audio or video you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Service other than Yahoo! Groups, the perpetual, irrevocable and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other works in any format or medium now known or later developed.

3.  Would using each site be appropriate with your students?

My students are grade one students, and therefore, many social software sites are not accessible to them because of their age.  Digg and Twitter require that users are at least 13 years of age.  Reading through the respective Terms of Service of each site, I could not locate age requirements for Delicious or Flickr.  That being said, I would not have students sign up themselves.  I would create classroom accounts on both services.  I would not have students bookmark sites to Delicious, rather I would direct them to the site to visit sites that I would like them to visit.  A Flickr account could be created to house photo collections of classroom projects.  I would not post photos of students on Flickr, unless I had parental permission.

4.  In your opinion, how well are the privacy interests of members represented?

Locating the Terms of Service for each site was very accessible.  That being said, some are easier and more straightforward to read and find the necessary information.  It is up to users to inform themselves before signing up to a service as Social Software sites are very clear with their expectations.   I would argue that if you are going to use a Social Software site, you are basically giving up your right to privacy.

References:

Delicious.  Terms of Service.  Accessed on-line July 18, 2009 from: http://delicious.com/help/terms

Digg.  Terms of Service.  Accessed on-line July 18, 2009 from: http://digg.com/tou

Flickr.  Terms of Service.  Accessed on-line July 18, 2009 from:  http://digg.com/tou

Twitter.  Terms of Service.  Accessed on-line July 18, 2009 from:  http://twitter.com/tos

Posted: 07|18|09 at 15:17. Filed under: Uncategorized.
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