My 3rd period class was cancelled today, and I went home to blog. Feeling uninspired to write, I decided to read first instead. I read a Danah Boyd Article. I started reading it and was surprised that it was from 2007. As it started with the history of social media, I was highlighting along when I realized that I had no idea what DB was talking about. I skipped to the conclusion and then I decided to go hunt down the websites as “research.” I was also being a good “digital native” by multitasking as I was listening to music on YouTube. I was curious about Benjamin Britten http://www.britten100.org/home for my upcoming winter Xmas season with my beloved choir IFC http://www.singaporeifc.org/ 😀
True to her words Friendster http://www.friendster.com/ was uber popular in SE Asia and that made me laugh as I have been to many of the cities sited. MySpace https://myspace.com/ was odd at first glance as there was a video of people flipping their hair and it was rather off putting and slightly nauseating actually. Then I was sliding through photos of people on MySpace, and there were only “older people” or 20-30 something’s and most looked like to be musicians, and then I spotted Jay Z & Justin Timberlake. DB was right again as MySpace had transcended into a musician website. I then went onto Facebook to see what changes they have made since August (it’s blocked at school at & I go offline at 6pm daily to have some human time.) While on FB I put a few status questions up for my monkeys (my term of endearment for my students), which I also found funny as DB mentioned social grooming (with monkey photo) in her Harvard video clip! 😀 How apropos!
After that I was sidetracked by two advertisements for http://www.justmillionaires.com/ and http://www.jdate.com/ I signed up just for fun to see what would happen and if any money was required. No money is required to date a millionaire so it seems, but to get access to people on jdate you do have limited access unless you want to pay. In addition, I think I recognized three men from my hometown! :O Personally I don’t believe in online dating, as people can lie even easier from behind their screen. That being said I do have friends who swear by it. I guess I have earned my “old & bitter” badges over the years of “live dating.” Is that even a term now? (Sigh.)
I will chalk up this experience and “whatever happens” to my experiment with Social Media for the day. Overall I did enjoy reading Dr. Danah Boyds’ article and I am becoming a fast fan of hers as I like her way of speaking, her creative bluntness when writing, and her personable presence when public speaking.
Now I must return to THIS class and blog out my feelings about Inquiry Based Learning. Wish me luck! …