Monthly Archives: February 2009

Feb 14 2009

How the World Sees You

There’s a certain sense of naivety that goes along with folks who sign up for social networking.  After all, online is a great place to share information, photos, play games, and interact with these people.  The leader in this field has to be Facebook, hands down.

BusinessWeek, last summer, reported that Facebook is the number one network globally.  It is an excellent example of how you can create a network of friends and stay in touch.  I have an account and stay in touch with The Boy in Toronto, the Wease in LaSalle, and Bubby next to me on the couch.  At one time, they were family, now they’re more than that — their friends.

They are good friends too.  I trust them with my information and they trust me with theirs even though the threat of cutting off allowances really doesn’t mean much anymore.

I do have other friends too.  These friends are a little less close.  These friends are folks that have asked to be friends of mine and I’ve carefully made sure that I know who I let into this circle of friends.

Now, it gets serious.  It’s one thing to let my kids know that my favourite colour is green but does the rest of the world need to know?  Obviously, your favourite colour is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to information that you provide online.

Facebook provides a complete section about how you control who gets to see your information.  It should be a setting that is pushed to users periodically to verify.   Since it isn’t, all users should take a review of things just so that you know what information you’re providing and how others see you and your personal details.

The link to check when settings appears right on the main menu.

Check your privacy settings, in particular your profile settings.  It is here that you determine who has access to what.  It does get serious because there are typically two settings – “Your Friends” and “Friends of Friends”.  This “Friends of Friends” should give you some concern.  While you may carefully select your friends, how do your friends choose their friends?  In some circles, folks try to have as many friends as they can at the expense of wise choices.  With that setting, the decisions made by others have an impact on you.

Above and beyond these settings, you have control over all information that you provide.  Depending upon your ultimate goal, I would suggest that less is best.  For example, there’s a spot for your birthday.  You may wish to let people know that your birthday is on August 14 so that they don’t miss it.  But, do you need to provide the year so that your friends or friends of a friend know that you’re a 16 year old attending a particular secondary school?

So, I would suggest that it is time well spent to go over everything that you do provide online with a lens towards the question – “Do people really need to know this?”  Then, there is an acid test.

In the privacy page, you have the option to see yourself through the eyes of one of your friends.  Type the name of one of your friends and see just what they see.  In the picture below, you’ll see how my best friend sees me.

I could share more but she knows it anyway.

If you have a Facebook or other account, you really owe it to yourself to try to determine just how the world sees you.  In these days of security, identity theft, cyberbullying, and the lot — not all friends are necessarily friendly.

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Feb 14 2009

links for 2009-02-13

Feb 13 2009

A Special Day

Today is quite the day, if you follow the numbers.

It’s Friday the 13th, a day grounded in superstition.  I’m guessing that this link in Wikipedia will be hit quite heavily as folks everywhere try to figure out the background and reason for paraskavedekatriaphobia.  After all, it’s things like this that generate rational and irrational fear in folks.  It generates concepts for movies, viruses and all kinds of other discussions.  Speaking of Friday the 13th viruses, the next day spawned the next day virus for Saturday the 14th.

I even remember at university having to prove mathematically that every year will have at least one Friday the 13th.  You can delve more deeply into the topic here.

Today is also a special day for another significantly different reason.

Today is 1234567890 Day.

This is very significant for those who use or rely on computers running Unix or based upon Unix.  On midnight of January 1, 1970, the Unix clock was set to zero.  Every second thereafter generates another digit to the number.  This is how Unix keeps track of time.

Now this is significant because it makes it relatively easy to calculate the difference between two times.  It also generates an algorithm that’s universal and not easily messed up between boxes and algorithms.  Online, there are lots of places where you can ask for a conversion like here.

So, unlike a number that’s somehow generated from superstition, here’s a really important and significant number.  Somehow, I don’t think that it will be celebrated nearly as much in classrooms today.

However, people that do appreciate the significance will party like there’s no tomorrow.

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Feb 12 2009

links for 2009-02-12

Feb 12 2009

Sharing Vulnerability

It was with great interest that I read Jeff Pulver’s entry in his blog this morning.  It’s been making me spin on things since then.  I’m still not sure that I have it right in my mind but thought that I should at least jot down my current thoughts on this.

Whether it be online or face to face, you meet all kinds of folks with all kinds of personalities.  Such is the joy of the variety of people and it’s something that you can definitely celebrate.  Some people rub me the right way and some people rub me the wrong way.  Definitely face to face, you get more social clues about a person than you do online.

I find that my reaction is the same to both online and face to face acquaintances.

It is the person who knows everything, has no room for flexibility, when things fail blame someone else, talking in the abstract, never produces anything except opinion, … that rub me the wrong way.  Perhaps it’s because I know so little that I resent these overbearing personalities.  Ultimately, they will hit the wall or just run into someone more overbearing than they.

In Jeff’s post, he talks about sharing your vulnerabilities online and exposing what is probably the most human side of you online.  Now, I’m sure that we don’t want to get into the act of exposing everything but, if you truly believe that you’re a life-long learner, then consider it.  Think of your first day in a class in high school.  Chances are, you were a clean slate, about to embark on some serious learning.  Why can’t the same thing apply today, in whatever context you choose?

I believe that it’s the notion of shared learning that makes for the best of friends and relationships.  Knowing that you’re all in the same life raft rowing together towards knowledge creates the best possible learning group.  Perhaps leveraging each other’s vulnerabilities will yield the greatest return in terms of learning and satisfaction.


Image via Wikipedia
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Feb 12 2009

links for 2009-2-12

By dougpete • Posted in Uncategorized
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Feb 11 2009

In Your Backyard

If you missed all the excitement of using Google Earth the first time, you need to jump on it this time around.

The programmers at Google seem to be working overtime these days adding increased functionality to many of the Google offerings and certainly Google Earth is one of them.

With the release of Google Earth 5, you have the ability now to browse, not only the sky, but now Mars, and under the sea.  Your horizons just got expanded.  You need to download or upgrade Google Earth as soon as possible.  In addition to the application itself, there is a new plug-in that will let you run Google Earth content embedded in a web page.  Apparently, WordPress doesn’t like it so here’s just a picture.

essex_county

Sometimes, though, we get so excited about the new features that we forget that there’s some great things in our own backyard.  When I do workshops, I point out some of the oddities that you’ll see in Google Earth from good ol’ Essex County.

Here are a few placemarks of some things that we talk about and discuss.  The ability to wander around your neighbourhood virtually with Google Earth is an exciting concept.

So, absolutely explore Mars.  It’s fascinating.  Checkout the locations of the Mars Landers.  But then, head home and look in your own backyard.

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Feb 11 2009

links for 2009-02-10

Feb 10 2009

Kindness

Did you know that this is Random Acts of Kindness Week?  How are you planning to celebrate?

If you’re looking for some ideas or inspiration, turn to the website:  http://www.actsofkindness.org/.

From here, you can create a website, download free calendars, and there’s an entire teachers’ section with all kinds of ideas.

There’s no excuse for not doing something out of kindness to make someone else the beneficiary.

Let me offer just one example and tag onto something that I posted in this blog recently.

Go forth and find a student or classroom blog.  Read it; understand the intent and then show a little kindness to the blogger.  The greatest gift that a blogger can receive is for a kind and thoughtful response to a post.  It will take you all of three minutes and can have an incredible impact on a writer somewhere.

I challenge you.


100_2175 by echoesofstars
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