And to Vicki, those are good points about privacy. There is this tension between a desire to be open for the positive feedback that social spaces provide and the dark side that creeps in the same doors. When we sit alone in our rooms pecking into a keyboard, it does not feel like people are looking over our shoulders, peering through our blinds. The public-ness of it all is invisible. I am less concerned over “who taught her blogging” (more likely a friend) and prior lessons– she, like all the rest of us, are learning, re-learning as we go.

It seems no different than the first email spam I naively responded to and said, “No, I really do not need that body part enlarged, please do not bother me again” — we walk, trip, correct, and walk on.

People are not getting jobs because their information in Myspace is being perused and potential employers find their weekend doings unacceptable.

If a person needs a private journal, they should keep it private or use some sort of privately hosted blogging tool that requires a password to access. They could even us a private Wikispace.

You were very gracious. I wish the person who started Gemma blogging had done a better job educating her about the realities of public information.

These are the vaunted digital natives we keep reading about, in their natural habitat, exhibiting a fundamental illiteracy concerning the medium. Given the very sensitive material published on these sites, this lack of understanding is frightening. The ferocity of the response makes it clear that thus particular group are clearly very vulnerable — what happens when they run into a genuine creep?

Hate to sound like one of those MySpace naysayers — it occurs to me educators need to stop hiding from the web if they are to play a constructive role in enlightening and protecting their students.

Your public, sagacious response is advantageous to me both in my work and in in life. Thanks for the reminder.