Archive for Safety

What’s on the tube today?

YouTube has profoundly changed the Internet landscape since its creation only three and a half years ago. People use it for video blogging, for product promotion, for political and social activism, for teaching others, for pouring their broken hearts out or simply for fun. Schools often find it hard to know how to deal with YouTube. While students typically love browsing for videos, it is very time- and bandwidth-consuming, and although you can find lots of content with educational value, it is also full of irrelevant and sometimes distasteful material.

In response to some of  these concerns, a number of alternative video sites have cropped up in recent years, of which I will discuss three (and include a sample video):

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MySpace Privacy Problems

myspace
What is Social Networking?

Many of our students are members of MySpace. MySpace is a social networking site that offers users a personalized page that can contain photos, videos and personal information about themselves. Students can connect with peers and set up their own online networks of friends. The site has privacy settings that allow users to moderate who can access their site. The minimum age requirement to sign up for a MySpace site is 14, although it is possible that a younger student could sign up and enter a false age.
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