Today, as I read my favorite blogs, I noticed that many of them pointed to this page: SchoolBoredom.com a.k.a How to Get to MySpace at School.
The site’s mission:
Welcome to SchoolBoredom.com, where you can get on MySpace in School! Does your school’s internet filter or firewall block myspace at school? Now you can easily get around those filters and firewalls! Just enter the URL below, and you could be surfing MySpace from school in just a few seconds!
Sites like this come as no surprise to me. Like it or not, MySpace/FaceBook/Friendster are spaces where many kids live online. It is where they present and represent themselves. (If someone tried to keep me from meeting my friends in the parking lot of the Seaview movie theater in Canarsie on Friday nights, I would have found a way to get there, even though I may not have been aware of all of the safety issues I now better understand.)
But somedays I feel I am the little boy with his finger in the dike, relentlessly trying to hold back a flood.
Though we do lots of curricular blogging and other types of 2.0 stuff, our school, like many others, blocks MySpace. I am a blogger. I am a believer in social networking. I believe we learn best in communities. Yet, most days, I can live with this decision. My students’ MySpace activity is largely social, not academic. Issues of intellectual freedom aside, I’ve reached peace with the academic vs. personal use thing.
However vigilant our network administrator is, the flood looms, and I cannot hold it back with my finger. The neverending march of proxy servers guides and tunnels my learners around the network filters. I discover new ones each day. Our filters are no match for the slightly determined student.
So what do we do? With many students, the chat about academic vs. social/home use kinda works. For many others, the attitude that “if I can do it, I will” wins out.
But I truly hate functioning as a MySpace enforcer. I hate looking over students’ shoulders.
I have also spent some time in MySpace space. I have a page I seldom visit. I know it’s fun. I know it can be dangerous. And I know we cannot avoid the conversations that adults must have with young people about the consequences attached to how they represent themselves online. I’ve had them with my own kids.
I know we are in a transitional time. I’d just like to have my finger back.
