Thing #18

Whew! I was so ready to get to this Thing to share my thoughts on MySpace. I have had a MySpace account since a few months after Tom created the darn thing. In case you don't know who Tom is, he's the one who is on everyone's page. He's the brains of this much talked about social network.

Just like anything, MySpace has attracted some bad actors and like life on the outside (of MySpace) you do have to be careful, but for the majority of us (those who have been around since the beginning) are at MySpace to stay connected or connect with new people. Until MySpace hit the news, it was a relatively quietly kept secret among those of us who were in college.

Anyhow, that's my spill. I know that I have students who are on MySpace and their parents don't know it and I know they lied about their ages. I would have never known my students were on MySpace unless they looked me up because I certainly wasn't looking for them. I finally had to open two accounts, one for my students who are under 18, Bowman97, and my original account, Nascargal101 for my friends and former students who are at least 18. It works for me. My original account is private, only my friends can see it, and my account for my students is public.

On another note, some kids use MySpace to blog about their feelings and in a way, I find that comforting because at least they aren't holding those feelings in. MySpace is how one of my former student's parents found out she was cutting herself (yes, I told her mom to read her blog), how I found some of my former students who had graduated from or were near graduating from high school, and I use it to dish out advice to kids (present and past) who sometimes trust me with their problems before they trust their parents. They all know my rule: I WILL TELL IT! and IF YOU ARE IN DANGER, I WILL TELL IT!

Personally, I wouldn't use MySpace in my classroom because it's just too much fun and there is not enough control over the content for it to be of any use.

One word of caution to those who don't use MySpace all of the time, be careful of where you get your layouts, etc. You could run into a killer virus or a spybot.