week 6

COPY AND PASTE LITERACY?
In my opinion as an educator, I believe myspace is for communication between teens and adults, but at times it has been abused. I know from experiece at my school a couple of 7th graders were suspended for posting pictures with students flashing gang signs in the classroom (that were taken by a camera cell phone). Some of the students that were posted didn't even know that their picture were even on the web. Myspace should be modeled in a positive way, so with teachers using it in classrooms, it could be a daily way of journaling between the teacher and students or between student to student. The question is: Is myspace really literacy? With all the copying and pasting, what really is the individual's work or even his or her own words.
Myspace is a way teens and adults can freely express themselves, but need to be shown how in a positive way. Using myspace is a way to keep up with our digital world in a expressive way. It ould be educational and pure enjoyment. There are teens that use myspace as an attention getter which can turn sexual and then there are others that use the site to bulley their peers (which can lead to other serious situations).
Myspace is turning into a commericalized blogging site then a individual creative site that it was supposed to be. Literacy? How can it be a great literacy when most of the information on everyone's site is simply copy and paste or videos. Copying and pasting doesn't take much skill.

The Perils and Pitfalls of Wikipedia
Wikipedia? Good resouce site? As a 2nd grade teacher, I used this site for my students when we were researching about US symbols and I thought is was great. Until I came to one of the US symbols were were researching on Wikipedia and half the the information was typed over with information that wasn't even about our US symbol. That was the last time I used Wikipedia, mainly because heaven knowns what could be typed on this site. At the present time, teachers every where are determining whether using Wiipedia as a resource place is valid or not.