the digital haze.

Image by dave_mcmt via Flickr

this is not a joke; that's actually the name.

i was looking around for advances in technology in public schools, and i found new media high school. it's a charter school in philadelphia specializing in, what else, new media. the curriculum is based primarily around digital multimedia and project-based learning, intended to give students skills that will be of greater benefit to them in their professional lives.

their aim is to go beyond the textbook-memorization study techniques of the past and teach to students to be actively engaged in the problems they are presented with and think critically about solutions.

while it might sound simple enough, it's actually a pretty innovative form of pedagogy. i think you'd be hard-pressed to find many teachers who would be able to conform to this method, though i think it might benefit the students.

this discovery mainly made me wonder; what is the future of technology in regard to education? we already have distance-learning programs, but will there ever be a program in place for the majority of public school students to opt for such? and also, what will this mean for certain classes where experience is imperative? as an undergrad studying art education, this is a real concern. when will conveniences and "inter-connectedness" online begin to overtake the real-life interconnectedness that interaction provides?

Image via Wikipedia

wednesday morning i logged onto facebook and was immmediately presented with a message about how the site was returning to its original terms of use because its recent revision was causing such an uproar with users.

i'll be honest, i didn't even know they had revised the dang thing. realizing this, and the fact that i had no idea what facebook's policy was involving what they could do with my image/information, i decided to probe further.

first of all, i was surprised to find out that if you are under 18 and not enrolled in high school or college, you are violating the terms of use! who'dda thunk it?

also, i chuckled at the rule about not creating false representations and impersonating other people. i tested this out by searching for lauren conrad (of laguna beach and the hills fame) and promptly received 10 different people with "lauren conrad" profiles within the first few pages.

"By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof..."

i must admit, the above statement is a little frightening. not enough so to prevent me from using the site, but knowing that a company has every right to use photos of my friends and i to advertise without notice is a little disconcerting.

"we do not screen or approve Developers". yep, that's what they said. basically, all of those nifty applications you add are totally unregulated. scary stuff.

"When we are notified that a user has died, we will generally, but are not obligated to, keep the user's account active under a special memorialized status for a period of time determined by us to allow other users to post and view comments." what i'd like to know is who gets to determine the appropriate amount of time to memorialize someone who has died? i feel like this is probably outside of the scope of a social networking site.

after reviewing facebook's terms of use and their policies on privacy and things of that nature, i've realized that it's really worthwhile to read these documents before getting involved. i know that it's a big pain and most of us just don't want to take the time to filter through seemingly useless information, but it may just be worth it to see how much of your "virtual rights" you're surrendering.

keep that in mind the next time you blindly click the "i have read and agree to..." button.