Radiohead and More

I have two different thoughts this week in my brain as I read and watched the assigned elements. The first is more simple: Radiohead, the music group, released their latest album in a digital format and allowed fans to pay whatever they wanted for the album.  After a set amount of time, the digital format was closed and the rights to distribution were given to the a record company, but the initial release of the album was done in an entirely new and different way than most people in the music industry.  Additionally, they asked fans to create storyboards for an animated music video and then the paid the best entries to make a one-minute clip.  I thought this was a really fun and legal take on the idea of listen and create process that Larry Lessig discussed. 

Second thought:  I was talking with a friend of mine who is a teacher this week.  Our discussion focused on the use of Facebook by students in here elementary school.  She teaches sixth grade, but had recently learned of students in third grade that had Facebook pages that did not have any security settings attached to them.  When she was exploring the students pages she noticed that there were many other students (as young as first grade) who did not have any privacy settings on their Facebook pages.  In looking through the Facebook terms of use, the Facebook people clearly state that users must be thirteen years of age which these students are clearly not.  Additionally, I asked her what the school has done to protect these students.  She said that they have put on internet safety seminars for parents but only five parents attended.  These are the questions that have been rolling around in my mind since I spoke with this teacher.  1) Since much of this media participation happens in the home setting what role should teachers/schools play in intervening in the situation of the very young and unprotected Facebook users?  2) Are there any additional security means that are possible on the side of the Facebook site that will stop these young children from having pages? 

For me this further motivates my understanding for the need for media literacy education in the classroom from a very early age.  I think that Tracy Mitrano's article had some very practical and useful guidelines for parents in teaching their children about protected internet activity, however I did not see any suggestions for teaching younger children.  I am not sure a young child would fully understand the ideas of only posting what you might "display in physical space."  The role of teachers was not really in the scope of her article outside of a college setting, but I wonder what she would suggest to teachers whose students are avid users without a lot of parental supervision? 

So at the end of this post I am torn by the excitement of students making mash ups and artists and musicians putting their creations out there for people to rework and remake.  And by the fear that young students already have an online presence that is not protected or legal and all their friends are also on the internet sharing personal information.  The only responses in my brain are "Yikes" and "I'm confused."  Any ideas fellow classmates?