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and when I do this….

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Learners on the Preparing For Employment Programme (PREP) at Tyne Metropolitan College are using Facebook, the popular social networking website, to help them keep a diary while attending a work experience placement. The diary is used as evidence for this unit, which is part of the Certificate in Employability and Personal Development. Facebook also helps the tutor to keep in touch and be more involved with the learners while they are away from the College.

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There are e-safety issues with using Facebook in this way, however with adequate guidelines in place for both staff and students, and under the assumption that students will check Facebook more often than college provided tools, this will remind then of the curriculum need to keep a diary.

Personally I would prefer using Posterous which can either be used with e-mail, on the web, or using mobile apps, as it would be a little easier for learners to post photographs and video to an online diary. From a privacy perspective, in my opinion it is easier to lock down Posterous than it is Facebook streams.

Dara O’Briain was among many who posted the following:

Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!! #IAmSpartacus

As you can see from the screenshot, another 95 people have retweeted Dara’s tweet. Dara was not along and probably thousands if not tens of thousands people tweeted the same thing…

Actually if you think about it, if a million people on Twitter sent that Tweet, all were fined, that’s £1bn that could be used to offset the spending cuts… A little bit of politics there!

There has been much written about the #IAmSpartacus meme today.

BBC News reports – Twitter anger over bomb tweeter

Guardian says – #IAmSpartacus campaign explodes on Twitter in support of airport joker

Channel 4 News writes – #Iamspartacus Twitter campaign takes off

It has also reached America, well you would expect that with Twitter.

LA Times – Twitter joke goes bad, users protest by evoking Spartacus

CNN – Mass Twitter campaign supports airport threat tweeter

The original tweet was a stupid joke, not a threat, a joke. The fact that two judges could not see that says a lot about how little the establishment understands social media. The protest may show, if Paul appeals again, that this was a joke between friends and in no way was any kind of serious threat.

That nice Stephen Fry has already said he will pay Paul’s fine.

Paul though lost his job because of the prosecution. The sad thing is that I doubt Paul will be the last person to be prosecuted for making a joke on Twitter.

via David Kernohan

Are all the people you are “friends” with on Facebook actually your friend?

Is it really important to know that the person you sat next to in A Level Economics had a coffee at their local Starbucks?

November 17th is National Unfriend Day, time to ensure that only your friends are your friends on Facebook.

Who’s watching your moves on Facebook? Employers, stalkers, federal agents, and even insurance companies have been known to scan Facebook profiles for information. Just as troubling are reports of Facebook account hackers, who put users at risk for identity fraud. Even if you safeguard personal information with a “Friends Only” setting, there is a chance you’ve friended someone whom you barely know or have never met.

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If you hate the idea of social networking and have never been on Facebook, then Facebook knows nothing about you. Correct? So how come when you set up a profile on the social network for the first time, it can suggest friends for you?

This echoes some of the stuff I have been talking about how I am concerned is that my privacy is affected by what other people post about me… in other words no matter how careful I am, other people are posting information and photographs about me all over the web.

Now part of that is because it is my job, if I give a presentation at a big conference, that will be online.

However when someone posts photos of when I was 14 on Facebook I have no control over those photos nor who sees them!

More from GMP.

Article on BBC News.

Facebook has introduced a raft of features aimed at giving users more control over their personal data.

A groups feature will allow users to specify circles of friends with whom they want to share different data.

For the first time, users will also be able to download all the data they have uploaded onto the site.

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