Friday, June 19, 2009

Online Personality Cleanup: Goodbye MySpace.

Contrary to what most people think, summer can be the busiest time for teachers. Aside from taking care of all the personal tasks we neglect during the school year, it’s often a time for reorganizing, cleaning, prepping and planning for the school year. I’m taking a few moments this month to clean up my online personality; to organize all the virtual clutter in my life. First item thrown off my boxcar- MySpace.

I’ve had my MySpace account for about 3 years. I hoped on board the idea of social networking as a way of easily communicating with people I couldn’t very well hang out with when I lived away from home. As more of my friends and family members set up their pages it did become more exciting, but then Facebook came on the scene. When all my MySpace contacts were on Facebook, plus some, it became evident it was no longer necessary to keep two social sites; I opted for the more popular (and much more user-friendly) one. Goodbye MySpace, off the train you go.

I’m glad I had one though; any teacher who wants to have a thorough understanding of social networking needs to really dive in and explore it for himself. I remember the awe and sudden respect my middle school students gave me when they found out I had a MySpace account. (Of course this was always followed with the inevitable question, “Will you be my friend?”….but that’s for another post…) Readers if you have not yet created a MySpace account I encourage you too…but then chuck it and go to Facebook.

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