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Online social networking is now so deeply embedded in the lifestyles of tweens and teens that it rivals television for their attention...Nine- to 17-year-olds report spending almost as much time using social networking services and Web sites as they spend watching television. Among teens, that amounts to about 9 hours a week on social networking activities,compared to about 10 hours a week watching TV.

any students engage in highly creative activities on social networking sites...Overall, an astonishing 96 percent of students with online access report that they have ever used any social networking technologies, such as chatting, text messaging, blogging and visiting online communities

Eighty-one percent say they have visited a social networking Web site within the past three months and 71 percent say they use social networking tools at least weekly.

MacNeil was already using his own website to post assignments, useful links and samples of work in his communications-technology class, so Facebook seemed a logical next step.

Looking through Vaughan's class Facebook page, there are several discussion topics being debated daily and students -- old and new -- posting messages by the hour.

"It wasn't that it was any better than sending an e-mail or anything like that, it was that they seemed more willing to accept that media over the other ones,'' says MacNeil.

In my own class, I am encouraging students to venture out beyond the protected walls of the institutional LMS and use blog posting and discussions to create “transactional presence” and sustain cooperative and collaborative learning. However, I note that most students confine reading permissions to others associated with the University or even exclusively to class mates, thereby eliminating exposure to search engines and external readers and communities. A safer, choice, but one that serves to minimize spontaneous and emergent connections and relationships with people outside of the institution

he first  use verbal and non verbal behaviours by which we invite others to enter or to leave our individual spaces. The second is built upon on environmental constraints and opportunities we build and inhabit such as doors, fences, passwords and speaking platforms. Finally, Altman notes cultural constraints such as  the type of questions that are appropriately asked, the loudness of voice and the amount of touching that we use to build and reinforce interpersonal boundaries that culturally define privacy spaces and practices.

hus, it  should come as no surprise that privacy issues are a major concern of all who use the net and perhaps especially so for those using social software tools for both formal and informal learning. No easy asnwers, but I don’t see any compelling reasons to attemopt to totally lockdown our or our students capacity to explore and gain control over their own emerging sense of privacy and security.