Twitter, Television and Agents of Shield

Outside of watching sports on television, I don't watch much t.v.  It isn't because I am one of those who think everything on t.v. is junk, I just don't like to wade through all the content to find something I like.  Anyway, I have been anticipating Marvel's venture into broadcast television extending the Avengers story with Agents of Shield.  The excitement of the show kept me checking social media for any bits of information that I could get.  Through the updates I learned that there would be a live Twitter feed going during the first broadcast of the show.  I realize that this is probably pretty common, but it was the first time I really noticed a non-reality t.v. show having such a feed.  My impression of following a live Twitter feed during a show is that it would be terribly intrusive and break the suture of the show.  Nonetheless, I decided I would join in on the conversation.

It was kind of fun to read what others were thinking about the show as it proceeded, but soon after the first commercial break I got a little tired of trying to keep up with all the posts.  I also found most posts to be trivial and not interesting.  I didn't really care that some people were lamenting that they were missing another show while watching Agents of Shield.  I did like the posts where people repeated their favorite lines said by the characters.  I participated in that fun.  What I did find interesting, and would guess could make for some really interesting data for social scientists and marketers, were the trends in comments.  For example, I discovered that most people must not watch much television on their televisions.  Numerous posts were complaining how they had to watch the show on t.v. which I implied that most shows can be watched online before or in conjunction with the original broadcast of the show.  I have no idea if that is true or not.  Several tweeted that they were having a hard time dealing with the quality of the signal they were watching and wishing they could watch it online.  I'm sure other trends could have been pulled out of the feed, but it was interesting.  I don't know that I will follow feeds during shows often, but it was kind of fun.  

Oh, I did enjoy the show, and I definitely look forward to the second show next week.  

Internet Security

Last year at our school, the IT director and I started a series of Internet safety lessons that we teach to each different grade in the school from 6th to 12th grades. We cover topics from evaluating websites for research to Social Networking.  What is always interesting is that the students almost always know more about certain aspects and features of using the Internet than we do, but rarely do they know or even think about anything regarding securing their own personal information and identity.
This week we did a lesson with sixth grade on using Facebook and other social networking websites.  The students were familiar with the workings of Facebook and helped me browse around my own site, but by a show of hands, less than half of them who have an account (which is about 65% of them), had ever visited, to their knowledge, the security section of Facebook to set up the security parameters.  This verified for us that the topic of our lesson was needed, but this is concerning.  My hope is that when students of any age 6-12 grades open a social networking account, that not only parents and adult family visit frequently, but that they also help with talking about and setting security parameters.  However, I visited many of the students' Facebook sites as a "non-friend" to discover that many of them are wide open to view and post. Scary.
We close our presentation telling the students that social networking sites are not bad, but sometimes bad people ruin good things.  They should use Facebook, Skype, Twitter and other social networking sites when their parents allow, but they must be smart about how they use them.  We highly recommend they talk with their parents about the security of their sites and encourage them to visit the security section of whatever site they use. "Go there today!" we say.  Just like everything else in education and working with kids, we know that several will not do anything.  Maybe because they think nothing bad will happen to them, maybe because they just forget in their busy day and minds, or maybe because they are not sure they really understand.  Hopefully, the lesson will get them to think about these issues and someday they will take action to protect themselves.