This Is JEOPARDY!

Have you watched Jeopardy recently? When I was younger Jeopardy always stood out because it was not the typical game show with all the lights and sequins and flashy products. It was kind of boring. It was really intellectual. It seemed like something for brainiacs. In my house, it usually came on right after the evening news, so if no one thought about changing the channel, we all ended up watching it. Well, I have not watched the show in a long time, but I came home to my sister watching it the other day. It had some of its usual categories, poetry and geography and so on, but then there was the category of Blogs and Bloggers. When did Blogs become the intellectual category that is at a level high enough to be on Jeopardy? When did Jeopardy become so “in the know”? I continued to watch and another category popped up that was based around popular song lyrics. These included things from Lady Ga-Ga and the Beastie Boys. Has Jeopardy really changed away from the boring intellectual or am I just older and now understand more?

I thought it was incredibly interesting to see how this kind of technology and media has changed and been influenced by the newer media. I guess I did not realize how important the blogging world had become that it would be included on Jeopardy. The whole category included specific excerpts from Blogs and the contestants had to name who wrote them or what Blog they were from. Or a Blog name was given and they had to name the Blogger. It kind of shocked me that people would know all these things. What was also interesting was that there were three of us watching this and none of us knew any of the blogs that were brought up, we were all clueless. It just goes to show that I guess Jeopardy is hip in its own special way.

Will you be my friend?

Blurry lines on Facebook are all too common now. I have now had several instances where I had to stop and really think before I accepted a friend request or posted something to Facebook. I work at a school with 5-12 year olds during the summer. This past summer we added some of our previous students as “junior counselors”. This meant that all of our helpers for the summer were technically old enough to be on Facebook. One girl, whom I’ve known since she was 5, wanted to friend me on Facebook. The hard part about this decision was that we had only ever had a student-teacher kind of relationship. I do not have anything bad on my Facebook that I mind her seeing, but I did not know if it crossed the line. It was strange to see that there were several other teachers at the school who had accepted her friend request, but still there were others that said that it crossed the line of an appropriate relationship with a student. I finally accepted her friend request but made it limited in the security settings.

It is interesting to see all the new controversies and things you have to think about when new technology and new media come out. I found one news article on this exact controversy. It was so popular that a New York news station picked up the story of what was happening in Utah. The school board in Utah was actually trying to ban student-teacher friendships on Facebook. The other interesting part of this news story was that it ended with them asking their viewers to contribute to a poll on the issue. News commenting on new media using new media…. O the world we live in…

Mamma always said to mind your manners

After discussion of family members and more generations joining things like Facebook, I started to think about all the unspoken etiquette of all the new media and technology that we have. These are things that you learn as you use the media, but it seems that the young adult generations are able to pick up on this etiquette easier than any other generations. I have two prime examples that show this.

My cousin, when she first got a Facebook in 9^th grade, hadn’t quite learned some of the appropriate uses of Facebook. She posted on my wall asking if I had heard that my grandma was sick and not doing well. This made me worry and I had to call my parents and get the update. They told me that she was not doing well and that they were waiting to call me until after they had more information and they were sure it wouldn’t interrupt my day. My cousin just seemed to not understand that there are some things that you don’t post on people’s walls, and there are some things that you do not communicate through Facebook. This is one of those etiquettes that is not written anywhere or really spoken about, but it is expected that you know.

At the other end of the spectrum, my aunt got angry at a family member and used Facebook as the place to take out her anger. She used this person’s wall to post a rant with name calling and insults. This is one of those places where you do not try to yell at someone because, firstly, it is very public, but secondly, the person can just delete these posts so it makes no sense.

These are more extreme versions of people not knowing the proper etiquette, but there are a million more examples that I’m sure anyone who uses the sites or technology can come up with. The point is that, how do we learn all of these rules? How is it that some generations catch on faster than others? Is there any way to fix these manner mishaps or do people just have to live and learn?