Monday, June 21, 2010 HomeworkNYC presented “Meeting of the Minds: Youth, Social Media, and Education” a panel discussion with guest speaker danah boyd.

Dr. boyd is a researcher at Microsoft Research and a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Her research investigates everyday practices involving social media, with specific attention to youth engagement. She recently co-authored Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media. She is currently co-directing the Youth and Media Policy Working Group, funded by the MacArthur Foundation. She blogs at zephoria.org/thoughts and she is on Twitter @zephoria.

As an audience member and a user of social media, I found the presentation interesting and insightful. So many questions were answered:

• Why do teens really use social networking?
• Myspace vs. Facebook?
• Do teens use twitter?
• Who is looking online?

So, I’m sure you are reading this wondering, “okay, great program, why write a blog about it?” I wrote this blog because of the overwhelming responses from this event. I figured I should keep the conversation going, create a forum for questions, and hopefully move us all in the same direction.

If you missed the discussion, watch the video here: Meeting of the Minds: Youth, Social Media, and Education.

A handout with everyone's bio information is available at the bottom of the page.

Message from danah boyd:
Thanks so much for a fun day! Let me share some links that might be useful for folks:

• Internet Safety Technical Task Force Report (including a complete literature review of safety data):
  http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/pubrelease/isttf
• Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out
  http://www.amazon.com/Hanging-Out-Messing-Around-Geeking/dp/0262013363
• My articles and conference talks:
  http://www.danah.org/papers/