DC-area schools: Action on blogs

Facebook.com has been the main focus of schools' actions against student blogging, the Washington Post reports, but MySpace.com and Xanga.com have also gotten school officials' attention. So far, private schools in the Washington, D.C., area have been the most aggressive: Sidwell Friends School "prohibited students from using their school email addresses to register for access to Facebook"; the Barrie School "asked a student to leave over the misuse of a blog"; and, before the holidays, Sidwell, Georgetown Day School, and the Madeira School "wrote to parents to warn them" about Facebook. But area public schools are now joining ranks, with blog-focused Internet safety meetings for parents. Examples of blog posts schools want parents to know about, according to the Post: "an Alexandria girl with an abusive mother confides that she wants to have a baby, even though it would 'most likely make everything 5,000 times harder'; a girl from a Fairfax County school posts photos of herself in a bikini, inviting boys to comment." Page 3 of the Post's article looks at the attraction of these blogging sites for teenagers. Here's Sports Illustrated's "A Quick [2-pp] Guide to Facebook.com," as in "Sure, there is a lot of posturing on Facebook. It's the college bar scene [although there are high school Facebooks], and you want to send out the right vibe."