International Law

Eric Darr recently had a moment that a lot of modern parents can relate to. He was watching his 16-year-old daughter click around frenetically on Facebook while juggling several conversations on her iPhone.

?I was frankly amazed,? says Darr, the provost at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology. ?I thought, 'How do you live like this?' It struck me to think, 'What if all this wasn?t there?' ?

So Darr conceived an experiment designed to parse how one lives with social media -- precisely by examining how one lives without it. He decided to pull the plug on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and AOL Instant Messenger for one week. But rather than conduct the experiment within his own home, Darr decided to take advantage of his position as Harrisburg's provost to tap a much larger sample: his institution?s entire student body, faculty, and staff.

On Monday, information technology officials at Harrisburg will block access to those popular social media tools from computers using the campus network. They will also disable the wiki and chat features in the university?s Moodle-based learning management system. The barriers will remain in place for one week.

Students, who will be asked to write essays reflecting on their time in social-media exile, will not be the only ones affected. Faculty and staff will also be unable to visit the sites -- at least not through the campus network.

via www.insidehighered.com

What a bizarre experiment - I'm really not sure what Darr hopes to achieve, especially because students and staff will still be able to access social media on their phones and at home.

That said, I sincerely hope QUT doesn't decide to do the same experiment at some point.