Social Media

American Academy of Pediatrics
Pediatricians should be aware of online risks to youths, such as Facebook depression, cyberbullying and sexting, and should advocate parent-child discussions of Facebook use, according to the social media guidelines of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The guidelines, published in Pediatrics, said Facebook friend lists and status updates may negatively affect children, [...]

Edutopia Blog
Educators must use caution and teach students about the basics of digital citizenship before incorporating technology into the classroom, high-school technology specialist Andrew Marcinek writes in this blog post. He suggests having students search for examples of inappropriate use, teach each other about possible repercussions and become familiar with their social-media privacy rights.
Full story

eSchool News  
Massive social media advertising campaigns have proven effective for colleges and universities large and small, and a new analysis shows that institutions that invest the most in social media ads spend less per student on marketing than do campuses who stick to traditional strategies.
Campuses considered “moderate-to-heavy” investors in social media marketing to alumni and [...]

eSchool News 
As celebrities, politicians, and students alike increasingly use social media to stay connected, education experts say they have noticed a growing number of companies turning to social media to determine grant award winners. And education is not alone. Sherrie A. Madia, director of communications for the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, said [...]

THE Journal 
Three leading consultants in educational technology offer their opinions on the best Web 2.0 tools for encouraging collaboration in learning and teaching. Blogs, Google Docs, and Twitter are among the standouts — for reasons including their ease of use and their ability to reach many users instantaneously — that can be used by students [...]

eSchool News 
From public relations in social media to the potential marketing power of “mommy bloggers,” colleges and universities are offering graduate-level certificates focusing on the business side of Twitter, Facebook, and a host of other sites that draw Americans from every demographic.
Social media courses have sprung up on college campuses as social media web sites—once [...]

eSchool News 
The social networking web site Ning, which many educators have used to establish online groups with similar professional interests, will remain free for educators despite moving to a fee-based model this summer, the site announced May 4. But some education technology experts believe Ning could see dwindling interest among teachers and college professors because [...]

New York Times 
Twitter’s donation of its archives to the Library of Congress offers vast potential—as well as challenges—for historians. Twitter users now broadcast about 55 million Tweets a day. In just four years, about 10 billion of these brief messages have accumulated. Not a few are pure drivel—but, taken together, they are likely to be [...]

Business Insider  
Facebook has named the first recipients of its new fellowship program for Ph.D. candidates doing research in areas related to “the social web and internet technology,” reports the San Francisco Chronicle. The five fellowships went to students working in cloud computing, social computing, behavioral economics, machine learning, and internet economics. The fellowships cover tuition [...]

New York Times 
As companies turn to social media to engage customers on a personal level, several top business schools are incorporating courses on social networks into their curricula, reports the New York Times. These include Harvard Business School, London Business School, and Insead, the international business school based in Fontainebleau, France. Social networking courses aim [...]

GENERATION M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds, one of the largest and most comprehensive publicly available sources of information on the amount and nature of media use among American youth, provides a detailed look at current media use patterns among young people, and also documents changes in children’s media habits since the [...]

Researchers theorize that the ever-accelerating pace of technological change might be creating a series of mini-generation gaps, with each group of children uniquely influenced by the tech tools available in their formative stages of development.
Read the full story from the New York Times.

New research suggests that more young adults and teens — normally at the cutting edge of technology, but initially slow to adopt Twitter — are finally coming around to the micro-blogging service, using it for school, work, or simply to monitor the minutiae of celebrities’ lives. It is a rare instance of young people adopting [...]

Twitter Inc. is selling the rights to mine its communications hotbed to both Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. in dueling deals that underscore the growing importance of being able to show what’s on people’s minds at any given moment. Microsoft will offer another way to probe into the collective mindset of web users by indexing [...]

Schools are increasingly using blogs, e-mail, and other online tools to bring scientific research within students’ reach. Around the country, scientists and education-advocacy groups have become ever more intent on making scientific studies and careers more attractive to young people, particularly underrepresented groups such as women and minorities. One goal is to quash the stereotype [...]

Educators need to embrace Web 2.0 technologies in schools, but they should be given adequate professional development to ensure they learn the proper ways to engage their students through digital media, said experts at a Sept. 21 Capitol Hill briefing.
That was the general consensus of the panel members, which included representatives from the Consortium for [...]

The Massachusetts Historical Society has begun posting John Quincy Adams’ diary updates from 200 years ago on Twitter in a program that links history with modern technology. The tweets will include mentions of the sixth U.S. president’s favorite reads, memorable meals, weather updates, and the daily drama of months at sea. Librarians and historians at [...]

Lightspeed Systems has released the Educational Video Library, a new tool that allows teachers to review YouTube content and choose files to submit to the district administrator for approval. Those files receiving district approval are then made accessible through a portal on the district’s local network. In addition, all YouTube community information and external user [...]

One educator says that using Twitter in the classroom teaches students to write concisely, using only 140 characters, and also allows students to collaborate and share resources. However, even as more educators use Twitter, others worry about privacy, say the Web site actually harms learning and see no valuable use for the technology in academia.
Click [...]

Some educators say Twitter can be used in creative ways to enhance classroom lessons, such as facilitating book discussions and creating online study groups for students. One high-school teacher says including social-networking sites in lessons keeps students more engaged, but another says using the sites can make it easier for students to cheat and can [...]

Attendees at the annual InfoComm Conference in Orlando gathered during an EduComm session June 16 analyzing how some universities have caught students’ attention on the web sites that have drawn millions of teenagers and young adults in recent years.
Universities are attracting students with coordinated, well-funded social networking campaigns, bringing their campus marketing message to sites [...]

Dennis Lembree has re-built Twitter with web accessibility and strict web standards. Check out this accessible web application here.

Gez Lemon gives an overview of some accessibility issues with Twitter and provides a rather simple solution to most of them. To read Gez’s overview and learn about his simple solutions for accessibility issues, click here.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project produces reports that explore the impact of the internet on families, communities, work and home, daily life, education, health care, and civic and political life. The Project aims to be an authoritative source on the evolution of the Internet through collection of data and analysis of real-world developments as they affect the virtual world.

Check out Julie Duffield’s take on the 2007 NCTI Technology Innovators Conference. Here is an excerpt:
…An important part of this conference is connecting researchers, innovators, entrepreneurs and policy makers. It was inspiring to hear from innovators and social entrepreneurs like Jim Fruchterman from the nonprofit technology company, Benetech. Recently, Benetech was selected by the Office of [...]

NOAA, CDC, and US Department of Homeland Security have started using Second Life as a tool for their agencies or interacting with the public. As more federal agencies delve into Second Life and other emerging technologies, issues of accessibility become more important — with more participants. If the second life (or other) platforms are used [...]

How are kids using the internet? Find out in this report on social networking by the National School Boards Association and Grunwald Associates LLC.

At 19, Mark Zuckerberg came up with a new way for college kids to connect—and started an online revolution. Now 23, he’s trying to build out his business without losing its cool. . . . Newsweek reports.