World-Shaker

Denver journalism students are writing Wikipedia entries as part of a curriculum that stresses online writing and content creation as readers move to the web en masse.

“Lack of engagement is one of the biggest problems we have today in getting more students through the college and university system,” Madan said. “If we don’t tackle the engagement problem collectively, we’re not going to get more people through the system. … And one of the great promises of social media in higher education … is about promoting engagement.”

But even as more and more colleges create profiles, fan pages, and Twitter feeds, the question of how best to take advantage of these adolescent technologies — and how influential they actually are in terms of recruiting students and prompting donations — remains largely unanswered.

Employees are visiting Facebook more than any other site when they are at work, and twice as often as the second most visited site, Google. Research out this week from Network Box, a Managed Security Services company, shows that visits to the social network accounted for 6.8% of all workplace traffic in Q1 2010, exactly twice the 3.4% of all traffic that went to Google.

infoneer-pulse:

greggyour:

New research shows that social media use has become a regular habit for three quarters of the online population.

The Library of Congress announced Wednesday via its official Twitter feed that it would be adding tweets to its inventory of published works. The addition of the vast body of public tweets sent since Twitter’s founding in March 2006 is the latest step in the Library of Congress’ effort to incorporate digitally published works into its archives.

The New Media Consortium has published its 2010 “Horizon Report” on technologies and trends likely to impact college-level teaching and learning within the next few years.

The authors note as key trends:

• the proliferation of mobile computing
• the growth of “open” educational content
• …

infoneer-pulse:

This might not mean much if you’re not writing or editing a tech blog, but news that the AP – whose stylebook is still the standard for all things grammar and punctuation in the news world — is officially changing “Web site” to “website” was met with a warm reception in our newsroom (and likely quite a few others) this afternoon.

» via Mashable

Yale, Harvard and the University of California network are among the at least 50 colleges planning to limit or remove loans from their financial aid packages, according to a report released this week by the Institute for College Access and Success. While 50 might not seem like a lot, their student bodies represent 8% of all four-year college students in the United States.

History Channel’s now working with foursquare to help Americans unlock the history in their city.

Genius!

infoneer-pulse:

The implication of the study, the authors write, is that those who want students to graduate more promptly need to talk about money. “Our finding of increased stratification in resources among colleges and universities — both between publics and privates and within the public sector — suggests that the attenuation of resources at less-selective public universities in particular limits the rate of degree attainment,” write the authors, John Bound of the University of Michigan, Michael F. Lovenheim of Cornell University, and Sarah Turner of the University of Virginia.

» via Inside Higher Ed

Tips for Educators

Educators should check out these suggestions for ways to use Facebook effectively and professionally.

34. Create a separate account just for your classes. Keep two accounts if you want to use Facebook personally as well. This keeps your Facebook relationship at school on a professional level.

35. Manage privacy settings. If you don’t want to manage two accounts, use these tips to manage privacy to keep your personal and professional lives separate.

36. Friend students carefully. Make sure you are friending students in current and former classes for professional purposes. Keep as professional a distance on Facebook as you would in person.

37. Ask students to put you on limited access to their pages. This keeps you from having to see their Spring Break photos, status updates that may indicate why they really missed that midterm, or any other information that may compromise your professional working relationship.

A provoking read straight from the source.

For those who attended my session at the 2010 On Course National Conference, I’ve posted my slides and handouts here on the blog.

If there’s sufficient interest, I’ll also post the session outline.

infoneer-pulse:

What is a surprise is how little parents seem to care about this.  (Or, alternatively, how much parents encourage this media consumption by consuming a huge amount of media themselves.)

* In 2/3 of households, TVs are on during meals

* In 75% of households, TVs are on when no one is watching them.

* More than 70% of kids have TVs in their bedrooms

* Only 1/3 of households have media-consumption rules

» via Business Insider

The pair looked at 20,962 photos and 13,543 comments on 333 Facebook pages, examining the subject matter in the photographs, the behavior of the subjects, the aesthetics of the images, the organization of the photographs, comments on the photos, and even what was missing from the photographs. Social and sporting events were the primary local of the pics, parties being the most common.

The study also found that families and academic related activities were notably absent. The two researchers believe that the main point of photos posted was to show others your ideal college life style and the tagging and commenting serve to “reinforce group cohesiveness and closeness.”

“…nearly half of the employers in the US now search for job candidates on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, according to survey results from CareerBuilder. The job-finding firm said that the numbers reflect a twofold increase over those who reported doing so in last year—45 percent in 2009 versus 22 percent in 2008—and cautioned that many employers choose not to hire based on information they find online.”

A pretty incredible read.

Check out the interactive graphic!

Interesting fact: Farmville has 118 million installed users. It has more active users than the population of France!

“CEO Mark Zuckerberg is pretty sure the future of the company won’t really be as a destination Web site, but as the Web-wide platform that connects us not just to our friends, but also the businesses we transact with.” And he may not be wrong.

This was nine months ago. I’m curious to find out what the numbers are like today.

One year ago Facebook reached 200 million users.

It now has over 400 million. The site has doubled in size in the past year. If it were a country, it would be the third largest country in the world*.

*Third largest country if you completely ignore basic statistics (because to be fair you would have to remove the user’s citizenship from the country they live in and apply it to Facebookistonia).

A survey of 221 first year students conducted between April and June of last year found that more than half (55 per cent) had joined Facebook to make new friends prior to entering college, while a further 43 per cent joined immediately after starting. Nearly three quarters said Facebook had played an important part in helping them to settle in at college.

And we thought those summer reading programs were effective…

In a shining PR move after being accused of assaulting a woman at a nightclub, Steelers player Santonio Holmes told a fan to kill themselves on Twitter.

“Honestly, most of my students are oblivious to the huge role mass communication and the Internet play in their lives,” said Amy Kristin Sanders, a media law professor at the U who has forced students into 24-hour media fasts. “They really think about access to the Internet as one of life’s necessities.”

Yep…there’s an app for that.

And from me:

#11: Facebook lets your friends give away your information to applications they use.

Is our current concept of reputation dead? Can we continue holding the discretions of others against them?

What lessons could higher ed pull from companies who have been successful in SoMe?

Social networking just became a little riskier to your privacy. Information from MySpace is now for sale to third parties ranging from academics and analysts to marketers.

The data will include any activity or information that is attached to an account. That includes blog posts, location, photos, reviews, and status updates-among others. InfoChimps, an Austin Texas company that collects and sells structured data, is selling the data.

Of course, MySpace is perfectly within its rights to work with Infochimps, because it legally owns the data and the server logs. Users wave their right to privacy in exchange for free Web hosting and access to its social features. “Free” comes at a cost. Here’s a snippet of what “they” know about you.