Mobile phone boom in developing world could boost e-learning | Global development. Globalisation, as defined by the rich, is a very nice thing, the former US president Jimmy Carter once reflected. "You're talking about the internet, you're talking about cell phones, you're talking about computers," said Carter. "This doesn't affect two-thirds of the people in the world. " That was in 2001; a lot has changed. In Kenya, mobile phones have become an integral part of cash transfer schemes, enabling poor people in urban areas to buy food. In remote rural areas of Peru, computers provided by the Euro-Solar programme are fuelling an appetite for learning among children. And the senior US political adviser Alec Ross – acknowledging the galvanising influence of social media on the Arab spring – has described the internet as "the Che Guevara of the 21st century".
If the global spread of technology can do all this, what else might it achieve? Mobile phones are increasingly ubiquitous in poor countries, which now account for four in every five connections worldwide (pdf).
Clay Shirky: How the Internet will (one day) transform government. From Gutenberg to Google: New media? New journalism. In 1997, Time-Life Magazine voted the printing press the most important invention of the last thousand years. That’s quite the accolade in a millennium that saw humans fly from London to New York in under four hours and astronauts play golf on the moon. But the printing press enabled mass communication; it made books affordable and brought literacy to millions.
It helped society advance and brought long-established hierarchies to their knees. The printed word heralded a massive evolutionary step for the information age. Johannes Gutenberg probably didn’t know he was changing the world forever, but when he developed the printing press in the mid-15th century, he paved the way for the mass circulation of books, instructions, manuals, journals and, of course, newspapers. And here we are, over 500 years later, and the printing press looks like it has finally met its match.
Old media, meet new media A seasoned campaigner comes up against a young upstart that’s slicker, and faster on the draw. Helen Skelton quits Twitter after abuse from trolls | Technology. Blue Peter presenter Helen Skelton decided on Thursday that the abuse had simply become too much too take. With a final sign-off to her 40,000 followers, she said goodbye to Twitter. "Turns out I don't have very thick skin after all so I am closing my twitter account. Enjoy the games. Signing off, skelts x. " A day earlier, it had been the turn of Channel 4 presenter Kirstie Allsopp to air her frustration with so-called trolls posting abuse to her on Twitter.
Allsopp refused to leave the social network over the comments, but told her 235,000 followers: "I will not accept being told to shoot my own womb or bleed to death with a spade in my vagina by anyone. The presenter, who fronts Location, Location, Location for Channel 4, said there should be a way to tackle internet trolls without calling in the police. There appears to be a growing wave of abuse targeting high-profile personalities on Twitter, prompting heated debate about free expression on the internet.
She was not alone. Young people need guidance to cope with the threats posed by social media | Society. This week marks the first anniversary of the summer riots, where mobile devices played such an important part in connecting rioters with each other and were used to capture much of the carnage and brutality. Of course, the technology didn't cause the riots, but as the police found out, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) helped crowds gather at remarkable speed and to circumvent police lines. A year is a long time in terms of technology. New mobile handsets and apps become integrated into our lives at astonishing speed.
Over the last 12 months I've been working with young people excluded from mainstream schools who are taught instead in pupil referral units (PRUs). The project we've been working on is called Munch, Poke, Ping, which I have written about previously in these pages, and has looked at how these young learners are engaging with social media. Over the year, many of the young people I worked with wanted to talk about the events of last summer. I'd never boast about it, but I'm a master of the new art of underbragging | Oliver Burkeman. Ever so 'umble: but then at least Usain Bolt really is better than everyone else. Photograph: McClatchy-Tribune/Getty Images If you're unusually insightful and perceptive, like me, you may have noticed that boastfulness is increasingly socially acceptable these days.
Perhaps this helps explain the unhinged gusto with which Usain Bolt declared himself a living legend last week at the Olympics: in a world where every other Facebook status update is a veiled act of self-aggrandisement, the only way to make an impact with your bragging is to push it to the limit. The more everyday kind of bragging – the mock-shy mention of your latest professional achievement, the smartphone photographs of your current holiday idyll, the drive-by name-dropping – is the fuel that powers social media.
Laughing at others' clunky efforts at self-promotion used to be a strictly annual pleasure, confined to the opening of round-robin Christmas letters; now it's a daily chore. Does your school use Facebook or other social media to communicate or teach? | Momania: A Blog for Busy Moms. Is your school administration or your school’s PTA using Facebook to communicate with parents? Are your teachers using social media in the classroom to help teach? According to one website 90 percent of teachers are using social media in their classrooms or in their professional careers. I think that numbers seems high for in the classroom but I do think there are lots of opportunities to use social media and communicate with kids/teens in ways in which they are comfortable.
Buzzom offers ideas for teachers such as: (The university encourages us to let the students live Tweet us questions. They think it would help if they are too shy to speak up but then how do I know if they are screwing around on Twitter instead of listening? I think though a lot of the social media sites are blocked within the elementary school. Our school’s PTO (they say O instead of A) started an open page last spring and has been doing a great job updating it throughout the summer.
Social Media Is Becoming Useful, Finally. Gustavo Razzetti | December 25, 2012 | 2 Comments inShare33 A new tool is looking to change your social media experience by allowing you to pull and save parts of the web that you care about. In one of my recent columns, I addressed how Pinterest has succeeded by creating a space in between Facebook and Google: balancing a "cry for attention" with "utility. " And when I mentioned Google, I was actually referring to the search component, not to its social media tool (Google+).
It's because then I wasn't aware of Clipboard (privately beta-launched by end of 2011). Welcome to Clipboard I had the opportunity to interview Gary Flake last week. So what's the buzz about Clipboard? Clipboard's solution seems pretty easy. By default, your clips are private unless you decide to make them public. Playing the Social Media Game Facebook has become a synonym of social bragging, showing to our world of "friends" our curated version of what we want people to believe about us: "the ideal me. " Future - Technology - Rethinking the social network. It’s not how many friends you have in your social circles but who you are friends with that matters, argues columnist Tom Chatfield. At some point later this year, Facebook will connect one in every seven people on the planet.
When it passes the billion user mark – and really it is a question of when, not if – it will inevitably be accompanied by the common lament of the social media critic: social networks degrade the idea of friendship. It’s absurd, they argue, to be “friends” with thousands of people – and an alarming sign of shallow times. It’s a critique backed by several studies suggesting that it’s only possible to maintain meaningful social relationships with a relatively small number of people.
Dunbar’s argument, first set out in 1992, was based on the limited capacity of the human brain’s neocortex – the part of the brain responsible for conscious thought, sensory perception and language, amongst others. Here, however, is where I diverge from the anti-Facebook brigade. Don’t ban social media from schools. By Steve Nicholls, Special to CNN Editor’s note: Steve Nicholls is the author of Social Media in Business.
He is a social media strategist hired by business executives to teach them how to implement a winning social media strategy into their organization. The New York Education Department recently stated that in the first 11 months of 2011 there were 69 cases where teachers were accused of inappropriate conduct with students on Facebook. Some were fired as a result, and there is a growing trend by schools across the country to put a ban on social media. This raises a question: Is prohibiting social media in schools the right way to protect children? In my view, if the answer is yes then that would mean that as technology grows, schools are forbidden to grow with it, and that would somewhat be of a contradiction to what a school is supposed to be in the first place.
Think of how far the space has grown in just a few years (remember Myspace?) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Don't let e-safety worries be a barrier to using social media in school | Teacher Network Blog | Guardian Professional. Using social media in school doesn't have to cause e-safety panics. This practical guide offers great advice for those yet to embrace social networking. Photograph: www.alamy.com • Read more on using social media in schools here It is clear that one of the major obstacles to adopting social networking is that of e-safety.
However, there is very little technical knowledge required, if any at all. Social networking raises many obvious (and some not so obvious) e-safety concerns in schools. Regardless of what we do there is a risk involved; driving to and from work, lifting something off the floor and, as I found out recently to the detriment of my back, keeping fit!
In all of the above examples we are taught to be safe by doing, not by sitting in front of a Powerpoint. Again going back to the driving analogy, practicing your driving skills and risk assessing hazards becomes second nature; this is a life skill, not a lesson. Social media is more than simply a marketing tool for academic research | Higher Education Network | Guardian Professional. According to Jeff Jarvis, author of Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live, thanks to the internet, "we all have our Gutenberg presses and the privileges they accord. " For academic institutions, the internet is a largely untapped resource for shaping and sharing scholarly research.
As with the Gutenberg press, maybe professors are worried about permanently penning their ideas into cyberspace. Others may worry about privacy, especially regarding social networking. But social media and the internet have transformative powers, allowing faculty to form powerful connections and reach new audiences that previously couldn't be accessed from the ivory tower. For the past year, I've been working with the faculty and research institutes at NYU's Robert F. One of the most important lessons I've learned is that social media is not just marketing for academic work. Learning through social networking platforms allows a researcher to be a lifelong student. Social media for schools: a guide to Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest | Teacher Network Blog | Guardian Professional. • For advice on e-safety in schools, click here The use of social media in education continues to be something of a hot topic with arguments both for and against.
So I carried out a small survey of 27 teaching professionals in order to create a baseline of understanding into the use (or not) of social networking in schools, and also any concerns over some of the e-safety risks. The full survey results can be found here. There are many uses of social media in education - below are just a few of the ways they can be effectively used. Facebook • Using Facebook as a 'broadcast' account. Inspiration: University of Gloucestershire - This is a Facebook Page from my old university. Cambridge University - Another good example. Twitter • Twitter, like Facebook, is also being used as a broadcast account. Risca Community Comprehensive - A great example of an active school Twitter feed. Clevedon School - Another great example of an active feed.
iClevedon - This is an account from the Clevedon again. A Teacher’s Guide To Social Media [INFOGRAPHIC] Digital media get top marks as they bring a new kind of learning into the classroom - Education. Given that, it's hardly surprising that digital and social media are becoming more and more widely used in schools and universities. In fact, institutions around the UK are bringing students new learning experiences via digital media. A recent example saw 9,000 students from 140 schools watch a webcast of Tim Crouch's play I, Cinna, based on the misadventures of a lowly character from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, then writing their own poems and prose in response and taking part in a live Q&A with the actor and director. The project was the result of a collaboration between Cisco, the Royal Shakespeare Company, JANET (a government-funded research and education network) and university sector college Ravensbourne.
The Q&A session was hosted by former Blue Peter presenter Konnie Huq, and many of the students taking part, aged 11-16, had never been to the theatre or written poetry. Being Twitter-literate can have unexpected advantages. Making Shakespeare relevant in the digital age. Teachers need advice on social networking. Released 02/08/2012 With 14 teachers suspended as a result of their social media activity and 18 more placed on probation; it's more important than ever for schools to provide up to date guidelines for staff, advises iTeachingResources.com.
The website - which is part of the PDC Education network - has welcomed the NUT's recent statement notifying schools of the need to implement social media policies ahead of the new term. Rebecca Jordan, founder of iTeachingResources says every school needs to make it clear to teachers what they should and should not do in the virtual space: "Social media is changing almost daily which makes it very difficult for schools to effectively police the use of sites like Twitter and Facebook by teaching staff. iTeachingResources has developed a social media policy in conjunction with internet and teaching experts, which it claims will help schools manage this increasingly important task. • Safeguards to ensure the school is not exposed to legal liability.