90+ Essential Social Media Resources Now you've gone and done it. You've come across a list so enormous, so useful, and so awesome, our futile attempts to describe it have been lost in the tubes of cyberspace. Facebook For Higher Education 7 Fantastic Free Social Media Tools for Teachers The possibilities for social media tools in the classroom are vast. In the hands of the right teacher, they can be used to engage students in creative ways, encourage collaboration and inspire discussion among even soft-spoken students. But we've already made our case for why teachers should consider using social media in their classrooms. Even when people say they want to incorporate social media, they don't always know the best ways to do so. To help, we've collected seven of the the best classroom tools for incorporating social media into your lesson plans. EDU 2.0 is a lot like online course management systems Blackboard and Moodle, but with a couple of distinct advantages. The founder of software company The Mind Electric, who has roots in education, self-funded the development of EDU 2.0 in what the site describes as a "labor of love." 2. The popular visual organizing and sharing tool Symbaloo launched its "EDU" version last month. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Honesty in the age of the paywall After months of discussion and speculation, The Times and The Sunday Times have disappeared behind a paywall or have asked their readers to pay for the journalism that they value, depending on which side of an almost religious divide you fall on. Like a lot of commentary, I find the punditry and posturing around paywalls uninformed, over-simplistic and, frequently, disingenuous. It is often said that people paid for journalism in print so they should pay for journalism online. If ‘they’ value journalism, they should pay for it. No. As the OECD said in its recent survey of the newspaper industry in 30 countries: On the cost side, costs unrelated to editorial work such as production, maintenance, administration, promotion and advertising, and distribution dominate newspaper costs. For every newspaper journalist who moans about how much money their publication spends on running their website, I would ask them if they know how much the outlay is for printing the newspaper. Like this:
25 Best Sites for Free Educational Videos RefSeek's guide to the 25 best online resources for finding free educational videos. With the exception of BrainPOP and Cosmeo, all listed sites offer their extensive video libraries for free and without registration. Academic Earth Thousands of video lectures from the world's top scholars. academicearth.org Big Think Video interviews with 600+ thought leaders in a range of fields. bigthink.com Brightstorm Short-form online video lessons by professional educators. brightstorm.com CosmoLearning Aggregator of free, online video lessons and documentaries. cosmolearning.com Coursera Lectures taught by world-class professors and reinforced through interactive exercises. coursera.org EdX Courses designed specifically for interactive study via the web. edx.org Futures Channel High quality multimedia content ideal for use in the classroom. thefutureschannel.com Howcast Professional and user-generated how-to videos. www.howcast.com Internet Archive archive.org iTunes U Apple iTunes - Apple iTunes Software Khan Academy Hulu
5 Social Media Trends to Watch Right Now This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business. With social media itself an exponentially growing trend that's here to stay, many companies both small and large are keeping tabs on new social technologies as they emerge. With new sites, services, apps and practices that help businesses connect more directly with customers coming online at a rapid pace, it's often helpful to zoom out a bit and keep an eye on upcoming trends on the cusp or just over the horizon. Whether or not particular individual services succeed, the following trends are likely to stick around in the near-term future. 1. It's always been true of real estate, but increasingly so it's true of almost everything online. In the mobile space, a number of standalone apps exist primarily to let users "check in" and broadcast their current location to their friends. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Educational Benefits Of Social Networking Sites Uncovered In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers at the University of Minnesota have discovered the educational benefits of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. The same study found that low-income students are in many ways just as technologically proficient as their counterparts, going against what results from previous studies have suggested. The study found that, of the students observed, 94 percent used the Internet, 82 percent go online at home and 77 percent had a profile on a social networking site. Data were collected over six months this year from students, ages 16 to 18, in thirteen urban high schools in the Midwest. "What we found was that students using social networking sites are actually practicing the kinds of 21st century skills we want them to develop to be successful today," said Christine Greenhow, a learning technologies researcher in the university's College of Education and Human Development and principal investigator of the study.
Catch the ELearning Train – From Classroom to ERoom Have you heard the new buzz word – eLearning? It has come to the forefront in the last couple of years. But, what does it really mean? ELearning is a method of instruction where the teacher and student are located in different locations or where there is a time gap between the two, but by using internet technology, the instructor is able to teach a specific topic or skill. The advantage here is that this can take place from any location in the world and at anytime that they are able to get together online. So now that we know what eLearning is all about, how can you take advantage of eLearning and what is it you should look for? There are many videos and e-books available for sale on the internet, but once you have spent your money, do you know what to do with the information? While these may seem like simple things to think about, it really has a large impact on your ability to learn new skills, especially if you are working to make a career change utilizing the internet.