Nicola Kuhn's List: EDES501

• the single most important factor in determining whether or not a person will  adopt one of these sites is whether or not it is the place where their friends  hangout
• Friendster didn't understand network effects. In kicking off users who weren't  conforming to their standards, they pissed off more than those users; they  pissed off those users' friends who were left with little purpose to use the  site
• And if you wanna curb problematic behavior, you need to think of the problem in  terms of networks, not individuals

  • example from last year with hate site directed at one kid
• , youth played a central role in the rise of some social media. Now, many adults  have jumped in, but what they are doing there is often very different than what  young people are doing. This showcases the ways in which some tools are used  differently by different groups.
• Unlike many adults, teenagers were never really networking. They were  socializing in pre-exiting groups.
• Teen conversations may appear completely irrational, or pointless at best. "Yo,  wazzup?" "Not much, how you?" may not seem like much to an outsider, but this is  a form of social grooming. It's a way of checking in, confirming friendships,  and negotiating social waters
• Adults, far more than teens, are using Facebook for its intended purpose as a  social utility. For example, it is a tool for communicating with the past.
• The "25 Things" phenomenon took me by surprise until I started thinking about  the intended audience. Teenagers craft quizzes for themselves and their friends.  Adults are crafting them to show-off to people from the past and connect the  dots between different audiences as a way of coping with the awkwardness of  collapsed contexts.
  
• the culture of Twitter is all about participation in a large public square.
• From the digerati seeking widespread attention to the politically minded hoping  to appear on CNN, many are leveraging Twitter to be part of a broad dialogue.  Teens are much more motivated to talk only with their friends and they learned a  harsh lesson with social network sites
• We can continue to design and deploy, but one of the amazing things that is  happening in the realm of social media is that folks are starting to iterate  with their users.
• We need to be able to evolve with our products as people begin to use it
• The key lesson from the rise of social media for you is that a great deal of  software is best built as a coordinated dance between you and the users.
  
• 1. Persistence
• 2. Replicability
• Searchability
• 4. Scalability.
• Social media scales things in new ways. Conversations that were intended for  just a friend or two might spiral out of control and scale to the entire school  or, if it is especially embarrassing, the whole world
• 1. Invisible Audiences
• . Collapsed Contexts
• 3. Blurring of Public and Private
• creates all new questions about context and privacy, about our relationship to  space and to the people around us.
  

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• Facebook is nonetheless the most significant one to higher education because of  its original focus on the college/university market
• interplay among the technological, social, legal, and market factors shaping  not only the Internet but American society overall.
• the medium provides a way to expose what otherwise might remain hidden behind a  teenager's closed bedroom door or monosyllabic responses to parents' questions
• It is the open display to a million potential eyes that is shocking and  alarming to many adults.
• The site itself fits clearly in the bull's-eye of First Amendment protections,  so state institutions might want to be particularly careful not to block  Facebook on any grounds that can be construed as pertaining to free speech
• Defamation or libel is also a possibility
• users should be cautious about using institutional or commercial logos, which  could be a potential copyright or trademark violation
• It is fitting that technology should serve age-old needs at the same time that  it sets a new pace. The world is both smaller and larger for youth today
• . Facebook offers a dynamic way for a young adult to play with his or her  emerging personality
• Facebook is disruptive, popular, and important because it intersects with all  that is edgy about innovative networking technologies deployed to full social  advantage

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• students who use Facebook more intensely were more likely to report higher  levels of social support and access to people outside of their immediate social  circle, which we believe is linked to the features of the site that facilitate  lightweight connections with a wide, diverse network of weak and strong ties.
• we have focused on collaboration via social network sites (SNSs) – how  individuals use these sites to get questions answered, share information and  advice, and accomplish coordination tasks (like finding someone to walk the dog  while on vacation).
• over half said they were likely or very likely to use Facebook to arrange a  face-to-face study group or to help manage a group project, and 49% said they  were likely or very likely to "collaborate in a way your instructor would like
• many students are repurposing Facebook’s features, especially those that support  social coordination, to facilitate their academic goals
• Instructors may need to reorient themselves to working with commercial entities  as opposed to in-house tools and support, and will have to consider issues such  as the ethics of exposing students to advertising messages, the availability of  technical support, and whether they wish to rely on third-party systems to  archive graded student work.

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• I Gave Up MySpace for Lent": New Teachers and Social  Networking Sites
• Ohio Department of Education and even the Ohio Education Association's saying  that teachers shouldn't take part in MySpace, Facebook, or other social  networking sites (Associated Press, 2007).
• Just as we stand on the brink of what may, in the next decade or so, be the  first real evolution of public schools in close to 100 years, we are telling  teachers, "You can't participate in Web 2.0 because it's too dangerous
• hysterical fears of new media have been well documented, with humans having  expressed fear about every new medium to come along including film and  television (Kist, 2008), comic books (Hajdu, 2008), and even print (Resnick,  1991).
• Their comments tended toward two major categories: the benefits (and rights) of  participating and ways of participating safely.
• Most preservice teachers reported feeling completely cut off from their friends  and family when not participating in social networking sites.

• "Developing a trust in their teachers and having a  genuine relationship with a teacher helps a student to get the best education he  or she can, because it helps the teacher to understand the individual student  and his or her needs. If we forget that basic principle of education, it's all a  lost cause."

   

  The Ways of Participating Safely
• Let's just hope the fear factor doesn't keep them from new ways of teaching and  learning in the classroom that may use these very Web 2.0 technologies, whatever  that "classroom" may be in the future.

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• Using Social Networking Sites as Student  Engagement Tools
• using SNS to "e-recruit" students
• professors are using social networking sites like these to assist in negotiating  the teacher-student relationships
• SNS is the impact of their active-learning features on low-income, minority and  first-generation students.
• low-income students are just as technologically proficient as their  counterparts and credit SNS for teaching them technology skills, as well as  creativity, and providing exposure to diverse views
• SNS have become such a pervasive element in our students' lives that they have  restructured social practices within academic environments
• actively engaged with college faculty and staff
• social aspect can increase students' persistence in their college studies and  their ability to achieve at higher levels
• 30 percent of Facebook users and 32 percent of MySpace users are older than 45.
• alter perceived power relationships by making faculty and personnel seem more  accessible.
• Though faculty-student interaction on SNS encourages relational exchange,  issues of self-disclosure and identity management are also of concern. How much  is too much? How much information should a faculty member or student share with  each other? Faculty fear of losing credibility is also germane. There is the  potential violation of student expectations, and university and administrative  expectations of proper behaviors.

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• School Librarians Lead in Social  Networking
• Media specialists are more likely to join social networking sites than teachers  and principals-and they're more likely to adopt a variety of content-sharing  tools for personal, professional, and classroom use, says a new report.
• Facebook is the most popular site for educators, with 85 percent reporting that  they're members
• Social networks dedicated to education such as Classroom 2.0 and edWeb.net  "have low penetration thus far," but there's growing
• As more educators join social networks, and as younger people enter the  education workforce, the adoption of this technology will continue to increase,"  the report says.

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• Survey: Educator Participation in Social Networking Lags Well Behind Interest
• more than six in 10 educators are at least interested enough in social  networking to register on one or more social networking websites
• The implication seems to be that although many educators are curious about  social networking as a communication medium, and some express an intention to  use such sites to meet other teachers, discuss and share ideas, and communicate  with students and parents, a relatively small number actually follow through.
• One important conclusion of the report is that educators who have joined a  social network, which the researchers found to be 61 percent of respondents, are  more positive about the value of the technology in education than those who  haven't.

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