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A commericial solution to social networking in the classroom. ConnectYard enables schools to leverage popular social media for teaching students where they live and socialize, online. The platform offers K-12 schools their own private learning communities with controlled access that are integrated with popular social networks like Facebook, which serves to make course work more social and collaborative by keeping students involved and engaged both in and outside of the classroom. Only users approved by the school are permitted to join the community and interact with other users. This eliminates a primary concern of both parents and administrators.\n\nConnectYard also provides teachers with the ability to audit student groups, walls, etc. This serves to ensure that both the interactions and information being shared are appropriate, which helps to guard against cyber bullying or posting of copyrighted materials. Thus fostering safe and secure learning communities, or Yards, that improve the student educational experience and chances for success.

Young people share the most intimate details of personal life on social-networking Web sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, portending a realignment of the public and the private. A post on YouTube can provoke global ridicule with the press of a return key. Social networks are forcing us to redefine what is truly private and what is public.

The explosion in social networking may be even greater than imagined. The time that people in the U.S. spend on social network sites is up 83 percent from a year ago, according to a report from market researcher Nielsen Online.

Here are 8 tips to monitor and protect one's online reputation from the U.S. Government Information Security Blog: Search your name. Type your first and last name within quotation marks into several popular search engines to see where you are mentioned and in what context. Narrow your search and use keywords that apply only to you, such as your city, employer and industry association. Expand your search. Use similar techniques to search for your telephone numbers, home address, e-mail addresses, and personal website domain names. You should also search for your social security and credit card numbers to make sure they don't appear anywhere online. Read blogs. If any of your friends or coworkers have blogs or personal web pages on social networking sites, check them out to see if they are writing about or posting pictures of you. Sign up for alerts. Use the Google alert feature that automatically notifies you of any new mention of your name or other personal information. Limit your personal information. Tweet/chat/discuss regarding business and the emerging trends in your industry, but limit posting information on your personal life, which could be a subject of major scrutiny by recruiters and hiring managers. Also, be sure you know how organizations will use your information before you give it to them. Use privacy settings. Most social networking and photo-sharing sites allow you to determine who can access and respond to your content. If you're using a site that doesn't offer privacy settings, find another site. Choose your photos and language thoughtfully. You need to ensure that information posted online is written professionally without use of swear words and catchy phrases. Also, be very selective in posting photographs, and use your judgment to ensure that these photographs are how you want the world to see you. Take action If you find information about yourself online that is embarrassing or untrue, cont

We need to stop talking cyberbullying and start talking cybercitizenship. Flip to the positive. Our focus in schools needs to shift towards responsible, positive use of social media. We need to stop ignoring and blocking and start embracing and amplifying. It is our duty to our students to start modeling responsible use of social media and encouraging them to follow our lead.

Significant concerns raised about student-teacher intractions in a social media environment, including the issue that students flirt. Relatedly, anything performed online by a public school employee - including information and images posted on social networking sites - will be used to judge the character of that individual. There is also the concern that the friends of the staff member may post unflattering information or tag inappropriate images of them which will quickly be used to prompt one major question: "Is this the kind of person we trust to be responsible for our children?"

Social networking sites are extremely popular among students, but there appear to be two competing trends for social media in school classrooms and on university campuses. Some teachers and lecturers are embracing Facebook and Twitter as new ways of communicating with students, and some universities and school boards are banning access to social networking tools entirely, citing security concerns.

Is the average high school student able to define social networking or give an example of it? I thought most would use Facebook as an example, but during a recent visit to a local high school, one freshman student used e-mailing his teacher in First Class as an example. Many of his classmates were of the same opinion as he, so it opened up a much-needed conversation during which this classroom full of 20 students spoke about where they preferred to network with each other.

The social network site has vaulted over rival MySpace in worldwide audience growth, thanks to tools that translate content into many languages. The social network site has vaulted over rival MySpace in worldwide audience growth, thanks to tools that translate content into many languages.

FACEBOOK, MySpace, YouTube and Wikipedia are considered valuable educational tools by some who embrace the learning potential of the internet; they are also seen as a massive distraction with no academic benefit by others. Research in Nottingham and Notts suggests split opinions over the internet in the classroom. Some 1,500 interviews with teachers, parents and students nationwide showed the 'net was an integral part of children's personal lives, with 57% of 13 to 18-year-olds in Notts using blogs in their spare time and 58% in Nottingham. More than 60% of Nottingham teens use social networking sites. They are a big feature of leisure time - but now the science version of You Tube, developed by academics at The University of Nottingham, has been honoured in the US this week. The showcase of science videos shares the work of engineers and students online. However just a quarter of teachers use social networking tools in the classroom and their teaching, preferring to leave children to investigate outside school.

NYU professor and social networking expert Clay Shirky talks about where to draw the line between personal and public life online.
You live your life online -- and anyone can read it. Should employers be able to troll your Facebook or MySpace page? Or should everything that you put online be accessible to anyone, anywhere? With increasingly popular social networking sites aggregating unprecedented volumes of personal data, the age-old issue of online privacy is once again rearing its ugly head.

This article offers new research results regarding the academic benefits of students use of social networking sites.

From the UK Home Office Task Force: Best Practices for the providers of social networking and other user interactive services. Download the full Report.

The first UK Social Networking Guidance provides advice for industry, parents and children about how to stay safe online. This has been developed by a taskforce of representatives from industry, charity and law enforcement agencies including Vodafone, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC).

Eighty-one percent of kids have visited a social networking site such as MySpace \nor Facebook. Yet more than 50% of schools block social networking altogether and \nover 80% block instant messaging and chatting services.

Salt Lake City's Granite School District is expected to approve a new policy this month barring students and teachers from connecting on sites such as Facebook and Twitter. The policy - the first of its kind in Utah - provides an exemption for teachers' sites that are educational, not personal. Officials said there was no specific incident that spurred the new guidelines. But with the popularity of social networking sites in schools, Granite wants to eliminate any gray areas when it comes to teacher-student interaction, district spokesman Ben Horsley said. "The reality is if someone is going to interact inappropriately with a student, there's certainly lots of technology out there that can help them get around those rules and guidelines in a very nonpublic way," Horsley said. "This gives us some tools to move forward on a disciplinary track."

Practical advice for parents with pre-tweens who are interested in social networking. The following ten tips will make your tweens safer on social networking sites.

Privacy and security concerns are among the many barriers holding back the use of social networking tools in schools, new research suggests--but a number of child-friendly applications have emerged.

Anne - has anyone compiled a general list of CFSNT?

Anne - has anyone compiled a general list of CFSNT?

By now, you've heard the buzz about MySpace and Facebook, but you may still be wondering what all the fuss is about. Maybe you're a little mystified by the whole social networking craze, or you're a little wary about venturing into your students' territory. But what if we told you it can actually be good for your career?

Started in January 2008 by the founders of MyYearbok.com, SocialSafety.org is an effort to educate US teens on the dangers of social networking. Social Safety provides hundreds of thousands of free safety education packets for U.S. high school students, and provides free safety content to any student or site that requests it.

How can we maximize the learning power of participatory Web sites while ensuring students are protected and behave responsibly? Creating and administering a private social network is an excellent method for establishing a safe social learning experience.