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From the EduCause Learning Initiative: Seven Things You Should Know About Second Life.

A malicious virus appears to have cracked the Facebook privacy firewalls and is sending thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of personal messages that appear to be from friend-to-friend, suggesting they are appearing in a YouTube video and providing the supposed link to view it.

"In general, the networks connect novice teachers to others in their preparation classes, teachers who instruct in the same subject or grade level to one another, and teacher-mentors to colleagues-even when they are not located at the same schools. The sites facilitate online discussions, workshops, coaching, and collaborative study groups and work teams."

Ty Nordic understands the need to inform kids about the dangers of sexual predators on the Internet. But when his 16-year-old daughter was targeted during an assembly at Windsor High School on the first day of school Tuesday afternoon, Nordic was left with plenty of unanswered questions for the presenter whom he said used inappropriate language during the assembly and singled out specific students.

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.

Over the last five years, scholars say, the meteoric rise of social media sites, including MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, has sparked a public explosion in self-documentation, making the "me" in multimedia more prominent than ever.

A Ross Elementary School teacher's assistant is under investigation by the school district.Tanealya Clay works with students who have special needs. But on some on-line modeling sites, she goes by "Ambrosia Bliss" and has a portfolio with some nude photos. They're not X-rated but some parents are complaining.

Brave New World of Digital IntimacyIt is easy to become unsettled by privacy-eroding aspects of awareness tools. But there is another - quite different - result of all this incessant updating: a culture of people who know much more about themselves.

Talking on cellphones is passé for students who use them for networking and sending photos. Mobile Social Networking Software - the next wave of virtual community - is already appearing on cellphones, beginning with college campuses. These under-25s (the target market for early adoption of hot new gadgets) are using what many observers call the next big consumer technology shift: Mobile Social Networking Software, or Mososo. The sophisticated reach of cyber-social networks such as MySpace or Facebook, combined with the military precision of GPS, is putting enough power in these students' pockets to run a small country.

A "digital divide" exists in Canada between young people who see information posted online as private and older people who see it differently, according to a study released Thursday at a privacy conference in Toronto. Ryerson University professor Avner Levin, a keynote speaker at the Youth Privacy Online: Take Control, Make it Your Choice! conference, said in the study that young people have a notion of online privacy that is not shared by business managers and executives. He said the latter view all information posted online as public.

The following is a list of five technologies currently employed by cyberbullies to intimidate other kids. Learn more about how each tool is used at this site.
1. MySpace, Facebook and other social networking sites
2. Instant Messaging
3. Email
4. Photoshop
5. Blogs

What is AOL Instant Messenger doing to ensure that aging Millennials keep instant messaging? Data from the Pew Center Internet & American Life Project shows that instant messaging habits are staying steady with about 75 percent of teens ages 12 to 17 using instant messenger services. That number has stayed the same since 2000.

David Kosslyn and two other students are in the process of developing StudyBuddy - an online academic social networking site that allows students to form study groups with others taking courses in the same subject areas, both on/off the same campus.

Parents who worry that their children watch too much television can take heart: a bigger concern may be children spending too much time online. For children ages 10 to 14 who use the Internet, the computer is a bigger draw than the TV set, according to a study recently released by DoubleClick Performics, a search marketing company. The study found that 83 percent of Internet users in that age bracket spent an hour or more online a day, but only 68 percent devoted that much time to television.

Last year, the Court ducked an opportunity to determine in Morse v. Frederick whether public schools have authority to restrict student speech that occurs off of school grounds. The Court's refusal to address this issue was unfortunate. For several decades lower courts have struggled to determine when, if ever, public schools should have the power to restrict student expression that does not occur on school grounds during school hours. In the last several years, however, courts have struggled with this same question in a new context -- the digital media. Around the country, increasing numbers of courts have been forced to confront the authority of public schools to punish students for speech on the Internet. In most cases, students are challenging punishments they received for creating fake websites mocking their teachers or school administrators or for making offensive comments on websites or instant messages. More often than not, the lower courts are ruling in favor of the schools.

Marketers convened in San Francisco this week to figure out how best to reach teens on the Internet. The answer: It's all about the mobile phone.

Teachers and students in Lamar County, Mississippi, can't be Internet friends this year after the School Board revamped rules prohibiting them from being friends through online social networks.

A charge against a Manitoba teenager accused of impersonating a teacher on Facebook has been stayed.

In a legal ruling likely to send a chill through the global social networking phenomenon of Facebook, a British businessman has been awarded £22,000 ($44,000, €28,000) in damages from a former school friend who created a fake profile of him on the website.