Channel 4 News Team

Twitter Helps in Haiti Quake Coverage, Aid

In the wake of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, Twitter has proven to be an important tool for fundraising and relief efforts to help the disaster’s victims.

According to Twitter.com, five of the most popular topics posted Thursday on the mini-blogging site were related to Haiti, where the death toll from a magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck on Tuesday might have surpassed 100,000.

First satellite map of Haiti earthquake A major 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince on 12 January, causing major casualties and damage. The quake was followed by several aftershocks with magnitudes over 5.0.

Such a powerful earthquake can make current maps suddenly out of date, causing additional challenges to rescue workers on the ground. Earth observation satellite images can help rescue efforts by providing updated views of how the landscape and the infrastructure have been affected.

Social Media & the Haiti Disaster: Thumbs Up for Twitter

Speaking of the many requests she received via Twitter for help with specific situations in Haiti in the aftermath of the tragic earthquake there, Curry added:

Social media illustrates devastation in Haiti in real time

WASHINGTON — The Homeland Security Department has joined the social-media movement and for the first time is reading Twitter posts, blogs and Internet forums to learn instantly about conditions in Haiti and send alerts to government agencies in the country. The department's Haiti Social Media Disaster Monitoring Initiative is designed to get information more quickly to people involved in recovery efforts by tracking up to 60 Internet sites including Google Blog Search, The Huffington Post and Twitter, according to a department report.

Twitter data accurately tracked Haiti cholera outbreak

The informal information source, Twitter, was yielding data that would have been a quicker way of detecting and tracking the deadly cholera outbreak in Haiti than traditional methods, according to a study. The study found that online social media and news feeds were faster than, and broadly as accurate as, the official records at detecting the start and early progress of the epidemic, which hit Haiti after the earthquake in January 2010 and has killed more than 6,500 people.

Twitter and Facebook users respond to Haiti crisis

An appeal to help victims of the Haiti earthquake is breaking all records, fuelled by the power of social media.Type "Haiti" into Twitter, Facebook or Youtube and you soon encounter a message from @redcross sent at 05:38 GMT on Jan 13. In less than 48 hours, the American Red Cross had received more than $35m in donations - including $8m directly from texts. "This breaks all world records for a mobile giving campaign," says their spokeswoman, Gloria Huang. "It's been incredible. People have donated more to Haiti than to Hurricane Katrina or the tsunami in Asia. "And Twitter has played an extremely significant part."

Over 150 kindergarten and first-grade students took part in a study about the educational television series "Between the Lions." Researchers wanted to see if watching the show would help them learn to read. Some of the students were assigned to watch the show for a few weeks and others did not watch the show. The researchers found that everyone who watched the program showed improvements in being able to name letters and read fluently. © Center on Media and Child Health

Researchers reviewed 85 research articles on television, language development, and children under 5 years old. The research has not shown any definitive effects on children under 2, but studies have shown that watching age-appropriate, high-quality educational programming is beneficial for children ages 2-5. These shows can help them learn vocabulary, learn letters, and help them better understand stories.

rogramming that encourages parents to interact with their children and the televisio

Using television for literacy skills

The Impact of Television & Video Entertainment on Student Achievement in Reading and Writing. By Ron Kaufman

Television represents a potent social influence for today's children. Whether it is a positive or negative force, however, continues to be hotly debated. This is the central issue of this second edition. Has television contributed to a decline in literacy skills? Are the charges justified by existing evidence or by the results of current experimentation? Are there certain cultural biases toward television that narrowly define its uses as a learning tool? Can these issues be resolved to take advantage of new opportunities that the television medium presents? Television's influence on literacy and school learning are examined within a framework of four major themes: the displacement hypothesis, whether television influences the way children learn, the public's concern that television affects school-related behaviors, and television's capacity to whet children's academic interests. This book takes a fresh look at these themes, starting with a review and synthesis of major studies to date and moving on to a new series of studies analyzing the relationship between media and literacy.

URLwire for Monday January 13, 2003   PBS TV Series and Web Site Help Literacy Skills . BETWEEN THE LIONS, PBS's award-winning television series, has been proven to contribute to the literacy skills of children ages 4-7, and its companion Web site at http://pbskids.org/lions/ serves as a valuable source of expert-approved curriculum of interactive stories and games to help kids successfully learn to read and write.

What are literacy skills? Literacy skills help students gain knowledge through reading as well as using media and technology. These skills also help students create knowledge through writing as well as developing media and technology.

Integrating Technology in the Classroom

Myths and Opportunities: Technology in the Classroom by Alan November

Technology in the Classroom: Using ScreenChomp to Learn Phonics

Learners have changed as a result of their exposure to technology, says Greenfield, who analyzed more than 50 studies on learning and technology, including research on multi-tasking and the use of computers, the Internet and video games. Her research was published this month in the journal Science. Reading for pleasure, which has declined among young people in recent decades, enhances thinking and engages the imagination in a way that visual media such as video games and television do not, Greenfield said. How much should schools use new media, versus older techniques such as reading and classroom discussion? "No one medium is good for everything," Greenfield said. "If we want to develop a variety of skills, we need a balanced media diet. Each medium has costs and benefits in terms of what skills each develops." Schools should make more effort to test students using visual media, she said, by asking them to prepare PowerPoint presentations, for example. "As students spend more time with visual media and less time with print, evaluation methods that include visual media will give a better picture of what they actually know," said Greenfield, who has been using films in her classes since the 1970s.

Multimedia tech increases literacy speed in kids

Using Technology To Improve Literacy Skills