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"There's an ongoing debate about the role social media should play in education. Advocates point out the benefits that social media provides for today's digital learners while critics call for regulation and for removing social media from classrooms. Finding a middle ground has become a challenge."

"Social Media has a significant impact impact on the world around us. Entrepreneurs, Business of all size can influence platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to build large, interact with communities, raise awareness and drive footfall. Equally, social media empowers consumers to make smarter decisions, engage with brands and demand better customer service."

""Social media can increase employee participation in learning, especially if the programs have a significant element of self-directed learning. Learners are more likely to stay engaged and complete their program of study if they are able to reach out to peers involved in the same program or get help on a particular topic. Face-to-face or virtual group interaction at key points in the program, such as a kick-off or achievement of a milestone, helps enhance user engagement.""

Renee Hobbs on media literacy.

"Now, with HTML5, media elements in the browser get a nice kick in the pants. You've probably heard of the new Audio and Video tags, both of which allow these types of content to function as first-class citizens in the browser, no plug-ins required. Next month's article will cover both of these elements and their APIs in depth. You've probably also heard of the canvas element, a drawing surface with a rich set of JavaScript APIs that give you the power to create and manipulate images and animations on the fly. What IMG did for static graphical content, canvas has the potential to do for dynamic and scriptable content."

"Zygote Media Group, which provided the imagery for Google's modeling, has built Zygote Body with the code. It offers the same navigation and features. To support this launch, the Google Body team has built a new, open-source 3D viewer at open-3d-viewer.googlecode.com. Thanks to the work of Google engineers, any developer can now use the same kind of 3D model browser for her or his own project."

"#Educon in many respects was born through social media. Most of the educators in attendance are connected educators. It is almost a requirement for connected educators to tweet their impressions out about #Educon at every session they attend. When you look at a twitterstream for the #Educon hashtag it is not a trickling brook, but a white-water rapids of a river racing with tweets of opinion, reflection, information, and occasionally adoration."

Beginning Classroom Integration. Of course, it is far more than a Facebook clone. Much of the public perception of Google uses Facebook as context. While comparative purposes are fine, many seemingly similar platforms are different in both nuance and function, and Google+ is no different. Resist the urge to "prefer Facebook," and consider the social media platforms for their diversity. Below are three stages of integration -- with examples -- to get you started.

As reported in U Connecticut's Daily Campus newspaper, N. Katherine Hayles, a professor at Duke University, recently gave a lecture on the impact of everyday digital media use on university students. The bottom line: the perpetually connected lifestyles of today's students means they are coming to the classrooms with significantly shorter attention spans than previous cohorts. Professors can ignore that, stay calm and lecture on - or we can respond by adjusting our teaching styles.

Renee Hobbs: Kindle Store

"In addition to specific exceptions for libraries and educators, academic and research librarians use the important general exemption of fair use to accomplish their mission. Fair use is the right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment under some circumstances, especially when the cultural or social benefits of the use are predominant."