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Interesting look at big data collected from google (not quote social media, but I thought you would want to read it)

This is fascinating. I've always found the reports on what parts of the country search for certain terms more to be fascinating. Wonder if we will get to a point where this kind of data will actually be a factor in policy-making?

A Google a Day provides daily trivia, and can be a fun way to teach your students important online research skills.

Hi Fabrizio, I just tried the Google a Day and I like the concept very much. However, unless I was doing something wrong, I found it cumbersome to do the research and get back to the original question. In addition, when I tried to access Google Map, which was needed for answering today's question, it said it would not support it in the Google a Day window. So I opend GM up in another window. Did you experience something similiar? With that being said, I think the idea is great, especially since they give you tips and hints at how to find the answer. I think researching tips and exercises are very important, even for graduate students. You can never get enough practice in researching topics. Thanks for sharing this, I really liked it.

When I type a research on the search box it opens a pop-up window with the data, so I have two pages open, the A Google a Day one and the search one. I think it works pretty well on Chrome, I didn't have any problem, but I haven't tried it with other browsers. A Google a Day is fun and challenging; however, I don't think you can learn too much from your answers, they are too general. Maybe in the future there will be a way to customize it and create your own challenges, it would be really interesting to use with our students/learners.

While reading an article this week, I was stuck on trying to grasp what Ontology was. After looking at several search results, images, and videos, this is the one that has helped the most - maybe all the rest I saw now makes sense seeing this?

I was confused at first, too, because although I am familiar with this concept in philosophy, it didn't seem to fit what was being described in the articles. This video was helpful-thank you!

Makes you wonder if we really should be using Facebook in education. I've no problem with folks choosing to use it, but if classes pressure students into using it? That can be a real problem.

This does pose a problem because even if you were to use it in education (but not forcing everyone to use it) Facebook could still collect data from non-users by other students in the class who are connected to Facebook, use the find friends feature, and have non-Facebook using student's information in their smart phones. I would like to know more about why Facebook collects this data of non-users, what purpose does it serve them? It also made me realize how Facebook can get my personal information when I post my new address to a friends wall, or share a new cell phone number. I may not have manually uploaded the information on the Facebook account, but writing it on my friends wall may be all the information Facebook needs from me.

This does pose a problem, especially for users like me that are infrequent with posts. I feel like I should be in there everyday "watching" for some weird activity. But I just don't have that kind of time. I am a smart phone user of all of 2 months now and already I have deleted my facebook app from my phone. I am certain I never opted to remain signed in, yet somehow I was. Then, while searching for a phone number in my contacts, I realized that the FB app had attached itself to all of my phone contacts. Too invasive. I like the idea of sharing information over platforms like Collaborate. There is a little more oversight and transparency.

Flickr is a photo-sharing network. What can we learn from it? Maybe we can learn photography on it. Is it useful in academia? This article tells us Flickr can serve as a database in which subject-relevant images may be searched for/consulted/viewed/used. The study addresses three main question: What types of images tagged with academic terms are posted to Flickr and how do they differ between subject areas? Are some subject areas more frequently represented in Flickr? Does term-frequency analysis of accompanying tags provide any additional insights into the types of images investigated and the reason for their placement? The study process mainly includes images tagged, image content analysis, and term-frequency analysis of associated tags.

Tess (2013) provides a great review of the literature on the role of social media in the higher education context. Tess (2013) suggests that as instructors look for ways to incorporate technology to mediate and enhance their instructions as well as promote active learning among students, they increasingly turn to different social media tools. The author argues that the current literature on the integration of social media in higher education are limited to self-reported data and content analyses. Therefore, he provides a summary of literature on the role of social media in the higher education classroom as well as discusses their limitations. Various studies (cited below) explored the role of social media and SNSs in different contexts of education -teaching learning process. These studies have demonstrated interesting and useful results. Tess (2013), in addition to keyword-specific searches, used a "snowball" method for finding the articles from the relevant articles cited in the literature reviewed. To narrow the range of the review, he chooses articles on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, blog and LinkedIn. Tess (2013) provides a brief definition of each of these five SNSs. He also looks at the social impact of these popular SNS tools. The author looks at the factors motivating the educators to use social media in higher education classrooms, such as: the changing nature of the student, the changing knowledge consumption relationship, and the de-emphasis of institutionally provided learning and emergence of "user-driven" education (Selwyn, 2010). The author provides platform-specific affordances and drawbacks in terms of their application in the higher education space. Tess (2013) argues that although the infrastructure to support social media's presence exists in most universities today, instructors have been slow in adopting the tool as an educational one. Those who are adopting are still likely in the experimental stage. He admits that his literature rev

I liked reading the comments. I didn't notice changes, so presumably they didn't remove anything that I use! They said they would remove a discover feature (helping newcomers search for content/groups?). That's OK with me. Interesting in the comments was some discussion of individual workflows with Diigo and other tools (Pocket, IFTTT, InoReader, OneTab).

In this article, two Australian researchers investigated whether Twitter can be used to foster enhanced student engagement within a university level sport marketing course. 68 students participated in the study. 59% of the class did not have an existing Twitter account and had to sign up for one to participate in the study. There were two aspects of Twitter user during the course. First, students would participate in two discussion lectures, which was structured much the same as a Twitter chat, with questions posted in advance of the actual discussion. The second aspect was to regularly post contemporary issues in sport marketing that coincided with the course content. Much like EME 6414, students used a hashtagged course code to be able to track the activity and respond to their classmates. I thought it was interesting that the researchers explicitly advised existing Twitter users that they did not have to censor their regular Twitter activity, as the instructor would only follow the course hashtag. This appears to be a clear acknowledgement of the potential for context collapse when social media is incorporated into an educational setting. Questionnaires were administered to broadly measure aspects of student engagement. The results suggest that Twitter was effective in the university classroom as engagement levels increased over the semester. Twitter made it easier for students to connect with both the instructor and other students and extend that connection beyond the lecture time in the classroom. These networking tools also allow students to take on a more active role in the co-creation of the course content. I think this is one of the most significant advantages of incorporating social networking elements into the classroom. The biggest limitations of the study were its small sample size and homogeneous population. Future studies should include more students from various disciplines.

It took me a very long time to find the comment button to add another thought to my original post. Not nearly as noticeable as other discussion platforms. Anyway...I wanted to add that this article was very appropriate right now because the TA for EME 5608 is currently conducting research on a very similar topic, specifically "when and how social media apps like Instagram are used by students (without instructor participation) to support social interaction and build social connections in online courses." I know some of you are also in that course and I'm curious what your opinions are on the experiment? Do you think that interacting on Instagram has increased your social connections and added benefit to the learning experience?

It also took me a long time to find the comment button! You are not alone in that!

Merlot is a great spot that I will spend some time on this summer to buff up on my online teaching

BONUS ARTICLE: This study examines how teens are portrayed relative to their technology use through images. The study presents some interesting insights about the tensions between macro and micro discourses about technology use as well as the focus on technology itself rather than addressing what teens are doing with the technology. Any parallels with teens and social media?