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The article extends beyond just discussing Yelp, to other community based internet knowledge platform sites like Wikipedia. Wikipedia is given a pass because it is nonprofit and has an active community dedicated to accuracy- review sites like Yelp and Google have financial considerations that possibly impact their ability to be totally impartial. Do you rely on online review sites? How much weight do you give them when making decisions?

I am a heavy user of Tripadvisor when I plan vacations and read hundreds of reviews on lodging, restaurants, and attractions. While I'm quite sure some of the reviews are fake, some of them are obviously fake or are done by persons who seem to be very disgruntled with life in general. When I look at reviews I prefer those that include photos and plenty of details. I tend to ignore the ones that just say things like "I hated it" or "I loved it" as they offer no real value.

This is such an interesting topic! I am not a heavy user of review sites but seeing this (https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/) makes me feel strange.

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

Good review of why Open Educational Resources (OER) should be considered over traditional textbooks

In response to Denise's reply to my Second Life post, I found this to give further illustrations on using virtual learning.

Many recent studies show the effectiveness of Web 2.0 technologies on collaborative writing for L2(ESL/EFL) students. Web 2.0 tools such as Wiki, Facebook, and Forum have been adopted in an L2 class to enhance students' motivation and achievement. Peer review and collaborative writing are drawing more attention and support from L2 instructors because of the collaborative potential of the latest CMC tools such as Wikis. With this latest technology, students can work more easily and simultaneously in groups of three or more than with previous technology. Check this article for the recent studies about using technologies in ESL/EFL writing classes for peer feedback projects.

This article discusses how Americans use Twitter and relates to our Week 3 discussion about lurking.

I am an invisible learner on Instagram. I have never posted on Instagram, but just like some of the posts. :-)

I'm definitely a lurker when it comes to Twitter.

This is an interesting concept, I had not heard of microlearning before today. It sounds like there is some merit to it, based on this article, but I do wonder how easy it could be to use ineffectively in terms of corporate trainings. I worry it could be easy to see low cost numbers and embrace the concept without ensuring learning gains are still taking place.