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Each year on Constitution Day, students and teachers celebrate the most fundamental laws of our republic. On this Constitution Day, they should also celebrate Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and other social media. Why? Because it turns out that social media are good for the Constitution. Specifically, they're good for the First Amendment. Fully 91 percent of students who use social networking to get news and information daily believe people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions, compared with 77 percent of those who never use social networks to get news. Not all the news is good this year. While more students understand that government can't censor the media in this country, nearly 40 percent still don't. While more students say they think about the First Amendment, most still don't. Even so, when the numbers start to move in the right direction, it's cause for celebration. Do we have teachers to thank for recent improvements in First Amendment attitudes? Not really. Fewer students say they get First Amendment instruction in school than in our last survey. And only 30 percent of teachers say they are teaching the subject. I'm afraid many teachers are a drag on First Amendment learning. The survey says most don't support free expression rights in a school context. They don't think school papers should print controversial articles. They don't think students should post about school on Facebook. And they mostly think social media hurt teaching.

The Youth Citizen-Journalist Network (YCJN) is a social media video and text-reporting educational project sponsored by Instituto de Formación Democrática (the Institute of Democratic Education). High school and middle school students are invited to send their informed opinions about democracy, voting, national and local issues that affect them and and their families and candidates for public office to: newsroom@ycjn.us . Details are available on this website.

Google is killing off Buzz, the company's 18-month-old first try at creating a social network.

It was the beagle, scared but unharmed by the chemicals that were supposed to kill him. There was no going back to the gallows for the miracle dog, destined, it turned out, for the Garden State. Volunteers at the pound took him, brought him to a veterinarian and then put word out to rescue groups around the country - to a little-known network of animal lovers.

Schools across the country commonly block access to YouTube, shielding students from the irresistible distractions of, say, the cat in a T-shirt playing a piano, or worse. So in December, Google started YouTube for Schools, offering schools the ability to pluck only the videos they want, scrubbed of all comments and linked only to other related educational videos. The program gives schools the ability to allow access to the YouTube EDU educational library, and to specific videos within its own network - while blocking the general site.

School districts around the state are considering disciplining students for their off-campus transgressions, even though such a policy may spark lawsuits from parents and free-speech advocates. A similar off-campus policy at a Bergen County school is being debated in the New Jersey courts. High schools around the country have had to deal with these incidents for decades, but social network sites are making it easier for school officials to nab teenage culprits.

Katherine Evans said she was frustrated with her English teacher for ignoring her pleas for help with assignments and a brusque reproach when she missed class to attend a school blood drive. So Evans, who was then a high school senior and honor student, logged onto the networking site Facebook and wrote a rant against the teacher, Sarah Phelps. "To those select students who have had the displeasure of having Sarah Phelps, or simply knowing her and her insane antics: Here is the place to express your feelings of hatred," she wrote. Her posting drew a handful of responses, some of which were in support of the teacher and critical of Evans. "Whatever your reasons for hating her are, they're probably very immature," a former student of Phelps wrote in her defense. A few days later, Evans removed the post from her Facebook page and went about the business of preparing for graduation and studying journalism in the fall. But two months after her online venting, Evans was called into the principal's office and was told she was being suspended for "cyberbullying," a blemish on her record that she said she feared could keep her from getting into graduate schools or landing her dream job.

Americans ages 12 to 34 are spending less time in front of TV sets, even as those 35 and older are spending more, according to research that will be released on Thursday by Nielsen, a company that tracks media use. The divide along a demographic line reveals the effect of Internet videos, social networks, mobile phones and video games - in short, all the alternatives to the television set that are taking up growing slices of the American attention span. Young people are still watching the same shows, but they are streaming them on computers and phones to a greater degree than their parents or grandparents do.

"Every public school district in New Jersey would be required to set guidelines on how its employees communicate with students online under legislation set for a vote in the state Senate today. The bill (S441) would require that the policy be written, and include "provisions designed to prevent improper communications between school employees and students made via e-mail, cellular phones, social networking websites, and other Internet-based social media." If it passes both houses and is signed by Gov. Chris Christie, school districts would have four months to adopt the policy."

Two conflicting online student speech rights cases are scheduled to be reheard on June 3. The decisions, which are likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court, will govern Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey and the Virgin Islands and dictate the authority schools have over what students write on social networking sites.

At Thursday's (September 22) f8 conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed tons of new features and changes aimed at making the social network even more engaging.

Four underground stations in Manhattan will come alive on Tuesday with an amenity that has long eluded the city's subterranean realm: cellphone service, loud and mostly clear. In a landmark trial, New York City Transit will unveil a fiber-optic network that could be expanded to every underground platform by 2016.

But there's another image that has a less soothing, homespun connotation, and that, too, was not entirely washed away by the floods. I happened to visit the Jersey Shore before Irene did, drawn to a different kind of cataclysm. This wasn't an act of God, but a stroke of network programming: the MTV series "Jersey Shore."

NEW YORK -- Just in time for the crucial winter holidays, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. aims to recreate the feel of a local store for its more than 9 million Facebook fans. The world's largest retailer announced Tuesday a partnership with the social networking site that offers Facebook pages specifically tailored for each of its more than 3,500 locations. Those pages are designed to allow its customers to interact with its local stores as well as get information on new products, events and discount offers. The partnership marks the first of its kind for a merchant and underscores how companies are using Facebook to develop a deeper relationship with its shoppers by responding quickly to their demands with the goal of increasing sales.

Days after being dropped from ESPN's "Monday Night Football," Hank Williams Jr. fired back at that network, "Fox and Friends" and what he called the "United Socialist States of America" in his signature style -- a song bellowing biting lyrics in between guitar licks.

We've devoted a lot of space here in recent weeks to Twitter, and for good reason: the June 12 elections in Iran were a major turning point for the social network. Whatever you think of Twitter - a lark, a waste of time, a brain-busting sociological malady - it's incontrovertible that the service allowed Americans a peek into a world that would otherwise have been sealed up pretty tightly.

Mr. Gosling is transforming a fleet of robots that move out in the ocean to measure everything from weather to oil slicks, sharply reducing many of the costs of ocean-related businesses.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other senior administration officials visited Pakistan in October to demand that Pakistan's spy agency either deliver the Haqqani network, a virulent part of the insurgency fighting American forces in Afghanistan, to the negotiating table or help fight them in their stronghold in Pakistan's rugged tribal areas.

"It's odd that so much emphasis is put on teaching journalists how to write an article when that skill is useless without also teaching journalists how to develop strong interview techniques. In an effort to help other aspiring reporters develop this crucial skill-I brought together some of my colleagues and journalist friends to ask them what interview tips they think are most helpful:"