Group items tagged

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.

This guide is designed to give teachers the tools and ideas they need to engage students using social media and existing curricula. The guide was inspired by the recent Knight Foundation study "Future of the First Amendment 2011" written by Dr. Kenneth Dautrich. The Knight study - based on a survey of 12,090 high school students and 900 high school teachers -- indicates that students who are most active in social media also have the best sense of First Amendment principles. That suggests that Twitter, Facebook and other social media can play an important supplemental role in the classroom.

As Washington looks to squeeze savings from once-sacrosanct entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, another big social welfare system is growing as rapidly, but with far less scrutiny: the health and pension benefits of military retirees.

As Washington looks to squeeze savings from once-sacrosanct entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, another big social welfare system is growing as rapidly, but with far less scrutiny: the health and pension benefits of military retirees.

"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."

Bodies hanging from bridge in Mexico are warning to social media users

While that debate rages on, here is a score in the social-media-may-be-harmful category. Using sites, such as Facebook and Myspace, makes teens more likely to drink, use illegal drugs and buy tobacco, according to a study from the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.

Blogs are so last decade. The preferred mode of communication, at least among young people, is social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, according to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. According to the report, only 14 percent of teen Internet users (12 to 17 year olds) in the United States today say they blog, compared to 28 percent in 2006."

All those hours you spend on Facebook may be adding grey matter, signifying greater density, to the part of your brain linked to social skills. Or, perhaps, people with larger areas of the brain for social skills may just have higher than average Facebook friend counts

"This year, for the first time, American high school students show a greater overall appreciation for the First Amendment than do adults. More students than ever before say they are thinking about the First Amendment. Nine in 10 say people should be able to express unpopular opinions. Six in 10 say the press should not be censored by the government. What happened? One explanation: the digital age. In 2011, Connecticut researcher Ken Dautrich found "a clear, positive relationship" between social media use and support for free expression. He now finds the same link between digital media use and First Amendment support."

When Michelle Ryan Lauto decided to organize a statewide protest against school budget cuts, she didn't pass out fliers, make phone calls or attend meetings.She just logged on to Facebook.Lauto's Facebook page - "Protest NJ Education Cuts - State Wide School Walk Out" - drew nearly 18,000 members within a few weeks and sparked today's mass budget protest in schools across New Jersey.With 400 million members and growing, Facebook is becoming the leading forum for mobilizing protests, rallies, boycotts and other social movements

Psych has a very active social media following with more than 2 million fans on Facebook

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

"Two high school football players in the US state of Ohio have been found guilty of raping a 16-year-old girl. The case came to light via text messages, online videos and social media posts made the morning after, attracting nationwide attention. The two were sentenced to at least a year in juvenile detention and the judge said both might stay in detention until they reach 21. The case was thrust into the national spotlight after attention by bloggers and the hacker activist group Anonymous. Some claimed that the community - including local police - had sought to cover up the crime to protect the accused, who were members of a celebrated high school football team."

The business plan of Varsity Monitor is simple. Major universities like North Carolina, Nebraska and Oklahoma pay $7,000 to $10,000 a year and Varsity Monitor keeps an online eye on their athletes. Among the services the company and others like it provide is a computer application that searches social media sites that athletes are active on, looking for obscenities, offensive commentary or words like "free," which could indicate that a player has accepted a gift in violation of N.C.A.A. rules.

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.

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.

Facebook. Twitter. MySpace. Cell phones. Blogs. Time thieves, all of them. Or at least that's how they've sometimes been portrayed in news media, common lore, and even the occasional scholarly study. Social media just add to the Great American Isolation, right? Not so, says a study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

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.