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In the article "Why Youth Love Social Networking Sites", Danah Boyd writes about Social network sites like MySpace and Facebook create a bridge for your social life and online life. Her article examines how these students use Social Networking websites to interact with their peers. She also addresses the issue of privacy and how it can be altered with in a social networking setting.

This article the author talks about how the different social networking sites have brought students together. A place where they can communicate with their peers and meet others. She addresses that fact that it allows the public to gather.

In the article Why Youth Love Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life by Danah Boyd is all about the way social networking sites work and how that connects to a person's real-life identity. Or in other words, how a person can form his or her own identity through social networking.

In this article, distance learning is viewed as a great way to reach adult learners and give students flexibility never before experienced with traditional learning. The main focus though is the obstacles and barriers present in this new method of higher education. Galusha names five areas of concern for student learning, responsibilities of faculty members for facilitating this new method, and possible organizational and course complications. Along with these are explanations of the motivations certain students and teachers have towards taking on distance education, and what institutions can do to provide the most successful online education experience for students.

In the article Mobile Identity: Youth, Identity, and Mobile Communication Media, by Gitte Stald, the author states how the mobile phone is a source of identity for the youth. The focus of the article is on the meaning of the mobile phone in young people's lives and how it somehow shapes their identity as a person. Most young people's identities are influenced by the media they use. The idea that the youth's identity is mobile means it is always changing every moment, and changing relations between friends and family. The mobile allows the youth to communicate within physical and virtual spaces always in transition. This tool (mobile phone) has become such an important part in the young people's lives and it is almost impossible for it to not be a part of their identity.

In Dara N. Byrn's article, The Future of (the) "Race": Identity, Discourse, and the Rise of Computer - mediated Public Spheres, Byrn argues that social networking on - line encourages the act of racism. The use of social networking increases racial and cultural discrimination, even though everyone seems to think that there are no racial or cultural boundaries when communicating with others on line. It is important to realize that social networking sites, such as AsianAvenue, BlackPlanet, and MiGente, can create racial boundaries for the young people who use them.

This article explores the influence of teacher's assumptions and attitudes about boys and their learning practices. The introduction of this article begins explaining "overwhelming evidence that boys are falling behind in our education system"(74). It further explains that this problem is crucial to boys everywhere because boys with low literacy skills are less likely to engage, complete and advance their education. Henderson argues that there are multiple factors that are contributing to boy's low level or underachievement in learning. Teachers, students, parents, siblings and friends play a vital role in shaping children's literacy practices outside of school that are then instilled inside of school. Henderson asks an interesting question, why do the literacy practices at school, home and in the community have to be different? Why can't all of these practices be viewed equally important and valuable? Henderson questions whether boy's bad behavior in school is a result of underachievement or is it the cause of it? Do teacher's play the most important role in shaping children, especially boys, learning identity in school?

Gaming becomes a huge topic that goes on throughout life. Many people would talk about their games, for example Farmville and helping out by sending things and other related subjects. Also as you go on it slowly goes and connect yourself to other games and topics that are going through.

Jesse Schell talks about how video games was once fantasy base and now has penetrate into reality.He gave examples of how life would be like if it was a video game and how we would benefit from it. Games have grown into technologies and it will keep on growing.

This source is useful and helpful when researching about the usage of social networking among teenagers (boys and girls) from the ages 12-17. It explains and gives examples and key facts between teenage boys and teenage girls and their differences of usage on the social networking.

In the article Technology and Media Literacy: What Do Teachers Need to Know?, by Dana L. Grisham, the author poses many questions about how well teachers are able to understand, teach, and learn about media literacy. The author believes, "When considering the proliferation of technology and its instructional applications, teachers need to focus on both hardware and software, but move beyond the simple "how to" focus into the whys, when, and for whom issues of curriculum." She also discusses the need for students to learn the history behind multimedia literacy to learn the importance it poses in society today.

"How Standardized Testing Damages Education," posted on, http://www.fairtest.org/facts/howharm.htm, the author talks about how standardized testing in schools today is damaging to students. The article talks about how the tests are biased but schools are still using it as a measurement of whether the student is ready for school or if they can go to the next grade. They also talk about how the tests have an emotional affect on the students. If a student is not able to go to the next grade, because of a bad test score, it's going to have a negative emotional affect and not necessarily improve their knowledge capabilities.

The National Center for Fair and Open Testing in regards to how they believe that standardized testing has damaged our education system. They begin by discussing how school use the tests the determine if students are ready for school, track them once they are in school, and help to develop and guide our schools curriculum, even though they are incredibly biased and are limited in their ability to measure achievement or ability in the students whom they are testing. They continue by arguing that these tests are very inaccurate when it comes to determining if a student is ready for school because they are 'overly academic and developmentally inappropriate in primary schooling.'

COOOOOL article--loved it.

In the article; "Digital Literacies" a 12th grade project about digital literacy is described. Elizabeth Boeser decided to develop an online role-play scenario for her students. The role-play was centered on the sites that were blocked by the school. Students made online avatars and discussed the pros and cons of blocking certain sites from students. Posts were being discussed after and before school and showed that the use of Ning (the website) showed students a positive way to use the Internet for school. It allowed for instant sharing of ideas. The author then goes into the importance of online identity where students can work with students by replicating, adding, and engaging in information. The four important digital literacy's are also mentioned; multimodality, connectivity, hyper linking, and collaboration.

In an article co-authored by Starr Roxanne Hiltz and Murray Turoff, distance learning is viewed as a revolution in education where if you do not adapt, you will become extinct. Universities nationwide must substitute "face-to-face interaction and teacher-centered pedagogy" with "hybrid courses using student-centered pedagogy"(2) Emphasizing the fact that a good percentage of students prefer distance learning, the authors call for new and innovative developments for the online course systems offered today. Hiltz and Turoff end with a very appropriate quote from Charles Darwin about the importance of flexibility and ability to adjust to changing times, ""It's not the strongest of the species that survives, not the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."

This article spoke about how scholars believe that children who are read to by their family members will most likely have better literacy practices. They have greater tendencies to try and read without any formal instruction compared to those who wait for instruction. They believe that the "comfortable atmosphere" of their own hom and the soothing voice of their mother (or in some cases their father, grandma...etc) generates as reading being something calm rather than a task. Children get to learn about all new things and can be explained to in a way that they can understand. Their parents are able to speak to them in a language easyly understood by their children and be able to meet their unique needs. The connection between real life situations and that of a storybook are made which makes it more simple for a child to understand and actually be able to personally relate to.

Boys, masculinities and literacy: Addressing the issues This article is from the Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, written by Wayne Martino. Through interviews, gathering data and reading over 30 books on boys, masculinity and literacy, he discusses these problems while offering solutions for the "underachievement and lack of engagement" with literacy for boys. (9). Right away Martino explains that not all boys are underachieving but overall test scores have shown a general pattern of boys struggling in literacy practices. He offers many reasons that may be causing this literacy crisis for males, as well as solutions that need to being in schooling.

This article talks about how young adolescents are constantly trying to find their own identity. They are always trying new roles to find out who they are. In this day and age many people are doing this by the use of technology. It talks about how people shape their image through myspace and other social networks. One girl named Isabella makes her site very elaborate and full of colors while boys of her age usually base their site around sports heros and masculine things. It further goes on to describe how adolescents shape their identities through technology.

This talks about how social medias such as Facebook, texting, and other social networking technologies are used to bridge the gap between formal and informal learning. Students collaborate or "meet" to discuss issues in the "adult world"

This article is about how students are using digital medias as apart of their learning. The authors also define what they believe to be social and cultural tools of technology and how they are used.

In "Classroom Technology and Teacher-Student Interaction" by Geneva Logic, they discuss how teachers can use the system called Vision on computers within the classroom and it will benefit the interaction of teachers and students. For in the article, it points out how the "ratio to public school students to instructional computers with internet access had shrunk to 3.8 to 1 in 2005" (14 percent improvement in availability over 2003). Today, in the year 2010 less than 10 percent of students do not have access to a computer. However, researchers have found it is the teachers who are intimidated by bringing in technology within the classroom. Researchers stated that "technology brings about changes in classroom organization and the role the teacher plays; providing teachers with the tools they need to negotiate these changes is crucial to their success". (Muir-Herzic, 2004) This shows that if we were to provide teachers with these tools then teachers would see how technology within the classroom "leads to qualitative and quantitative improvements in teacher-student interaction.

This video is about how a large group of people join every year to show off there cars and just talk about there cars. This is a social event that is famous all over the world but mostly in U.S. and Japan and is uploaded to Youtube and people talk about it in facebook and magazines and is just a big event in the beginning of the year.

In this article, the author is explaining how lying gestures mean something, as well as the way a person's speech is. On the average, the effectiveness of uncovering a lie ranges from 45% to 70%. In most cases the suspicion that someone is lying can improve revealing the truth. I thought it was very interesting how they had an experiment where people went about their everyday lies, and still a few came out with a lie. I just don't understand how we can take something so small and stretch it to something large and grand, and for what? Is it the attention? Or is is the deception we want others to grasp upon? It stated that women are consistently more accurate than men at detecting lying and what the underlying truth really is. I was surprised to find out that women actually do fall for a man's lie more than vise versa. This article gave many small reason as to why people, and what was funny is that I, myself have heard them almost everyday or quite frequently.

Meade, the author, discusses the difference in lying when it comes to the opposite sex. She also discusses how growing we were not able to understand the differences in the types of lies.

The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading, from The MIT Press, is a book chapter written by the author Peter Lunenfeld. He talks about downloading and uploading and in the beginning he said, "The computer is the twenty-first century's culture machine. It is a dream device, serving as the mode of production, the means of distribution, and the site of reception." This book chapter is really interesting. It has really good descriptions and will totally grab your attention.

This article talks about how online communication like social networking sites Facebook, Twitter and Youtube, by terrorists and their supporters. It also looks at how chatrooms and electronic forums are used by terrorist groups to communicate with members and its supporters and to share tactical information.