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With news organizations beginning to create special positions to manage the use of social media tools, such as the recently appointed social editor at The New York Times, journalism schools are starting to recognize the need to integrate social media into their curricula. That doesn’t mean having a class on Facebook () or Twitter (), which many college students already know inside and out, but instead means that professors are delving into how these tools can be applied to enrich the craft of reporting and producing the news and ultimately telling the story in the best possible way.

1. Promoting Content Social media tools are bringing readers to news sites and in many cases are increasing their Web-traffic. This isn’t just through the news organizations’ own social media accounts, but those of their writers that tweet, post, share and send links to their organization’s content. Each writer has a social network, and using social media tools to promote and distribute content increases the potential readership of the article being shared. Sree Sreenivasan, dean of student affairs at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, said this is one of the most basic and yet very important social media uses for journalists.

3. News Gathering and Research The power of real-time search is providing journalists with up-to-the-second information on the latest developments of any news, trends and happenings, worldwide. Jeff Jarvis, a professor and director of interactive media at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism, said it’s important for students to know how to use real-time searches to gather information and keep up on what is breaking. This includes, but is not limited to, using search on Twitter, FriendFeed (), OneRiot, Tweetmeme, Scoopler, and SearchMerge.

n noting the potential power of social networking tools for organizing mass change, I thought out loud for a moment about what kinds of dangers might emerge. It struck me, as I spoke, that there is a terrible analogy that might be applicable: the use of radio as a way of coordinating bloody attacks on rival ethnic communities during the Rwandan genocide in the early 1990s. I asked, out loud, whether Twitter could ever be used to trigger a genocide.

In a 1999 presentation for the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, Professor Frank Chalk noted five circumstances that would allow the maximum intensity of a media-driven response to a crisis: the introduction of a new medium of communication, such as radio [or Twitter]; the use of a completely new style of communication; the wide-spread perception that a crisis exists; a public with little knowledge of the situation from other sources of information, and a deep-seated habit of obeying authority among the target audience. All of these circumstances pertain to the promulgation of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and many of them are found in other cases of genocide and genocidal killings, as well. It's easy to see how well this model applies to the Iranian situation, too. This shouldn't be read as an indictment of social networking technologies in general, or of Twitter in particular. As I said at the outset, I'm thrilled at how critical this technology has been to the viability and potential success of the pro-democracy demonstrations. As the cat-and-mouse game around proxy servers further suggests, the only way for a state to entirely cut off the use of these kinds of tools is to kill its own information networks, blinding itself and effectively removing itself from the global economy. What I'm arguing, however, is that we shouldn't see the positive political successes of emerging social tools as being the sole model. We should be aware that, as these tools proliferate, they will inevitably be used for far more deadly goals.

Beyond Social Networking: Building Toward Learning Communities

Web 2.0 tools have critically elevated the social networking activity and skills of individuals. Not only are young people highly active in social networks, but older individuals are also showing a huge increase in their use of these tools. The attraction of older age groups is, of course, social connection and community building among professional and casual peers and friends. The following graph of a Pew Internet study shows the various age groups and the increase of use

Certainly, there is a powerful new force developing here. Citizens who previously had little voice in public are using cheap Web tools to tell the world about the drama that has unfolded since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner of Iran's presidential election. The government succeeded last week in exerting control over Internet use and text-messaging, but Twitter has proven nearly impossible to block. The most common search topic on Twitter for days has been "#iranelection" -- the "hashtag" for discussions about Iran -- and international media outlets are relying on information and images disseminated by ordinary citizens via Twitter feeds. Yet for all its promise, there are sharp limits on what Twitter and other Web tools such as Facebook and blogs can do for citizens in authoritarian societies. The 140 characters allowed in a tweet do not represent the end of politics as we know it -- and at times can even play into the hands of hard-line regimes. No amount of Twittering is going to force Iranian leaders to change course, as Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's supreme leader, made clear during Friday prayers with his stern rebuke of the protesters. In Iran, as elsewhere, true revolution can only happen offline.

Building Engaging Learning Experiences through Instructional Design and E-Learning I’m an instructional designer developing online learning, so that’s primarily what I write about. Instructional Design: This is what I do all day, and I’m always trying to learn how to do it better. Higher Ed: The courses I create are graduate courses, so I’m interested in higher education. K-12 Education: The participants in those courses are mostly K-12 educators, so I’m interested in what’s important to my audience too. Corporate E-Learning: Even though I’m in education, I know I can learn a lot from corporate e-learning. Besides, I’m employed by a for-profit company. Lifelong Learning: It didn’t start out to be a goal for my blog, but I’ve discovered that these tools help my own lifelong learning. I write about my discoveries: what works, what doesn’t, what I’m thinking. Technology: I write about technology, especially as it overlaps with any of the above areas. Bookmarks: The Daily Bookmarks Posts are resources I find interesting or useful. You can view and search the complete list of bookmarks on Diigo or del.icio.us. On my Post Series and Recurring Themes page, I’ve collected some popular topics. This includes my liveblogged posts from the TCC 2008 conference and my series on instructional design careers. The top posts in the sidebar to the right are another great place to start reading. If you want to learn more about me, check out my bio.

Do you shoot video with your cell phone, digital camera, or other handheld device? Then the chances are good that you have shaky, dark, noisy, pixilated, or blurry videos. Less-than-ideal videos that obscure your life’s best, captured moments.But those moments don’t have to be lost to common video problems any more. vReveal has the advanced enhancement technology and “one click” touch-up tools that make it easy to dramatically improve the quality of flawed videos

Google SMS is a suite of mobile applications that allows you to find information on topics as diverse as sexual & reproductive health, and agriculture to sports scores and weather. It also includes a new marketplace application, Google Trader, that will help buyers and sellers find each other; use it to buy and sell electronics, crops, tools, cars, properties, or anything else that you need or have. To start using Google SMS Search, simply text message your search query to one of the following short codes and we’ll text message back your results:

The SoMo experience begins with tools like GPS that can identify where we are and where we are going in real time. GPS is further enhanced through the marking of actual physical locations -- geotagging. Geotagging can include everything from "soundprints" to video markers, and the tagging of locally relevant reviews and news. GeoGraffiti, for example, allows mobile phone users to record a message tied to a specific place that is later retrievable by anyone who finds themselves near the same location. Geotaggers can leave a virtual "Kilgore was here" tag at any place, freezing in time and making publicly available their location-specific activities, interactions and thoughts. Mobile social networking is also coming on strong with applications like Foursquare and Britekite. Mobile phone users can discover each other, both friends and strangers, via profiles they make available at a particular location. Such applications are good for networking on the fly and immediately finding out if your friends are nearby at a given time.