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"When I first began tweeting, I came up with the following "formula" to help guide my work. Identify>Engage>Leverage This approach was (as it is today) pretty simple. If I could find the people I was interested in following, I could engage with them (e.g., retweet their posts, promote their blogs, share their professional achievements, etc.) and then "leverage" these connections; this "leveraging" process would include followers responding to my "Questions of the Week," retweeting my posts, and/or reaching out to me directly referencing my handle in their tweets.) The challenge, of course, is actually finding these "influencers" and in this post I'll share some research approaches that have worked for me."

Facebook Subscribe lets you get feed updates from people who don't have to Subscribe back. It's essentially Twitter within Facebook. So to reduce confusion and hopefully boost traction, it's adopting Twitter's terminology and renaming Subscribe as "Follow".

In order to understand Circles, Communities, and Sharing, it was important to grasp how each worked and then discuss what is best for the learning environment. Tools Each teacher received the following: markers, tape, yarn, and two package of photos of their peers On the think tank wall, each teacher was provided with the following drawings: three circles, share options, and a house community. Process Teachers started by categorizing the photos and labeling the circles with each category Teachers placed the photos into the proper labeled circle Anticipated Question: Can I place the same person in multiple circles? Teachers label their house community with an interest: CrossFit, Bulldogs, Blackhawks, etc. Each teacher takes his or her picture and does a gallery walk of the community houses. Once a community of interest is found, each teacher places his or her photo into the house community. The creator of the house community returns and determines whether to "accept" those people into the house With circles and a community created, teachers are ready to share ideas. They choose one of the options, draw/write/place links on the wall, and decide whether they are sharing to a circle, house community, public, or more. Using yarn, they connect their idea to whomever they are sharing to see visually how ideas spread

"A company you've probably heard of before called Always Innovating is working on a pretty awesome little project for smartphones. It's called the MeCam and is essentially a mini helicopter they're calling a Nano-Copter complete with video recording and streaming capabilities. The MeCam is designed to follow you around and record every moment. You can stream that video right to your Android phone and even share it to your social site of preference or YouTube."

"Now let's imagine a university in the 21st century decides, as a matter of choice, to make all of its students attend classes in these sorts of learning spaces. But more than this, they decide to black out all of the windows so that no one can see in and they say that there can be no displays of student work within the room. They provide a standard overhead projector in each room and they insist that teaching consists of a 5 minute introductory presentation from the teacher followed by a question, followed by another 5 minute video and so on. Students are only allowed to talk to each other if they go to a corner of the room that has been walled off from everything else. This method of teaching will be the same for every degree program so the artists and sculptors will use a space like this as well as the engineers and physicists. Learning about modern dance and nursing will all occur in these spaces."

"Massive open online course, following a collaborative project-based pedagogy. Over 1200 registered participants, although impossible to predict how many will actually show up. We expect a significant portion of participants to follow through the MOOC, dedicating 3-10 hours a week, while others will participate casually, dipping in and out and choosing the activities they want to complete."

"Second, and more importantly, Google Plus generates much more brand engagement than you think. Recently we studied more than 3 million user interactions with more than 2,500 brand posts on seven social networks. The result? Brands' Google Plus posts generated nearly as much engagement per follower as their Facebook posts - and almost twice as much engagement per follower as their Twitter posts. "

"Use of in-class concept questions with clickers can transform an instructor-centered "transmissionist" environment to a more learner-centered constructivist classroom. To compare the effectiveness of three different approaches using clickers, pairs of similar questions were used to monitor student understanding in majors' and nonmajors' genetics courses. After answering the first question individually, students participated in peer discussion only, listened to an instructor explanation only, or engaged in peer discussion followed by instructor explanation, before answering a second question individually. Our results show that the combination of peer discussion followed by instructor explanation improved average student performance substantially when compared with either alone. When gains in learning were analyzed for three ability groups of students (weak, medium, and strong, based on overall clicker performance), all groups benefited most from the combination approach, suggesting that peer discussion and instructor explanation are synergistic in helping students. However, this analysis also revealed that, for the nonmajors, the gains of weak performers using the combination approach were only slightly better than their gains using instructor explanation alone. In contrast, the strong performers in both courses were not helped by the instructor-only approach, emphasizing the importance of peer discussion, even among top-performing students."

"Nelson says the new version of the system lets professors quickly divide a large class into groups of up to 12 students. Those break-out groups of students can then participate in a small-group discussion while each student fills out a "structured worksheet" that can be graded later by a TA following a rubric to make sure each student was following along and participating. During the live class, the professor can peek into any of the breakout sessions, either by appearing as one of the participants, or lurking in the background so that he or she can see and hear the students but they don't know the professor is there. The requirement of filling out the worksheet, or doing some other activity like a poll or quiz, makes sure students in breakout groups stay on task, Nelson says."

"You can use Twitter Archiver to save tweets for instance, for brand mentions, tweets from a specific person, trending hashtags, geotagged tweets, and even to back-up your own tweets. Besides the actual tweet text mentioning your keywords, Twitter Archiver also captures other data related to the tweets include: details about Twitter user (e.g. their name, number of follows and followers, location, bio, profile image, verified or not), a link to the original tweet, date and time of the tweet,  the app from which the tweet was shared, number of retweets, and many more. 'The add-on is free though you can upgrade to premium edition to capture more search terms. The premium version also includes supports and polls twitter more frequently (every 10-15 minutes) to download new tweets."

"The echo chamber doesn't need any bad connectivity to function. Limbaugh's followers have full access to outside sources of information. According to Jamieson and Cappella's data, Limbaugh's followers regularly read - but do not accept - mainstream and liberal news sources. They are isolated, not by selective exposure, but by changes in who they accept as authorities, experts and trusted sources. They hear, but dismiss, outside voices. Their worldview can survive exposure to those outside voices because their belief system has prepared them for such intellectual onslaught."

40 percent of people with Twitter accounts don't tweet. Costolo said many folks shy away from the platform because they think they have to tweet, but that just isn't true - and that 40 percent aren't. What ARE they doing? They're following others.

we have to realize that no matter the level of tech saturation in their lives outside of school, that this introduction of ever-present connectedness during school is something very different for students too. So my approach with the following students was to ask them to simply share what some positives and negatives were with their first few months of this newfound access to the Web. Here are their unabridged responses…

"As a former K-12 teacher and a current educator in higher education, I grappled with the idea of creating a Facebook account to communicate and become "friends" with my students. I was less concerned with using Twitter because of the difference between "following" and "friending." In my youth I was told by parents and teachers, "I'm not your friend." They said this to distinguish between the roles of friends and adults in the rearing of a child. An assumed level of respect was maintained between teacher-student and parent-teacher when such boundaries were made clear. Today's shift in learning environments to learner-centered classrooms thus raises these questions: Do educators now want to be friends with their students? Do students actually prefer not to be friends with their teachers?"

"Who created the Internet and why should we care? These questions, so often raised during the Bush-Gore election in 2000, have found their way back into the political debate this season - starting with one of the most cited texts of the preconvention campaign, Obama's so-called "you didn't build that" speech. "The Internet didn't get invented on its own," Obama argued, in the lines that followed his supposed gaffe. "Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet." In other words: business uses the Internet, but government made it happen."

"If you don't have a resume, what do you have? How about three extraordinary letters of recommendation from people the employer knows or respects? Or a sophisticated project they can see or touch? Or a reputation that precedes you? Or a blog that is so compelling and insightful that they have no choice but to follow up? Some say, "well, that's fine, but I don't have those." Yeah, that's my point. If you don't have those, why do you think you are  remarkable, amazing or just plain spectacular? It sounds to me like if you don't have those, you've been brainwashed into acting like you're sort of ordinary."

"Unlike any other website you have the freedom to do whatever you like and wish to see. Even the profile viewers can be edited according to your wish. It can be made into a very useful account if you follow the below mentioned 10 tips."

"They found that people were not very concerned with credibility for users they already follow, and more concerned with tweets & users they encountered via search. In addition, the results of the study found that people were most concerned with credibility for topics like news, politics, emergencies, and consumer information (product information & reviews)."