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"That's the latest number from the Social Media Report, an annual snapshot by Nielsen and NM Incite. The report says that Facebook is still the top social network, though its tally of unique visitors has fallen 4 percent from the same time last year. Blogger, the second-place network, also saw a slight decline (3 percent) while third-place Twitter saw a gain of 13 percent. Wordpress, likewise, saw a 10 percent jump. The break-out social media star of the past year has been Pinterest, the report said, which jumped 1,047 percent from the same time last year. And since its Sept. 2011 debut, Google+ has grown 80 percent."

""Canvas Network allows institutions to define the structure of their courses and the approach to teaching that makes the most sense to them. Some institutions have chosen to pursue a massive open online course format (MOOC), and some have chosen to pursue a smaller online course format with more interaction. Often the courses are taught on the same platform the institution uses to teach tuition-based courses, which means students have a seamless experience as they progress through their academic journey.""

"You could browse events and find interesting events that connections in your network were organizing or attending. You could also post upcoming events and promote them through your network and the LinkedIn Events page. It worked great and lots of people used it. Unfortunately, LinkedIn didn't talk much about it and hid it in their navigation bar so there were a lot of people who didn't even know it existed."

"Social networking entails "following" people and exchanging personal information about one's family, work, life, travel and so on. And pictures of your cat. When Google launched Google+ in 2011, social networking was on the rise. Social media, on the other hand, is when you share memes, articles, photos and videos taken by someone else-pictures of someone else's cat-and other content that is not about your own life."

"The Open Textbook Network (OTN) promotes access, affordability, and student success through the use of open textbooks."

Establish a PLN (Personal Learning Network) to build staff development and become a scholar in a pedagogy and curriculum: Teachers need to accept primary responsibility for their professional growth. Participate in social network sites for teachers and learn from the experiences of others.

"The overarching theme now of Learnist and Lore (aside from the first letter of the names) is that these sites are designed to function just like the most popular social networks in the world … except they were built just for teachers and students. To me, that says that it's a very exciting time in edtech as companies are able to finally leverage the resources and data from the Facebooks and Blackboards of the world … then turning this into a very useful new tool that can be completely tailored to the education audience."

"Below you'll see a guide to who is using social media (pretty much everyone is aware of it) to which actual social networks they prefer. Surprising Info Most teachers don't use Twitter. They opt for Facebook and YouTube by a large amount LinkedIn is preferred over both wikis and Twitter Just about every social network can play a pivotal role in education, so it's time to start learning about all of them!"

"The far greater danger is that of preparing today's students en masse for a repeat of life in the twentieth century, when homework was for the eyes of teachers only, where learning was delivered exclusively by an expert standing at the front of the room instead of sometimes constructed collaboratively by a network, and where students were taught to be effective but largely passive cogs in an industrial machine, rather than active and intelligent nodes in a networked learning society."

"It is shame when teachers use excuses not to build their own networks. Too many times they say they can't or they don't have the time when they just don't want to. They are afraid to try something new. Until they give it a try, they won't see the value in it. I believe that when I try something new, I have to use it regularly for at least 2 weeks in order to make an honest decision about it. "

"Bullying in a Networked Era: A Literature Review", by Nathaniel Levy, Sandra Cortesi, Urs Gasser, Edward Crowley, Meredith Beaton, June Casey, and Caroline Nolan, presents an aggregation and summary of recent academic literature on youth bullying and seeks to make scholarly work on this important topic more broadly accessible to a concerned public audience, including parents, caregivers, educators, and practitioners.

"The response is not only technological. The best communication, remote meeting, collaboration or social networking solutions won't fix bad habits but can enable new ones provided they're desired. No one will switch from a reporting culture to an open work one without effort. And in the same way businesses establish social networking policies - and should even start with email policies - they should contemplate establishing meeting policies."

"The key to effective socialized course design lies in understanding and configuring the LMS as not (just) a content delivery mechanism for distributing grades and PDFs but also as a potentially valuable niche online networking platform that can support a series of socialized assignments."

" instead of professors and students, there's facilitators and participants, instead of one-directional lectures, you have discussions, and instead of tests and quizzes you create projects and artifacts. If it all sounds too squishy and feel-good, make no mistake, this is serious learning, tackling the amazingly heady topic of feminism and technology and created by bona fide, longtime professors in their fields. It's rigorous, complex and in San Antonio, you don't need to be a college student (past or present) or even own a computer to access it. That's the new international network FemTechNet in a nutshell, one of those ideas that seems to have suddenly arrived fully formed, like Athena springing out of Zeus' head. Obviously a lot more work went into it than that, but the actual creation timeline for the Network took a little more than a year-and-a-half according to co-creators Anne Balsamo and Alexandra Juhasz, Dean of the New School's Media Studies program and professor of media studies at Pitzer College, respectively."

The Blended Schools Network is hosting a massive open online course (MOOC). Starting on Monday, October 21, 2013 this course is designed for educators who wish to Learn the fundamentals of being a quality online teacher using a pre-built online course. Note: This course is designed for educators that have access to online course content via a course management system of their choosing (e.g. Blackboard, Canvas, Edmodo, Moodle etc.). If you do not have access to an online course the Blended Schools Network can provide you with a sample online course for use during the MOOC. This MOOC is an online course consisting of: Weekly online lesson content that can be completed at any time during the assigned week Weekly online collaboration activities that can be completed at any time during the assigned week Weekly online presentation and discussion sessions that can be attended live or viewed as a recording

This looked interesting - very interesting.....

60 percent of social shopping starts on Facebook. 15 percent starts on Pinterest, and a little five percent wedge begins on Twitter. But there's one network you've probably never heard of that drives more than Pinterest and four times more social shopping traffic than Twitter. It's called Polyvore.

"What confuses me is the lack of reference to or connection with the existing open education movement. This is a frustrating Silicon Valley attribute. Don't learn from others. Learn it yourself. By joining existing networks, you add power to an existing structure. By creating your own, you subvert other networks and create your own integrated power structure."

"Launch a homebase for your cause and collaborate. Simplify the organisation of your group and share content with like-minded people. All in your own space where you have control. Create your very own and free Social Network. You don't need to be a developer. Just select what you need and get started now."

"However presently, few discussions and promotions of PLN's venture further than lauding specific benefits for teachers. But why just teachers, and not students? Could students benefit from a network of learners? Considering the importance of exams in determining futures, it seems that professional development for students not only has unbounded potential, but must be taught as a matter of urgency."