EDUC 439/639 Social Networking - Fall 2012

Although institutional leaders are still discussing e-content plans, in reality the debate is over: students are asking for digital now, this semester.

"Anyone who works with children with autism knows the difficulties in regulating emotions.  Within an hour, a child can go from 'sleepy' to 'boiling' and not have strategies to get to the 'green' area."

There's nothing particularly new about MOOCs. Most universities have offered online courses for many years and the basic technologies involved - video lectures, discussion forums, tests, and the like - are the same we have used with on-campus and distance students. The only difference is the scale.

One in every four Americans receives their news digitally from mobile devices, which are helping to expand the consumption of journalism across multiple sources, according to a new report released Monday. The 2012 State of the News Media Report, conducted by Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, provides an in-depth examination of how Americans read news as their consumption habits transition from the printed form to the digital.

"Twitter and Facebook might soon replace traditional professional development for teachers. Instead of enduring hours-long workshops a few times a year, teachers could reach out to peers on the Internet in real time for advice on things like planning a lesson (or salvaging a lesson that's going wrong), overcoming classroom management problems, or helping students with disabilities."

"Curation is a term that has always referred to the careful selection and pruning of aggregates, such as for a museum or an art exhibition. But the concept in the digital content world means the selection and presentation of these disparate items to help a browser or consumer navigate and select from them. Aggregation without curation is, normally, not very helpful. Curation creates the brand."

"I have long been a fan of Edmodo after it was introduced to me as tool in the Global Read Aloud.  This free social network specifically aimed at students and teachers is a fabulous way to integrate social media into your classroom, as well as setting up ways to collaborate with other classrooms."

So now that I am seeing this, I am torn between which one to try in my classroom. Between Edmodo and Collaborize Classroom, which one would you suggest? Has anyone tried both of these? Looking for suggestions before I finalize with my classroom.

Stacy: This would be a great tool exploration project. Compare and contrast both of them.

"Finding copyright free (public domain) and free to use cartoons (open licensed) can be difficult and the reuse of cartoons in online resources without the necessary permissions is a tricky legal area depending on the facts and circumstances of the case. Here you will find a collection of free to use cartoons that have been licensed in terms of Creative Commons licenses - to visit each cartoonist's site, click on their cartoons shown below. Please do adhere to the terms of use specified by each author."

"Being consumed in constant judging leaves us with the feeling of being mediocre or, alternately, with narcissistic pride. Both antithetical perceptions absorb us in the vicious cycle of comparison with friends, family and unknown others. What's most important -- which I wish I had realised in my teens -- is to learn to be comfortable in our own skin."

"If a tweet is sent in the evening but no one is around to read it, was it ever really tweeted?"

The New York Education Department recently stated that in the first 11 months of 2011 there were 69 cases where teachers were accused of inappropriate conduct with students on Facebook. Some were fired as a result, and there is a growing trend by schools across the country to put a ban on social media. This raises a question: Is prohibiting social media in schools the right way to protect children?

"Although Web 2.0 assists educators with guiding learners to complete tasks and supports the scaffolding of lessons to meet course objectives, there are more advanced pedagogical implications when using Web 2.0 as an instructional tool, such as fostering information literacy and metacognition."

As I'm reflecting on the #eci831 experience and actually thinking about something like a grade for my participation, I realize that I may not have been as good a student as I thought. Not that I didn't do a lot of wandering around the interwebs, connecting myself, exploring spaces of education, learning about digital learning theories, examining how others were using these theories, and determining what, of all of this, would be useful to me and to the analogue educators I am closest with. I certainly did that, but I didn't capture all that here. Why is that a problem? Because if you didn't blog it, it didn't happen.

This must be the educator in you talking. Metacognitively speaking => the ability to discuss what you have learned is one of the great opportunities of the web 2.0. And a great way to reinforce your learning, so this idea of "if you didn't blog it, it didn't happen" is an interesting idea for educators. I have a link to post about this.

"PLN stands for Personal Learning Network.  Simply put, it is the people you connect with to collaborate, share resources, and discuss ideas.  We each have a PLN of some kind, even if you have never logged onto a computer in your life."

I think I can start getting my head around all of these tools as long as I keep reminding myself that this is my PLN, this is my PLN. And then use it like one.

This is a dialogue between Teach, an adjunct philosophy instructor at a public university in New York, and Cheat, who has authored over 100 papers for pay.

" Cliff Lampe, assistant professor of information at the University of Michigan's School of Information, says those who abandon Facebook are doing so as the result of a single, uncomfortable event like a difficult interaction with an ex. A smaller segment of the population is discontinuing membership as a result of privacy concerns."

"My question is about what tools do you think I should use to connect students with genres or communities of practice based on their personal interests"