US parents may be interested to see the Times of India's account of single mom Darshana Verma "who never learned to use a computer and saved for 10 months," spending more than half a month's income on mobile phones for her two children. Verma told the Times that the access to Facebook and the Internet these phones bring her kids represents opportunities she never had. She must not be alone, given … [Read more...] about India’s very mobile social networking
How teachers Facebook & tweet for students
Facebook and Twitter are very different but social utilities just the same, so there are about as many ways teachers use them as there are teachers. And their creativity is truly inspiring. In his blog post "The Why and How of Using Facebook For Educators – No Need to be Friends At All!," Texas middle school teacher Ronnie Burt has a little graphic showing that 61% of educators have Facebook … [Read more...] about How teachers Facebook & tweet for students
Social media: Time to end the laments & get on with it, maybe?!
I wrote it before I read New York Times executive editor and parent Bill Keller's stylish dismissal of social media, but "Hawk drama (& human drama) in the digital age" would've been my response. It was about how we really need to think about "the observer effect" on both the experiment (red-tailed hawks, or youth in social media) and the observer (people at the viewer end of the "hawk cam," … [Read more...] about Social media: Time to end the laments & get on with it, maybe?!
Social media in the classroom: +1 or -1?
Not entirely unlike using chalk and a blackboard, whether or not using Web 2.0 tools is a positive or a negative has a lot more to do with how a teacher views and uses them than with the tools themselves. Two college professors who do use social media as teaching tools "view new literacies as additive rather than an annihilation of traditional literacy practices," writes Prof. Todd Finley of East … [Read more...] about Social media in the classroom: +1 or -1?
Virginia school officials, pls get this right!
Read the lede anecdote of this Washington Post story and tell me if you think Kimiya's 11th-grade English teacher didn't come up with a brilliant solution to help her. Using Twitter. And yet the Virginia Board of Education apparently thinks that the use of social media in school assignments could be the slippery slope that leads to more teachers becoming sexual predators. "The push for new … [Read more...] about Virginia school officials, pls get this right!