Archive for the ‘Twitter’ Category
May 13, 2011
A New York Times article today looked at teachers who use Twitter and other “backchannel” technologies in the classroom to enhance participation. While most people (and educators) might be skeptical of the merits, Trip Gabriel points out the benefits that some teachers see in the form of increased student participation. He cites one high school class in Detroit where participation in a class of 30 was thought to be up around 66% when backchannels were used.
The other answer to the skeptics’ fears that having Twitter in class would negatively affect learning—as cited in a recent Pearson survey (PDF) by the Times—you are more likely to keep students on task if they are engaged with the technology for an educational purpose. The big argument of pro-backchannel users is that you harness students’ interest through technology instead of prohibiting it. While the hope that giving students freedom to do classwork through Twitter would make them less likely to use the technology for non-class purposes is a bit defeatist, it does strike me as a realistic way to properly incorporate social media in school. Instead of being afraid of technology or going retrograde in a society and economy where digital communication is increasingly important, everybody wins.
January 6, 2011
Social networkers, pay attention!
Some may say you are wasting time on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, but there is a social policy foundation that disagrees. According to a recent article in The Obsever, a new study shows the strength of social networks is vital to landing jobs in the creative sector in the UK. So vital, in fact, that networks trump unpaid internships. Social networks also explain why well-off youths land more in-demand jobs than poor ones. In other (clichéd) words, it’s not what you know, but who you know.
The Social Market Foundation, an independent UK think tank, is reported to have shown that word-of-mouth recruitment highly affects the following creative industries:
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December 20, 2010
Quick Twitter “facts”:
- Twitter is big with college students, but not good for recruiting them.
- Late twenty-something adults love Twitter much more than teens or senior citizens.
- The average college student (who uses Twitter more than the average Internet user) is between 18-24 years old, but her Twitter use doesn’t count toward the 90% of the Tweetdeck-using population that is over 25.
Confused yet? There’s a reason …
Twitter statistics are crazy!
That’s the conclusion to be drawn from two recent studies, one from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, another from Nielsen. The same Nielsen study also suggests that adults over 25 use Twitter at almost double the rate (12.1%) that kids, teens and young adults do (6.6%). But stop right there: Pew says “Internet users ages 18-29 are significantly more likely to use Twitter than older adults,” [emphasis added] and its findings are from last month (compared to Nielsen’s July).
What do we do with this data? One way to look at it could be to focus on the overlap in the two studies from ages 25-29. If adults over 25 are on Twitter at almost twice the rate of their younger counterparts, then Pew’s more recent conclusion of greater use among 18-29-yr.-olds makes more sense if ages 25-29 are carrying the group.
[Aside: As far as the percentage of Internet-using college students who use Twitter, what college students don't use the Internet? Isn't "Internet-using college student" redundant in these circumstances?]
Kids and old people must go
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November 23, 2010
KFC, fried chicken titan and member of the culinary avant-garde, made a significant announcement last Tuesday.
From Yahoo! News: The company will be offering a $20,000 scholarship to the high school senior who concocts the best reason for why they deserve it — on Twitter, in 140 characters or fewer.
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November 16, 2010
Technology is slowly making its way into the classroom, with decidedly mixed responses. On the one hand, the wide use of cell phones has led many college professors to ban them outright. Then there’s this study. The Wiley Online Library uncovered a surprising bit of information:
It was found that a group of students using Twitter in and out of the classroom earned higher grades than the group that did not.
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August 31, 2010
You have important things to say, and it’s about damn time someone paid attention, am I right?
I, for instance, tweeted my breakfast this morning, as well as a thought on what I might eat tomorrow:
This is big time stuff, and thanks to an initiative at the Library of Congress, my breakfast tweet is now set in digital stone. Beginning in April of this year, the LOC began archiving every tweet ever tweeted on Twitter.
That’s right, all of them.
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August 5, 2010
Nielsen has some new findings about how Americans use the Internet on the computer vs. on their mobile phones. (See mobile Internet graph at end of post.) The biggest differences on the surface appear to be:
- Americans use the mobile web more for email than anything else.
- Americans use the computer-based Internet more for social networking.
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July 21, 2010
As reported by Inside Higher Ed, Susan Zvacek, director of instructional development at the University of Kansas, has proposed a new definition of technological literacy for students. Instead of restricting literacy to the ability to use a computer, she advocates expanding the standards to include an understanding of and capacity for critical thinking about technological concepts. In her words, computers today are easy to use and Google is easy to access, but “the ability to deal with information” is what sets the true tech-literate apart from those who just know how to do tasks.
Tech skepticism
I love the idea of “tech skepticism” presented by Zvacek. I like using new technology, and appreciate the benefits that much of it brings to my working and personal life. At the same time, I’m skeptical of the limits of technology and the ways it can consume our attention and isolate us from our immediate surroundings. I’m intrigued by the ideas of Nick Carr (“Twitter is neurological heroin,” “Google is making us stupid”), but I also think he’s only half-right: The real problem is distraction, not the Internet itself.
Focused Internet use
All use of the Internet need not necessarily be distracted. For example, if you want to focus on one action while using the Internet on your computer or mobile phone, don’t open 5 windows, browser tabs or net-using applications. Keep one page/window open, and concentrate on the task at hand, whether it’s reading an article, watching a video, or making a purchase. Alternatively, you can simultaneously keep other pages or applications open, but keep them in the background until you finish your prioritized task. A little mental discipline can go a long way, and much distraction can be avoided by turning off Facebook, Twitter, email, or instant-messaging services, or at least stopping any “push” notification built in to the way you use them. By simply putting a wall of focus up, and then blocking out time for when you want to use more distracting applications like email or Twitter, you can retain your mental efficiency.
Tech literacy
To come full circle to tech literacy, I see the problem of distraction as integral to tech literacy in as much as technological distractions prevent us from being efficient students, workers, and people. As a result, I applaud Susan Zvacek for her level-headed advocacy. Educating students (and the rest of us) on the best ways to manage technology positively impacts nearly every aspect of life in the information age.
What do you think? Do we need a new definition of tech literacy? Is distraction in general more of an intelligence/competence obstacle than Twitter or the Internet?
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Photo courtesy of Bluesoft Brasil via Flickr.
July 6, 2010
Colleges, take note. The Chronicle’s “Wired Campus” blog tells us that students don’t typically use social media applications to learn about colleges. In fact, a Bloomfield College marketing director is cited in the post showing 40% of college admissions offices being on Twitter in contrast to only 15% of prospective students expressing “interest in using Twitter to learn about colleges.”
In a great example of avoiding marketing tone-deafness by knowing your audience, the post also links to a previous Chronicle post that cited a Nielson study showing teens don’t tweet. Indeed, Twitter’s vast recent growth cannot be attributed to people under 25, who are under-represented on Twitter compared to the Internet-at-large.
What does all this mean? Well, if you’re an admissions officer, and you want to reach prospective students on the Web, try to go beyond Twitter. Make sure your school’s website is welcoming to prospectives and give them a good preview of what to expect on the all-important campus tours. Go a step further and provide tips for making the most of a college visit, whether it be by day or overnight.
After all, maybe the admissions officials are just a few years early on the “tweet outreach” efforts: some 6-year undergrads may be looking for master’s degrees at age 25, which is the beginning of the age bracket where Twitter use takes off.
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Opening image courtesy of jmilles via Flickr.
June 25, 2010
Do you like to party? Do you dig Facebook?
Do you want a job? Be careful!
I’ve seen these numbers before: employers use the Internet extensively for background checks on candidates. As Dan Schawbel points out in a “Hire Education” blog post today (WSJ), a recent Microsoft survey shows that 78% of employers check out search engines, followed by 63% with social networks. I’m sure plenty of employers use both.
What You Need To Know
If you’re a new college graduate, or anybody looking a job, you better be sure that an Internet search for your name comes up clean, and if it doesn’t, you’d better be ready to explain why.
Schawbel’s post warns about the dangers of leaving damning evidence about yourself on a place like Facebook, where he found a reason not to hire a student applicant. (She was expelled from her college dorm.) This example is actually pretty tame, so if you have more embarrassing evidence on Facebook than that—use your imagination—clean up that profile by limiting what’s publicly viewable via your privacy settings* and deleting any tags (or the pictures themselves) that tie your name to things you don’t want your future boss to see you doing. Another way around potential image problems is to make sure your full name is not tagged in relation to any photos better kept among close friends: try using a nickname or just your first name, and tell your friends who can’t resist tagging you to do that before they take pictures of you having one too many Gray Gooses.
I know full well the importance of online reputation monitoring for both individuals and businesses as part of my previous full-time job at a search-enginge marketing firm. One of my colleagues there—Kurt Krejny—has a great blog post on the subject that applies to both camps. Schawbel’s tactics for getting the right Google results for your name are solid. Even Google has tips for gaming its own results in the name of reputation.
So, read up, watch your back, and keep your Google results clean.
*See an instructive video from Huffington Post about how to navigate the new Facebook privacy settings.
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Photo courtesy of Bergdorf Brunette via Flickr.
