Gwen Mueller is an IT Professional, #dnd Gamer-girl, #coffee drinker, geek in Secondary Education, editor on tumblr #education, curating #science, and #tech resources to inspire lifelong learning with 1/4 cup of #fun.
Showing 139 posts tagged facebook
Where is the line of appropriate contact? As an educator, I would not want people posting items to my personal page nor calling me at home uninvited. How much training do we provide for our staffs about issues like this? Connecting with parents and students through personal pages? Are mandates and policies needed? Guidelines?
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“The conventional wisdom is that Facebook use is merely a time sink and leads to an assortment of negative consequences. But our research shows that it can be a psychologically meaningful activity that supplies a sense of well-being at a relatively deep level,” said co-author Dr. Jeff Hancock, Cornell professor of communication, and computer and information science.
“The extraordinary amount of time people spend on Facebook may be a reflection of its ability to satisfy ego needs that are fundamental to the human condition.”
While some begrudge the ubiquitous distraction of social media, others are using Facebook to build community in their classes. Hosting a class page, they say, promotes solidarity in large classes in particular, by providing a place where students who might not otherwise connect outside of class share digital flash cards and encourage each other to study harder.
“They’re not competing, they seem to be saying, ‘Look, we are in this together,’” says University of Kentucky psychology professor Jonathan Golding, PhD. He uses Facebook to answer questions about labs and assignments, highlight deadlines and post psychology humor and YouTube videos that reinforce course concepts for his classes. “As an instructor, that’s a very gratifying feeling.”
New research, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that surprisingly accurate estimates of Facebook users’ race, age, IQ, sexuality, personality, substance use and political views can be inferred from automated analysis of only their Facebook Likes — information currently publicly available by default.
Models proved 88% accurate for determining male sexuality, 95% accurate distinguishing African-American from Caucasian American and 85% accurate differentiating Republican from Democrat. Christians and Muslims were correctly classified in 82% of cases, and good prediction accuracy was achieved for relationship status and substance abuse — between 65 and 73%.
But few users clicked Likes explicitly revealing these attributes. For example, less that 5% of gay users clicked obvious Likes such as Gay Marriage. Accurate predictions relied on ‘inference’ — aggregating huge amounts of less informative but more popular Likes such as music and TV shows to produce incisive personal profiles.
He explained, in his appealingly blunt way, “What we have over you is that your Facebook profile is of value to you. It’s a hostage situation.” This didn’t surprise me. In the course of my reporting, I’d been asking middle-school and high-school students whether they’d rather be suspended from school or from Facebook, and most of them picked school.
photo via flickr:CC | Ken Whytock
What most students (and parents) fail to realize is that the success of the American college system has less to do with the quality of the formal education than it does with the social engineering project that is quietly enacted behind the scenes each year. Roommates are structured to connect incoming students with students of different backgrounds. Dorms are organized to cross-breed the cultural diversity that exists on campus. Early campus activities are designed to help people encounter people who’s approach to the world is different than theirs. This process has a lot of value because it means that students develop an appreciation for difference and build meaningful relationships that will play a significant role for years to come. The friendships and connections that form on campuses shape future job opportunities and help create communities that change the future. We hear about famous college roommates as exemplars. Heck, Facebook itself was created by a group of Harvard roommates. But the more basic story is how people learn to appreciate difference, often by suffering through the challenges of entering college together.
Facebook Can Stimulate Cognition in Older Adults
Researchers wanted to study whether teaching older adults to use the popular social networking site could help improve their cognitive performance and make them feel more socially connected.
Specifically, after learning to use Facebook, seniors performed about 25 percent better on tasks designed to measure their ability to continuously monitor and to quickly add or delete the contents of their working memory — a function known in the psychology world as “updating.”
photo via flickr:CC | KimSanDiego
Is There Any Reason Not to Use My Social Network Account to Sign Into Apps?
In a lot of cases, the OAuth authentication is all an app wants or needs. However, in other cases, you’re also granting apps and webapps access to your data.
Good personal security review here. Take the time, it’s worth it to:
photo via flickr:CC | soulzdead
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Earn Facebook Time By Practicing Math
One of parents’ and teachers’ biggest concerns about kids’ use of technology is the issue of distraction. As much as being wired can help kids with school work, it can also lead to temptations for goofing off.
While opportunities for social interaction online can help kids collaborate and work together on school projects, they can also be distracting. That was Pierce Higgins’ experience with his three teenage children, who spent a lot of time on Facebook. Higgins started to ask himself, “How can one harness the energy that teenagers have about their Facebook?”
Higgins teamed up with his brother, Ronan Higgins, and a group at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland to develop Aftermath, software that directs kids to a math skills game where players can earn time on social networking sites. Parents buy and install the software, then choose which sites they want to limit, like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Minecraft.
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Students On Facebook Study 10 Times Less Than Non-Users
We all know that as students progress through their school years, their homework load increases. According to the handy infographic below, the average 6-8 year old spends 9 hours per week studying, vs. 14 hours per week for college students.
What’s really interesting is where Facebook comes into play. Students who are Facebook users spend 1-5 hours per week studying, and non-Facebook users spend 11-15 hours per week studying. Effectively, it would seem like students are losing 6+ hours per week of study time to Facebook!
What other web based distractions do you find eat into your students’ (or your) study time?
On Wednesday, Gov. Pat Quinn signed the law at the Illinois Institute of Technology, making the state the second, after Maryland, to halt the practice. Other states, including Washington, Delaware, and New Jersey, are considering adopting similar legislation.
“Members of the workforce should not be punished for information their employers don’t legally have the right to have,” Gov. Quinn said in a statement. “As use of social media continues to expand, this new law will protect workers and their right to personal privacy.”
A University of Wisconsin-Madison study may provide evidence to refute a supposed link between depression and the amount of time spent on Facebook and other social-media sites.
The UW School of Medicine and Public Health study suggests that “it may be unnecessarily alarming” to advise patients and parents on the risk of “Facebook Depression” based solely on the amount of Internet use.
The study results were published online today in the Journal of Adolescent Health.
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fjrodriguezg adds:
Most Socially devoted industries on Facebook
searchengineland finds:
Companies in the telecom and airline industries are tops when it comes to providing customer service on Facebook. That’s the conclusion of a recent study by the social analytics company Social Bakers.
