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“Once they were hosts to lively discussions about academic style and substance, but the time of scholarly e-mail lists has passed, meaningful posts slowing to a trickle as professors migrate to blogs, wikis, Twitter, and social networks like Facebook.” Chronicle of Higher Education

“Yesterday, Google announced a new mobile location-aware application called Latitude, which lets you track your friends’ whereabouts using your mobile phone. The move will have major ramifications to the current mobile social networking market which was just beginning to get off the ground. The question we must ask now is this: did Google just validate mobile social networking …or did they just kill all the competition?”
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A company called Cerego just launched a new adaptive learning system for English speakers who want to learn a new language: iKnow!

Link to review of site

“One way of better understanding Net-Generation learners is to examine the texts they create on online social networking, blogging, and image sites as well as in virtual worlds. Mark Mabrito and Rebecca Medley explore the nature of Net-Generation texts as a reflection of the cognitive differences between this generation’s students and their older instructors, discuss the unique challenges this group of learners may present for instructors who do not share their technological immersion, and suggest the means by which such challenges may be overcome. To accommodate the needs of the Net Generation, Mabrito and Medley suggest that faculty must reconsider traditional pedagogy and integrate more innovative ways of instruction for this significantly different population of students.”

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“‘Emerging technologies for learning’ aims to help readers consider how emerging technologies may impact on education in the medium term.”

Link to PDF Report

by Farhad Manjoo

“In 2005, Stephen Colbert catapulted the word “truthinessâ€Â?â€â€?the quality of an idea “feelingâ€Â? true without any backup evidenceâ€â€?into the public consciousness. Salon blogger Manjoo expands upon this concept in his perceptive analysis of the status of truth in the digital age, critiquing a Rashomon-like world in which competing versions of truth vie for our attention. Driven by research and study, the book relies on abstract psychological and sociological concepts, such as “selective exposureâ€Â? and “peripheral processing,â€Â? though these are fleshed out with examples from American history, politics and media. For example, Manjoo demonstrates how the Swift Boat Veterans’ negative campaign derailed John Kerry’s 2004 presidential run. He also points out that the sheer quantity of 9/11 imagery has engendered more conspiracy theories, not fewerâ€â€?demonstrating, he says, the disjunction between truth and proof. Manjoo rounds out his analysis by examining the workings of “partisan news realities,â€Â? and he points out that the first casualty in these truth wars is a basic human and civic need: trust. Though several of the author’s ideas are repetitiously threaded through his narrative, Manjoo has produced an engaging, illustrative look at the dangers of living in an oversaturated media world. (Mar.) (Publishers Weekly, January 28, 2008) ”

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“Within the last decade, blogs have become an important element of popular culture, mass media, and the daily lives of countless Internet users. Despite the medium’s interactive nature, most research on blogs focuses on either the blog itself or the blogger, rarely if at all focusing on the reader’s impact. In order to gain a better understanding of the social practice of blogging, we must take into account the role, contributions, and significance of the reader. This paper presents the findings of a qualitative study of blog readers, including common blog reading practices, some of the dimensions along which reading practices vary, relationships between identity presentation and perception, the interpretation of temporality, and the ways in which readers feel that they are a part of the blogs they read. It also describes similarities to, and discrepancies with, previous work, and suggests a number of directions and implications for future work on blogging. ”

Eric Baumer University of California, Irvine

Mark Sueyoshi University of California, Irvine

Bill Tomlinson University of California, Irvine

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Freshman hit with 147 academic charges for online study network at Ryerson University

Toronto Star

“Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann has joined 44 other states in seeking greater controls for online networking sites to prevent sexual predators from using those sites to contact children.”

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