I've recently partnered with Facebook and co-authors Linda Phillips and Dr. BJ Fogg to write the Facebook for Educators Guide!
The guide is also available in Spanish, Portuguese and German.
Those cutle little "Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF boxes are going high tech!
Thanks to a partnership with Microsoft TAG, kids can now ask you to scan the barcode on the side of the box with your smartphone and donate any amount--on the spot.
No smartphone? No problem. You can also contribute $10 by texting the word "TOT" to UNICEF (864233).
Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF just for teachers
via blog.nielsen.com
In a demographic view of social networking activity on mobile devices, women were found do use their phones to “tweet” and “friend” 10% more than men.
And while social networking is commonly thought of as something for “the kids,” the 35-54 age group had more active mobile social networkers than any other group.
via Nielsen Wire
The LG Text Ed program, which was launched in early 2010, offers parents a number of articles, tips, videos and other content so they can educate themselves on the dangers of mobile phone misuse, employ strategies to help protect their children from potential problems, and discover how they might be modeling their children’s mobile phone behavior.
In a study conducted by the Pew Research Center, presented during the Federal Communication Commission’s recent Generation Mobile Forum, 40 percent of teens said they’ve been in a car when the driver used a cell phone in a way that put themselves or others in danger.
LG Text Ed with Jane Lynch
Bringing her trademark intensity and flair to the LG Text Ed campaign, award-winning actress Jane Lynch is working with LG Mobile Phones to raise awareness about risky mobile phone behavior.
In a series of comedic vignettes, which can be viewed on www.LGTextEd.com, Lynch tackles issues such as sexting, texting while driving, mobile bullying, and other questionable teen behaviors.
At the end of each video, Lynch directs parents to LGTextEd.com where they can find professional advice and guidance to help promote safe and responsible mobile usage among their text- and tech-savvy families.
In the texting while driving video, Lynch confronts a classroom of parents about their own texting and driving bad habits and urges parents to model good behavior for their children.
Using humor to get to the heart of the issue, Lynch helps parents help themselves by putting the phone away in the car and encouraging their kids to do the same.
Parents can find additional information on the LG Text Ed initiative and mobile phone misuse (mobile bullying, sexting) by visiting www.lgtexted.com. You can also connect with LG Text Ed on Facebook.
Related: 'No Phone Zone' Lesson Plan: Teaching Teens the Dangers of Texting & Driving
While most children and teens still rely on feature phones, college students have graduated to the world of mobile internet devices—including smartphones, tablets and mobile game consoles.
Ownership of internet-enabled handheld devices increased by more than 11 percentage points between 2009 and spring 2010, with the number of students planning to purchase such a device in the next year holding steady.
As the devices have become more common among undergraduates, they have also begun to play a bigger role in students’ lives.
In 2009, fewer than half of respondents who owned an internet-enabled handheld device said they used it at least weekly, with fewer than a third reporting daily use. By 2010, 42.6% reported using the devices every day and two-thirds did so at least once a week.
Three years ago, Twitter was barely known outside the geeky confines of San Francisco. Today, it's a marketer's dream: a free service with an audience of nearly 125 million people, who use it to keep tabs on friends, celebrities — and their favorite companies.
Co-founder Biz Stone explains what's happening, where it's headed, and how entrepreneurs can take advantage. He recently spoke with Inc. senior writer Max Chafkin.
via www.inc.com
Earlier tonight Facebook ended several weeks of speculation and made it official that they're jumping into the check-in space with a new geolocation feature called Places.
Facebook Places has three key components: Help you share where you are, help you find where your friends are, and discover new places around you.
At the live announcement, Chris Cox (VP Product, Facebook) talked about how technology is encouraging interaction in the real world and forming a living history. Think of Places as a form of digital storytelling.
Imagine getting a push notification: "this is where your parents had their first kiss, here are the photos, this is what their friends said about it" - or something like that. "One day, when it's done, you'll go to a page and on that page will be our collective memory and that's dope."
Facebook also announced that they were partnering with the other leading geolocation services--Foursquare, Gowalla and MyTown (with others to soon follow)--and allowing them to integrate their services into Facebook Places.
For the most part these geolocation services have only been popular among the early adopter and geek crowd. Now that Facebook has jumped into this space, it will be interesting to see how quickly the 500 million members of Facebook embrace (or don't) this new service.
Avoiding a privacy debacle will be key to making this a successful mainstream service. Right now it looks like Facebook has learned from its previous privacy misteps--the default setting for Places will allow only your friends to "tag" you to a location or see where you've checked in.
Have you ever wondered about the relationship between mobile phones and social media? The mobile web is growing at an exponential rate, and this trend shows no signs of slowing down.
This graphic illustrates the rates at which people access the mobile, social web, as well as what they do once they are connected.
For Many Blacks, Twitter Enables a Vibrant Social Life: Some researchers have surmised that African-Americans might use
Twitter more heavily because they use it in a more conversational way
than other groups.
Twitter's "trending topics" - popular subjects
on a given day - often center on issues African-American users are
tweeting about. [NewsObserver]
Instead of Banning Your Kids from Social Networks, Consider Teaching Responsible Usage: I’m glad my parents didn’t ban me from them. I’m glad that my parents taught me basic principles to live my life by, principles that have served me both online and offline.
They weren’t particularly tech savvy. They didn’t hover over me at all moments. The family computer wasn’t locked down and it didn’t have any monitoring software. But, they taught me how to be safe as a kid. [ManagingCommunities.com]
More Cyberbullying on Facebook Than Rest of the Web: Thirty-two percent of online teens have experienced some form of harassment via the Internet, a problem also known as "cyberbullying."
According to recent data, 15% of online teens have had private material forwarded without permission, 13% have received threatening messages and 6% have had embarrassing photos posted without permission. [NYT]
Facebook Privacy Research: There is significant concern about the exposure of personal data to facebook’s advertising partners and to external sites, often governed by the decision of friends rather than the personal subject of the data. [Frances Bell]
Hello Kitty Death Watch: Hello Kitty fatigue is hitting Japan first, and hard, the company indicated. Analysts say part of the problem is that Sanrio has oversold Hello Kitty, which appears on products as various as T-shirts, toilet paper and toasters. [NYT]
How Facebook’s ‘Community Pages’ and Privacy Changes Impact Brands: While there’s been plenty of coverage about user privacy concerns, attention on Facebook’s changes on brands hasn’t been adequately covered, this analysis is intended to unravel what’s at stake –and what brands should do. I’ve spoken to a handful of brands and their representatives to learn what’s eating at them. [Web Strategy]
Tweets From Disneyland: Our weekly roundup of some of the best--and the worst--tweets from the park that's only sometimes the happiest place on earth. [OC Weekly]
Business School Ditches Kindle DX: The Kindle isn't doing as well in academic environments as Amazon—and educators—had originally hoped. The Darden Business School at the University of Virginia is near the end of its Kindle "experiment," already concluding that students are not into the Kindle when it comes to classroom learning. They are, however, fans of the Kindle when it comes to using it as a personal reading device. [Ars Technia]
The Real ROI of Social Media: If you're asking the ROI question about social media and expecting to be able to show it all on a spreadsheet, you're still looking at social media as a channel, most likely for just one or two business functions, such as marketing or recruiting.
While it's true that social media can be used in that way, it has become something else entirely: an essential communication utility. What's the ROI of the telephone? Or email? It's a ridiculous question, right? [American Express OPEN]
According
to research conducted by BlogHer and iVillage “2010 Social
Media Matters Study,” co-sponsored by The Nielsen Company and Ketchum, social sites
are now a frequent destination for nearly three-quarters of Internet
users.
Respondents’ top daily media activities were social as well. Watching television is still on top, but Facebook was the next most common media destination visited every day.
The study found similar rates of usage among men and women, and pegged the percentage of weekly social media users at 73% of the online population.
Here are some of the other key findings in the 2010 Social Media Matters Study:
Have you ever wondered what teens were really using their mobile phones for? A recent study released by Pew Internet Research has shed light on average mobile phone use among American teens.
This study includes not only information regarding how much teens use their mobile phones, but what they are using them for as well, such as: to go online, text, listen to music, sharing pictures and accessing social networking sites.
Perhaps not surprisingly, average mobile use varies greatly by age, and sexting, while limited (according to Pew only 4% of teen admit sending a nude photo of themselves to someone via text) seems to becoming more of an issue.
View Large on www.flowtown.com
A recent Pew
Internet & American Life Project report, Teens and Mobile Phones, indicated that black teens were more than twice as likely as
whites to go online on with their mobile phones, at 44% versus 21%. Hispanic
teens were also relatively active on the mobile Web.
“Teens from low-income households, particularly African-Americans, are much more likely than other teens to go online using a cell phone,” the report said. “This is a pattern that mirrors Pew Internet Project findings about adults and their cell phones.”
Urban Youth Are Wire(less)
For most of the 1990s the conversation around minority youth and technology was centered on the “digital divide.” This conversation was primarily focused on hardware issues and connection to the Internet.
However, as S. Craig Watkins points out, the digital divide is not just about access, it is “also about social and cultural skills in human networks to enable proper participation.”
In his keynote at the 2010 Digital Media Learning 2010, S. Craig Watkins (University of Texas at Austin) presented a number of emergent patterns about African-American and Latino youth usage and participation in the digital media space:
Whether it's marketing soda, producing digital entertainment or online learning opportunities, it's vital that we have a better understanding how minority and urban youth connect and interact on the web so that we can create more inclusive digital experiences.
Related: The Young and the Digital
Image Source: eMarketer
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Header Artwork by BT Livermore
Social Icons Courtesy of Davide Di Cillo
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