Derek E. Baird :: Barking Robot

Weekly Wrap: Democrats & Millennials, Disney's "Alice" Goth Party, Vancouver 2010 Social Media Experiment, John Lennon Education Bus, Google Buzz Lawsuit & More!

Democrats Edge Among Millennials Slipping: While the Republican Party picked up support from Millennials during 2009, this age group continues to favor the Democratic Party more than do other generations. And the underlying political values of this new generation continue to be significantly more liberal than those of other generations on many measures. [Pew Research]

Harvard Law Student Files Class Action Suit Against Google Over Buzz: One of her attorneys, Gary E. Mason of Washington, D.C.-based Mason Law Firm LLP, said, "It's not so much that we're expecting to get millions of people hundreds of dollars. What we'd like to see as result is a commitment from Google that they're not going to do this again the next time they launch a product." [ABC News]

Why Gen Y Isn't Buying Your Products: To put it bluntly, if you’re uncomfortable with marketing to Generation Y, or refuse to understand our unique demographic, your store will not see 2020. To understand Generation Y is to overcome many obstacles in the retail industry. [Retail Customer]

Twitter Users Do It In the Car: Twitter is checked more often while driving than other sites, such as Facebook, according to a recent survey by research firm Crowd Science. Sounds like it's time to take Oprah's No Phone Zone pledge! [NBC San Francisco] [Oprah.com]

John Lennon Educational Bus: Throughout TEDActive, TEDsters had a chance to participate in something truly magical: the making of a music video. The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus, a nonprofit mobile recording studio, travels all around the country 10 months out of the year, providing free hands-on workshops to students of all ages, working with both audio and video projects. [TED Blog]

Tweet O' the Week: RT @henryjenkins: Whatever people are doing in World of Warcraft, it isn't "bowling alone." http://bit.ly/dhrSeI

High School Kid Uses YouTube to Land Prom Date with Maxim Model: In a move sure to inspire hundreds of copycats, 17-year-old Dakota Ridge High School senior Conner Cordova used a series of YouTube videos to get UFC Octagon Girl and Maxim model Arianny Celeste to go to the prom with him. [Asylum]

A Conversation About New Media & Education: It is about a world where students learn with a book in one hand and a mouse in the other, rather than one where they are taught that book culture is so fragile it needs to be protected from the computer. [Danielsaurus.com]

Disney Invites 'Goths' to the Party: Disney, the company that created "the happiest place on earth" and cornered the market on pink, is embracing a darker aesthetic as it reaches out to an unlikely audience for new merchandise: female "goths." [WSJ, Registration Required]

Welcome to Vancouver, the World's Largest Social Media Experiment: Social media was around for the Summer Games in Beijing, but this is the first time it will be deployed in a free and democratic regime.

There's good reason to expect that the Olympic experience will be transformed by the social media presence: it's already changed the Olympic planning process for both the Games organizers and the media that's now descending on the city. Related: Olympics Must Embrace Digital & Social Media Or Risk Losing Youth Audience [Harvard Business Review] [Barking Robot]

Yahoo's #Olympics Website Beats NBC's in Traffic: According to comScore, Yahoo's Olympics site and Yahoo Sports are the top websites for coverage of the first weekend of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. [The Wrap]

Weekly Wrap: Gen Y & the 'Obama Effect', Social Web Strategy Matrix, NBC Olympic Strategy, Facebook Privacy for Teens, Rebranding Mickey Mouse, Gen Y Slang, Young Hollywood = $$$ & More!

Why Brands Are Becoming Media: One of the greatest challenges I encounter today is not the willingness of a brand to engage, but its ability to create.

When blueprinting a social media strategy, enthusiasm and support typically derails when examining the resources and commitment required to produce regular content.

Indeed, we are programing the social web around our brand hub, which requires a consistent flow of engaging and relevant social objects. [Mashable]

Web Strategy Matrix: There’s an incredible amount of media and blogger noise about social networks, yet most focus on “killer app” hype without an objective point of view. My career mission?  To cut out the hype and help companies make sense of what to do. For those fraught with information overload, this definitive matrix distills what matters. [Jeremiah Owyang]

Facebook Privacy Settings for Teens: I would love to have the network's response to these recommendations, so please chime in as an educator, researcher, counselor, doctor, parent...or friend. I am hoping we can get the best recommendation out there for our young teens...and their parents. [Architecture of Ideas]

Hollywood Still Doesn't Understand How to Market to Women: This past weekend, something momentous happened in Hollywood. “Dear John," a chick flick based on a schmaltzy Nicholas Sparks novel and starring two only moderately famous actors, unseated “Avatar,” the most successful movie of all time. Nobody saw it coming. Why not? One simple reason: Hollywood still doesn’t understand how to market to women. [The Wrap]

Probing the 'Obama Effect on Gen Y: According to a study to be released this month by Images USA, 81 percent of the so-called Generation Y feel the gravity of world events is causing them to get involved. But according to Ricki Fairley-Brown, CMO of Images, African-American and Hispanic Gen Yers are more motivated than Caucasians of the same age. [AdWeek] [BrandWeek]

Yet Again, NBC's Olympics Strategy is a Loser: If the reason you are not showing events live online is that you say no one is interested in watching them that way, why are you bothering to police the Web? Prove that no one cares about live events online. [C|NET]

Disney to Rebrand Mickey Mouse: Mickey's popularity in the United States has begun to wane. He's been crowded out of children's hearts by growing competition from Nickelodeon, Pixar and Dreamworks characters and personalities. Executives consider the rebrand of Mickey's personality necessary to remain relevant in the marketplace. [BrandWeek]

Gen Y Makes Vanity Fair's Top 40 Moneymakers List: Los Angeles is the home of American cinema and these days, Gen Y is making the big bucks in this town. Vanity Fair recently compiled a list of Hollywood’s top earners in 2009, including the likes of Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, and Ron Howard. Fifteen percent of Vanity Fair’s list, though, belongs to Generation Y. [Examiner]

Shamelust? GTL? The latest slang from Gen Y: Here's a taste of some new Gen Y vocab that may have otherwise made you go "huh?" upon hearing it. [@ Trend Central]

More Content Shared on Facebook, but User Activity Falling: Facebook's continual system tweaks plus services such as Facebook Connect are really helping transform the company into a content-sharing network rather than a meeting place for college friends. [Fast Company]

Do You Need a Social Media Policy?: Even when a company has a clear social media policy in place that provides more specifications as to what employees aren't allowed to post, there is no guarantee that everyone will represent the company exactly as you want. [INC.]

The Revolution Will Be Mapped: GIS mapping technology is helping underprivileged communities get better services — from education and transportation to health care and law enforcement — by showing exactly what discrimination looks like. [Miller-McCune]

Hillary Clinton on Digital Freedom

"There are many other networks in the world - some aid in the movement of people or resources; and some facilitate exchanges between individuals with the same work or interests.

But the internet is a network that magnifies the power and potential of all others. And that's why we believe it's critical that its users are assured certain basic freedoms.

First among them is the freedom of expression. This freedom is no longer defined solely by whether citizens can go into the town square and criticize their government without fear of retribution. Blogs, email, social networks, and text messages have opened up new forums for exchanging ideas - and created new targets for censorship...

The final freedom I want to address today flows from the four I’ve already mentioned: the freedom to connect - the idea that governments should not prevent people from connecting to the internet, to websites, or to each other.

The freedom to connect is like the freedom of assembly in cyberspace. It allows individuals to get online, come together, and hopefully cooperate in the name of progress. Once you’re on the internet, you don’t need to be a tycoon or a rock star to have a huge impact on society."

— U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Henry Jenkins on Transmedia, Participatory & Convergence Culture

Henry Jenkins is the director, Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT. In this viral-info-snack he discusses the power of media in a 21 century trans-mediated world. A world where converging technologies and cultures give rise to a new media landscape.

'I Am What I Learn': Department of Education Announces Student Video Contest

In an effort to get students more engaged in their education, President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan have announced a new video contest, asking students to "inspire" them with their stories.

The contest, called I Am What I Learn, is accepting entries from middle school, high school, and college students ages 13 and older. Students can submit videos up to two minutes long, and entries must be received by Nov. 2.

You can find all the details, along with the contest rules, over on the I Am What I Learn website.

A Kindle in Every Backpack: A Proposal for eTextbooks in American Schools

A concept paper published in July by former members of the Obama-Biden transition team, titled A Kindle in Every Backpack: A Proposal for eTextbooks in American Schools, suggests we consider an innovative plan to spread eTextbooks around the country, rapidly scaling up employment of the technology so that we can learn, adapt, and perfect its use quickly. It describes the case for an eTextbook system in three parts.

In Part One, the report discusses the multiple reasons why eTextbooks like Amazon's Kindle are a much better approach for our nation’s students. The reasons they are superior include the ability to update eBooks relatively cheaply and easily, environmental and health benefits (such as reducing loads on young backs and shoulders), and the enormous opportunity to make texts more exciting and interactive—like the other tools children use today and that compete for their attention.

In Part Two, this paper discusses the economics of this approach. Cost estimates in the education world are notoriously sketchy and often self-serving, but it seems clear that over time an investment in these tools would produce big savings.

Finally, in Part Three, this paper outlines how we could implement such a plan, and why there could be broad-based support for it.

Also of interest is an article in the September/October 2009 issue of Scholastic Administrator Magazine titled, "Will the Kindle Change Education?" The article does a really good job of weighing in on both the pros and cons of using the Kindle in the classroom.

A lot of education folks have focused on using the mobile phone as the primary device to usher in the age of mlearning (mobile learning).

But perhaps we should be paying more attention to e-book devices like the Kindle, Sony Reader, Nook or the (rumoured) Apple tablet as the more viable mlearning option to delivering media rich and digital content to kids at school.

A lot the current research shows that when kids go to school they are disconnected from how they live outside the classroom. Either way, what's important is that we take a look at and try using any resource or tool--including e-books--that gets kids' more engaged and invested in their education.

Related: Amazon's Jeff Bezos Gives Away Kindles To His Alma Mater, Asks For Feedback

Weekly Wrap: Coca-Cola's Teen Mobile Marketing Strategy, Social Media Statute of Limitations, Facebook Privacy, Youth in Revolt & More!!

Coca-Cola Targeting Teens with Mobile Marketing Strategy: Millennial's are using their handsets to communicate, consume media and befriend brands more than at any point in the past and as a result Coca-Cola is increasingly turning towards mobile marketing to reach the teenage and young-adult generations. [mViews]

At-Risk Students Make Multimedia: A team of college professors and K-12 teachers discovers how building video games can elevate student performance. [Edutopia]

Games lessons: Since the beginning of mass education, schools have relied on what is known in educational circles as “chalk and talk”. Abandoning it, though, is what Katie Salen hopes to do. It sounds like a cop-out, but the future of schooling may lie with video games. [Economist]

Blog, poke, twitter and be damned: We need a 'statute of limitations on stupidity' for our youthful online indiscretions – otherwise only the drones will thrive. (AMEN!) [Guardian]

(List) What the Internet is Killing: The article is hardly surprising given the massive shifts the Internet brings to society, but it does raise a debate about what will be missed from a bygone era and what will be rightly forgotten. [PSFK]

U.S. Universities Plan Course to Navigate the Mobile Learning Curve: It is imperative that colleges and universities around the country include mobile as part of their marketing communications strategy if they want to continue to attract, retain and satisfy students and school supporters.

Platogo: user-generated content comes to browser gaming: It's a fascinating endeavour, and there seems to be a real emphasis on quality rather than quantity - the UGC stuff is also nicely implemented in the games I've played. [Guardian]

Tweet O' the Week: "I really have become addicted to Klondike bars for breakfast... they're like square frozen bowls of cereal --- they're practically vitamins." (via @DougCoupland)

Youth in Revolt: The plot of this teen film feels episodic, but not in a bad way, with Arteta squeezing an impressive number of set pieces into 90 minutes. Well-placed animated sequences -- a mix of stop-motion and CGI -- keep things moving along at a perky clip. [Variety]

10 Tips to Safeguard Your Privacy on Facebook: Facebook statistics show that it has 250 million active users each with an average 120 friends. More than 1 billion photos are uploaded every month by its users, over 70% of whom use applications like games and quizzes in Facebook. This guide will show what you can (and cannot) do to safeguard your Facebook privacy. [MakeUseOf.com]

Speed Round: Ypulse posted this hillarious list of 'Random Thoughts of People Our Age', TechFlash wonders if New Google is the Old Microsoft, Mike Schmid--one of the talented musician's who backs up  Miley Cyrus on her tour has a List of Rules for all you tweens and finally....in the UK Boy Scouts have been forbidden to Carry Pen Knives! [BangItOut.com] [TechFlash] [It's All True] [Free Range Kids]

Weekly Wrap: Fox Twitter #FAIL, MySpace is Dead, UK TV Revolution, Ad Literacy 101, Too Much College Debt, RIP Zune & More!

A Revolution in TV as Content Moves Online: There's a revolution going on in television but you may not necessarily be watching it on the set in your living room. Online viewing of programmes in the UK will more than triple in the next few years, according to the latest forecasts, boosted by new video on demand websites offering the best British and US shows to users for free. [The Guardian UK]

A Textbook Discount: The Bigwords free iPhone App works to take some of the sting out of the experience through a complex calculation to find the best textbook deals, whether than means buying new, used or digital, or just renting. [NYT]

Fox's 'Twitter on TV' Experiment Irks Fans: Fox’s idea of “tweet-peats” would combine reruns of popular new shows Fringe and Glee, with producers and members of the cast tweeting their show commentary as the episodes rolled. [Mashable]

Ad Literacy 101: Ads are often enjoyable for kids. They're also pretty ubiquitous. So it might be counterproductive to act as though all advertising is dumb or boring or evil, or to make your kid feel guilty for partaking of it. The goal here is rigorous critical thinking, and good/bad dichotomies generally fall into the "simplistic thinking" category. Life is much more complex. [Brett Berk in Babble]

Web-monitoring software gathers data on kid chats: Parents who install a leading brand of software to monitor their kids' online activities may be unwittingly allowing the company to read their children's chat messages — and sell the marketing data gathered. [San Francisco Chronicle] 

A Sneak Peek at Obama's Speech to Schoolchildren: On September 8th, President Obama will speak to American schoolchildren. I got a look at an early draft... [Huffington Post]

Is A College Education Worth The Debt?: A college degree has long been considered a golden ticket to success in this country. But with the current economic recession, some question whether obtaining a college degree is worth going into debt. [NPR]

New College Majors for Changing Times: The Chronicle of Higher Education says colleges are now offering new disciplines for students, including a major in the science behind customer service. [American Public Media]

Speed Round: UK considering 'No Fee' degrees, teachers are using Twitter to connect with students, teachers discover how building video games can help at risk students do better in school, an Ofcom study finds young people want advice about online privacy (thanks Tania!), according to HitWise MySpace is Dead..long Live Twitter, Zune doesn't pass Microsoft's 'death panel' and finally....new data from comScore shows that teens now LOVE the Twitter! (At least until next week when another study will show that they don't love the Twitter!) [BBC] [SA Blog] [Edutopia] [eGov] [Josh Dhaliwal] [GadgetLab] [Mashable]

Talking About My (Green) Generation

When it comes to Gen Y there are a couple widely held truths.

The youth vote put Obama into the Oval Office (are you sure?), they don't tweet (or do they?), they are 'digital natives' (sorta) and when it comes to Mother Earth it's widely believed that they are the 'Greenest Generation.'

Turns out that Kermit was right--it's not easy being "Green." And IBM has the study to prove it.

The study found that young adults in the UK "had both the highest levels of awareness of environmental issues, and were the biggest wasters of energy and water in the country."

Among the key findings:

• 72% of Gen-Y members surveyed admitted that they wasted water on a regular basis.
• Fifty-six percent said they leave the tap water running while brushing their teeth.
• 40% allow the shower to run for "a few minutes" before getting in.
• 55% of young adults couldn't correctly guess whether a clothes dryer or an incandescent light bulb used more energy.
• 55% couldn't tell you which of four appliances used the most electricity (vs 43% of the general population asked the same question).
• 25% overall said an electric kettle used more water than a clothes dryer.

So let's give em credit for having their heart in the right place, but it looks like there is still a long way to go between being green in theory and actions.

Sing it Kermy....

Weekly Wrap: Glee Sweepstakes, Twitter & Teens (Again), Avatars for Kids, Virtual World Advertising, Jenna Bush on 'Today' & More!

Twitter Doesn't Care About the 'Teens Don't Twitter' Talk: Says Twitter co-founder Biz Stone: "There have been studies which have indicated that our audience skews a little older, but I think that everything is changing so quickly that in a few months the situation could be completely different.” Duly noted. Can we all just move on now? [Digital Beat]

Why Don't Teens Tweet? We Asked 10,000 of Them: This TechCrunch guest post on Teens & Twitter was written by Geoff Cook, co-founder and CEO of the wildly popular social networking site myYearbook. [TechCrunch]

Former First Daughter Jenna Bush Joins 'Today': NBC's "Today" show has hired someone with White House experience as a new correspondent former first daughter Jenna Bush Hager. Hager, a 27-year-old teacher in Baltimore, will contribute stories about once a month on education issue to television's top-rated morning news show. [Yahoo! OMG]

Tips on Choosing Age-Appropriate Texting Devices: John Biggs over at the NYT offers up some basics you should know about the mobile devices out there for kids. Also, Amy James at Knowledge Essentials has some advice on choosing a mobile phone for your kids. And once you pick your new mobile gadget, here are some texting tips from yours truly. [NYT] [Knowledge Essentials] [Barking Robot]

Tweet O' The Week: "I was just thinking, it's so great to be out of schooling. No more people bullying each other, bringing one another dow- oh, wait..." [via @johncmayer aka John Mayer]

Obama Nod Linked Ted Kennedy to Younger Generation: A few might have known him as the bad boy, or the last Kennedy brother to mount a presidential bid. But when he endorsed Barack Obama and later gave a stirring convention speech, Kennedy truly raised his profile with a generation wholly removed from Camelot. Also related: Ted Kennedy's Impact on Education. [AP] [Knowledge Essentials]

Free Kid Friendly Avatar Creator Sites: Philly Teacher has put together a great list of sites where kids can create their own avatar---for free! [Philly Teacher]

Kids, Virtual Worlds & Advertising: Over eight consecutive weekends, I had watched about 100 hours of children’s television across seven stations, which loosely added up to over 3,000 commercials viewed. That many commercials edited end-to-end would fill an entire day of watching nothing but commercials. [360Kid]

Global brands look to China's young consumers to offset losses in crisis-battered home markets: Young Chinese shoppers are still spending freely, and major brands ranging from Nickelodeon, Nike, Quicksilver  to Barbie doll maker Mattel Inc. are courting them eagerly to shore up revenue as demand elsewhere slumps. [Washington Examiner]

Fox Launches 'Glee' Sweepstakes: There's also the "Biggest Gleek" mini-competition.  You register online, at the same website, and then use your Twitter, MySpace, or Facebook accounts to play along.  The idea's simple: you earn points by mentioning Glee on your status messages or tweets, inviting friends to join the competition, and whatever else they have you to do. Related: 'Glee' Pilot Doubles as Marketing Trial.  [TV Buddy] [TV Week]

Speed Round: Check out the award winning educational resources & curriculum 'BEYOND THE FIRE: Teen Experiences of War', WSJ on 'Why Gen Y Can't Read Nonverbal Clues' (thanks Armory Marketing!), examples of good-cause campaigns featured in kids' virtual worlds, Gen Y physicians want more transparency in Pharma & Medical vendor relationships and finally......debunking Gen Y stereotypes & proving old people just love to blame young people! [Independent Lens] [WSJ Online] [gamine expedition] [Dark Daily] [Examiner]

Weekly Wrap: Sears to Sell Toys (Again), MTV Mobile Marketing, Riley Project for Charity Water, Virtual Goods & Britney Spears, Cheskin on Chinese Youth & Facebook for Grandma

Return to Toyland: Sears, famous for its Christmas Wish Book, has announced that it's returning to the toy business in time for the holiday season. Also, Costco has pulled a controversial doll from its shelves after customers complained it was racist. [LA Times] [KTLA]

MTV Youth Marketing Uses Mobile to Promote Setting Goals: MTV launched a new multi-platform advertising initiative inviting youth to publicly share something they feel strongly about. [MobileMarketer]

The Riley Project: After learning that 5,000 kids die a day because they do not have clean water, 7-yr-old Riley Goodfellow wanted to see what 5000 kids dying a day looked like. She drew 5,000 lines to help people understand how many kids die a day. It took her about 4 days to make the lines. Riley is now collecting donations to fund new wells in Africa through one of my favorite organizations--Charity Water. [Riley Project] [Charity:Water]

NAEP on Technical Literacy: The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has released a draft framework for the national assessment of technological literacy, the first to gauge students’ understanding of and skill in using a range of tools, has been presented to the board that oversees the testing program. [Education Week]

Virtual Goods, Real Money: Virtual goods represent one of the strongest ways that marketers and retailers can get involved with virtual worlds, and their popularity in social networks has increased with the opening up of the Facebook platform. This potential gold mine has inspired Britney Spears to launch her own line of virtual gifts on Facebook. [eMarketer] [Britney Spears.com]

Less than 1/20 Social Networkers Pay Attention to Ads: Research out today by LinkShare (via the Internet Advertising Bureau) shows that only 4% of users have ever clicked on an advert on a social network. [Social Media Today]

Miley's Choice: Over on Ypulse, Anastasia Goodstein has an excellent essay about Miley Cyrus' and her risque "pole dance" performance on the 2009 Teen Choice Awards. [Ypulse.com]

Tweet O' the Week: "One of the few holy traditions that Christians, Jews, and Muslims all hold sacred in common? S'mores." (via @sacca)

Cheskin on Chinese Youth Culture: China’s New Culture of Cool provides answers to these questions and more. LiAnne Yu, Cynthia Chan and Christopher Ireland take a fresh, easy-to-read look at the emerging, affluent and influential middle class of China. [Cheskin]

Speed Round: A 11-year old interviews President Obama, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is bullish on mobile phones in the classroom, research conducted by Common Sense Media found that parents aren't hip to what their teens are doing online (shock! awe!), Ars Technia has compiled an excellent privacy guide for Facebook (thanks Anastasia!) and Rookie Moms has a Facebook guide for grandma, Glyndŵr University is hosting a conference on how youth and community work practice can respond to the digital transformation of society, and finally........CNN asks if the Twitterati can sell your soda pop! [ABC News] [Tech Disruptions] [Common Sense Media] [Ars Technia] [Rookie Moms] [Glyndŵr University] [CNN]

Did Obama Really Rock the Youth Vote? Sorta.

New figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau suggest that Obama & the Democrats surfed into power on a wave of across-the-board increased support for the left. Not the young.

According to the report, voter turnout for 18- to 24-year-olds increased, but only by about 2 percent compared with 2004 election numbers.

So it appears that the much ballyhooed "youth revolution" didn't quite pan out the way we all thought it did.

Related Links

• Jonas Brothers Encourage T/weens to Volunteer
• Iranian Gen Y on Revolution 2.0
• Election 2008: How Obama Hooked Gen Y

Weekly Wrap: Twitter & Social Media in Education, Television 2.0, Social Gaming, Boomers & Social Media, Virtual Worlds Growth Spurt, BackTweets & TwitterCal

Higher Education is Stuck in the Middle Ages: In this article Don Tapscott, youth guru and author of Growing Up Digital, outlines the clash between the model of learning offered by big universities and the natural way that young people who have grown up digital learn. The entire U.S. education system is woefully behind when it comes to using social media (and mobile devices) in the classroom. [AlterNet]

The Hidden Problem with Twitter: Speaking of the Middle Ages, this article stirs the pot by asking if the texting and Twitter habits are "hurting" the English language. Perhaps we need to take a cue from our Aussie friends and look for a way to use social and mobile media to help educate the Net Generation.  [HigherEdMorning.com] [University of Melbourne]

More on Television 2.0: Is the TV business dying or does it have a second act? Television networks are actively looking for ways to hold onto Gen Y by interjecting more social media and even 3D television features into their programming.

In an attempt to hold on to younger viewers, MTV is launching It's On with Alexa Chung, while the BBC is placing its bets on a new interactive TV studio. Or will 'traditional' TV networks be replaced by young upstarts like Halogen TV which is featuring both webisodes and traditional distribution outlets for its content?

Virtual Worlds Booming: Market research firm Strategy Analytics released its forecast for growth within the virtual worlds sector and said it sees the global population of virtual world users growing from 186 million today to almost 640 million by 2015 -- that's almost one hundred million new players a year, a nearly 25 percent compounded annual growth rate. [Virtual Worlds News]

Boomers Crashing the Social Media Party: According to iStrategy Labs, Facebook's seen its 35-54 demo membership blow up by 276.4 percent between June 2008 and January 2009. The 55-and over contingent grew 194.3 percent in the same amount of time. In comparison, that ever-so-sought 18-24 group bounced just 20.6 percent.

The total number of Facebook users aged 35-plus in October 2007 totaled just fewer than 845,000, while as of this past January, their combined might totals just less than 8 million - 18.9 percent of the total Facebook pie. [MediaPost]

Young Obama Official Helped Keep Twitter on in Iran: According to The New York Times, there's a steady flow of information on Twitter largely thanks to the efforts of a 27-year-old State Department official named Jared Cohen, whose job is to advise the department on how to use social media to promote U.S. interests in the Middle East. [MTV News]

One More Thing: According to experts social gaming is the next big thing, use Backtweets to see which tweets link to your site, mobileYouth has a list of youth marketing & trend Twits on Twitter (thanks Graham!), get a sneak peak of Josh Shipp's new tv show--"Jump Shipp", tweet to add appointments to your Google Calendar, more on Millennials and Twitter and an Iranian Gen Y writes about Revolution 2.0!

Also, thanks to all of you who took part in Operation 55 Zebra! Go David Go!

Global Youth: Iranian Gen Y on Revolution 2.0

In this stunningly beautiful and poignant essay, titled "1984" appearing in the Tehran Bureau, a young Iranian man shares how the 1984 Revolution fought by his parents' generation has effected his generation and provides a glimpse into the motivation and impetus behind the current election crisis in Iran.

"My generation is tired of being disillusioned. We refuse to accept the status quo and we have risen up in defiance. I am not sure how long it will take for the totalitarians to crush our resistance. For now though, we’re holding up just fine.

We’re holding up fine even though our brothers at Basij and the police are murdering their dear fellow Iranians. We’re holding up even though you bash us with clubs and batons and try to suffocate us with your tear gas.

A nation stands tall refusing to succumb that easily."

Related Resources

• Clay Shirky on Twitter & Iran
• FutureGov Network
• #IranElection And the Death of News
• The Dark Side of Twittering a Revolution

Image Credit: Iran, Tehran, The Green Victory Sign Originally Uploaded by Hamed Saber

NCSS Position Statement: Media Literacy is an Imperative

In February the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) released a position statement on media literacy, social technology and learning in the digital age. Their conclusion?

"These changes in society and the experiences the students bring into the classroom challenge social studies teachers to change both how and what we teach. One reaction is to fear these changes and try to protect our students from things we don’t understand or appreciate. Such an approach is neither helpful nor pedagogically sound.

Another response is to take advantage instructionally of the wealth of experiences that young people have making media choices by respecting those choices when consistent with democratic principles. Whether we like it or not, this media culture is our students’ culture.”

Today's Students Are Experiencing a Different Childhood

• The digital age requires new skills for accessing, analyzing, evaluating, creating, and distributing messages within a digital, global, and democratic society.

• The ubiquitous and mobile nature of information and communication technologies has resulted in a world far different from that of those of us whose childhood was once surrounded by large box televisions, rotary dial telephones, and transistor radios.

• What was once characterized as a digital divide has transformed into a digital disconnect. Outside of the classroom young people regularly engage with music and videos via MP3 players, constantly text their friends with their mobile phones, check the latest videos on YouTube, and even upload ones themselves. But, upon entering the classroom they are expected to disengage from this interpersonal, producer-oriented, digital world.

Media Literacy

• Canada, Australia, and Great Britain have taught media literacy for several decades, while the US, the world’s leading producer of media, is far behind.

• These changes in society and the experiences the students bring into the classroom challenge social studies teachers to change both how and what we teach.

• Teaching students to think critically about the content and the form of mediated messages is an essential requirement for social studies education in this millennium.

• Media literacy integrates the process of critical inquiry with the creation of media as students examine, create, and disseminate their own alternative images, sounds, and thoughts.

• Media literacy includes the skills of accessing, analyzing, evaluating, creating, and distributing messages as well as the cultural competencies and social skills associated with a growing participatory culture.

• Media literacy also includes analysis of ideology and power as students learn how media are used to position audiences and frame public opinion.

• In the 21st century, media literacy is an imperative for participatory democracy because new information/communication technologies and a market-based media culture have significantly reshaped the world.

Media Literacy & the Social Studies Classroom

• Teachers need to expand their notion of “legitimate texts” and realize that it includes popular culture, advertising, photographs, maps, text (SMS) messages, Twitter, movies, video games, Internet, all sorts of hand-held devices and information communication technologies (ICTs) as well as print.

• Students should be presenting their research and learning through interactive multimedia presentations, as Internet blogs, videos, podcasts, Facebook, etc.

• The ability to differentiate between primary and secondary sources or distinguish fact from fiction is now intimately connected to the ability to analyze and create media.

• Social studies educators should provide young people with the awareness and abilities to critically question and create new media and technology, and the digital, democratic experiences, necessary to become active participants in the shaping of democracy.

Related Resources

• NCSS Media Literacy Statement
• Learning Styles 2.0: Digital, Social, and Always On
• mobileYouth: 100 Million Mobile Youth in USA
• Making mLearning Work: Gen Y, Learning & Mobile Technologies
• Social Software & Online Learning Design
• Social Media & Digital Learning Styles
• Handbook of Research on New Media Literacy