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Blog It

An easy way to post to your blog through a Facebook account. Multiple blog accounts are supported.

Blog It

An easy way to post to your blog through a Facebook account. Multiple blog accounts are supported.

Social Media - A Force for Good (video)

Social Media - A Force for Good (video)

Teacher Librarian Tom Kaun (Marin, CA) recommends a panel discussion on "Social Media as a Force for Good" with Twitter and LinkedIn founders and UK author/activist Stephen Fry. (1.5 hours).

Stephen Fry realized the power and potential of Twitter about a year or so ago when he decided to use Twitter as "verbal post cards" for a trip to Africa to do a story on Rhinos. He suddenly got thousands of followers. He says that humans are emotional creatures and need to communicate. Writing -- even on Twitter -- is a literary form. Twitter is an instrument of free speech.

Biz Stone (CEO/Founder, Twitter) said early on he saw how Twitter was used for "Tweet-ups" (like "meet-ups") to organize events or meetings. People in a conference session would tweet that a different session was more interesting, and lots of people like a flock of birds would leave the first session to go to the better session. Similar use of "Tweet-ups" can be used for raising money for a charity, to do good. Biz said Twitter was created to do good.

Biz says Twitter was created with mobile devices in mind, and mobile devices are growing way faster than desktop computers. Re: Twitter as news media -- it is good for breaking news, but journalists are better for putting news in context.

LinkedIn's Reed Hoffman, in commenting about social media trends, said "you haven't seen anything yet." "Web 2.0 is power to the people, a '60's expression." Social networking sites are platforms upon which other sites are built ("platforms" rather than "features" on a site.)

Google Personalizes Search

A posting on Search Engine Land blog starts out with the following:

"On Friday afternoon, [Dec. 4, 2009], Google made the biggest change that has ever happened in search engines, and the world largely yawned. Maybe Google timed its announcement that it was personalizing everyone’s search results just right, so few would notice. Maybe no one really understood how significant the change was. Whatever the reason, it was a huge development and deserves much more attention than it has received so far."

2009 Edublog Individual Educational Blog Winner

This year's winner of the Edublog Award for best individual education blog is Free Technology for Teachers.

"A review of free technology resources and how teachers can use them. Ideas for technology integration in education."

Connecting California's Children Report

The Connecting California’s Children: California’s Efforts to Leverage Technology in K-12 Education addresses the general question “how does K-12 education in California use and benefit from the investment being made in technology?”