Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

What are college students talking about on Facebook?

87 percent of comments were recorded in Facebook groups, not pages.

General confusion might be the key ingredient to an engaged crop of incoming freshmen on a college or university’s Facebook page.

An analysis published May 16 on the blog .eduGuru breaks down what college students are discussing on their school’s official Facebook pages and third-party groups, and the most consistently engaged posts were written by “confused students trying to find more information about orientation, registration, and housing.”

An “engaged post” was a comment or question that received five or more responses, according to the analysis of how college freshmen were using their Class of 2016 Facebook pages.…Read More

Five questions–and answers–about Facebook Groups

Another week, another Facebook controversy — this time, over the site’s just-relaunched “Groups” feature, which lets you create instant private or public spaces for your friends, co-workers, fellow hobbyists, you name it, says Ben Patterson, technology writer for Yahoo! News. (Also read “Facebook ‘Groups’ could boost privacy, collaboration.”) By designating smaller circles of friends within your overall list of Facebook pals (which, for some online social butterflies, can easily run into the thousands), you can post updates, photos, videos, and URLs to your individual subsets without bothering everyone on Facebook with the minutiae of, say, your breakfast menu, or how quickly you crossed the finish line in your latest half-marathon.  But it didn’t take long for a controversy to flare up: namely, the fact that your Facebook friends can add you to any group they so choose–as long as they’re already members of said group–without your permission.
So, here are five questions–and answers–for how to weather the current Facebook Groups storm…

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…Read More

Facebook ‘Groups’ could boost privacy, collaboration

Facebook launched an updated "Groups" application that allows for more collaboration.
Facebook "Groups" allows for easy communication and collaboration on projects, but is it an appropriate collaboration tool for students?

A new Facebook feature unveiled Oct. 6 gives users more control over which information is shared with certain groups of people, and it also offers an easy platform for online communication and collaboration on group projects—leading some K-12 educators and ed-tech officials to wonder if the social networking site might be a viable collaboration tool for students.

The Facebook “Groups” application lets users determine specific content to share with members of a defined group, as well as chat or work together on documents within a group. The feature could be a useful communication and collaboration tool for students outside the classroom—but concerns about online safety might keep many teachers and ed-tech officials from embracing the tool for such use.…Read More