The New York City Department of Education (DOE) wants to make sure teens know how to use social media responsibly, the Huffington Post reports. The DOE recently rolled out a nine-page social media guide for students 13 and older, in an effort to make sure students leave a “smart digital footprint.” The guidelines advise students on how to create a preferred digital image, respond to cyberbullying and adjust their social media privacy settings. They also warn students to be cautious of what they post online and to “pause before you post.”
…Read MorePodcast 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.
3 big Facebook policy changes
Facebook users beware: Your posts and likes can be turned into ads shown to your friends and others, depending on your privacy settings, InformationWeek reports. Facebook announced that it has moved forward with changes to its Data Use Policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, which were first announced in August. By owning a Facebook account, you’re allowing the company to use your posts and other personal data for advertising. Shortly after Facebook revealed the proposed changes to its policies this summer, privacy advocates chastised the social network and petitioned for the FTC to step in and block it. The changes, privacy advocates said, violated Facebook’s policies and the 2011 Facebook settlement with the FTC. That settlement stated that the social network deceived consumers by failing to keep privacy promises…
…Read MoreFirefox add-on can hijack Facebook, Twitter logins
Secured logins have been one of the most crucial issues pertaining to web security today. Eric Butler, a freelance web application developer showed how vulnerable current day websites are, reports Techtree. At the ToorCon security conference, Butler showed a Firefox add-on dubbed Firesheep that lets anyone scan a Wi-Fi network and steal login details of Facebook, Twitter and several other services. This is one heck of a dangerous extension that points out the security loophole in any website. Butler created Firesheep extension for Firefox with an altruistic aim to point out the negligence of popular web services that follow weaker security measures…
…Read MoreNewark, NJ, schools to get $100M Facebook donation
Mark Zuckerberg, the 26-year-old wunderkind behind Facebook, is making a move to become a player in philanthropy just before the opening of a film that portrays him as less than charitable.
The recipient of his $100 million donation–thought to be the biggest of his young life–is the Newark public schools, a long-struggling district that could use the money to become a laboratory for reforms.
The donation is being announced Sept. 24 on Oprah Winfrey’s TV show in an arrangement that brings together the young internet tycoon, Newark’s celebrated Democratic mayor and a governor who has quickly become a star of the Republican party.…Read More
Facebook founder to donate $100 million to remake Newark’s schools
Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive and a founder of Facebook, has agreed to donate $100 million to improve the long-troubled public schools in Newark, and Gov. Chris Christie will cede some control of the state-run system to Mayor Cory A. Booker in conjunction with the huge gift, according to the New York Times. The three men plan to announce the arrangement on Friday on the “Oprah Winfrey Show.” The changes would not formally relax the legal power the state seized in 1995, when it declared Newark’s schools a failure and took control of the system, replacing the elected school board with a mostly toothless advisory board. Rather, Mr. Christie plans to give the mayor a major role in choosing a new superintendent and redesigning the system, but to retain the right to take control back. For now, at least, the arrangement tightens an already friendly relationship between the governor, a Republican, and the mayor, a Democrat who was once seen as a likely challenger for the State House in 2013…
…Read MoreDiaspora, Facebook’s potential rival, offers a peek
Mark Zuckerberg is having a bad publicity day. Despite a flattering New Yorker profile of the founder of Facebook (both in writing and in a rather Roman statue-esque photograph), a flurry of media activity has not been so kind, the Washington Post reports. Although Facebook remains one of the most popular sites on the web, with 500 million users, there has been a backlash against Facebook over Zuckerberg’s global openness policy, and the buzz behind the upcoming movie “The Social Network” has put more public eyes on the usually publicity-shy Zuckerberg. Today, Diaspora, a potential rival for Facebook, released its open source code, inviting designers and programmers to help shape the network. It is still in a very early beta iteration and the alpha site will not launch until October, but there are signs that Diaspora could improve on Facebook and supplant part of its market share. Mashable asked today whether Diaspora would be the social network Firefox to Facebook’s Internet Explorer. Firefox was an open source web browser that took a large chunk of Internet Explorer’s market after its launch in 2004…
…Read MoreSocial media site an ‘academic supplement’ to Facebook
Instead of a Facebook news feed cluttered with tidbits about friends’ FarmVille progress, Boris Revsin wants a social media site that alerts college students to the latest in academic news from their peers—information that could connect students and form study groups.
Since 2007, CampusLive.com has been a one-stop shop for college students looking for local eats, perusing campus headlines, and connecting to their school’s library.
And Revsin, a former University of Massachusetts Amherst student and CEO of CampusLive, said the site’s next iteration will allow users to pull their Facebook profiles into a more academically-focused site dedicated to campus goings on.…Read More
To boost security, Facebook adds remote logout
The social-networking giant Facebook is rolling out a new security feature that lets users see which computers and devices are logged into their Facebook accounts, then remove the ones that they don’t want to have access, PC World reports. The move addresses a growing problem on Facebook: Spammers use fake phishing sites to trick Facebook users into entering their usernames and passwords, and then they use those credentials to send spam messages to as many Facebook friends as possible. This type of spam is often very effective because it looks like it’s coming from a trusted source (a Facebook friend), and security experts say that many spammers have now developed automated programs that log into stolen Facebook accounts and send spam. Besides knocking out spammers, the new feature also gives users a way of logging out of machines that they’ve recently used—a school library computer or a friend’s mobile phone, for instance. Not everyone will be able to use this new feature immediately, as it’s being rolled out “gradually,” Facebook said in an eMail message. Users who have been granted the login control feature can see it by going to Account Settings and then looking for it in the Account Security Section. There, they can see the different computers currently logged into Facebook, which browser and operating system they use, and—based on Internet Protocol information—a guess at where they are located. With the click of a button, the user can “end activity” on any of these sessions…
…Read MoreFacebook pokes start-up Teachbook with lawsuit
Facebook is concerned that a start-up social network for teachers with the word “book” in its title is infringing on its own trademarks, CNET reports. The company on Aug. 25 filed a complaint in a California district court against Teachbook, a networking site geared toward teachers. Claiming that Teachbook is “riding on the coattails of the fame and enormous goodwill of the Facebook trademark,” the complaint asserts that the start-up, which is headquartered in a suburb of Chicago, shouldn’t be using the “-book” suffix. “If others could freely use ‘generic plus BOOK’ marks for online networking services targeted to that particular generic category of individuals, the suffix ‘book’ could become a generic term for ‘online community/networking services’ or ‘social networking services.’ That would dilute the distinctiveness of the Facebook marks, impairing their ability to function as unique and distinctive identifiers of Facebook’s goods and services,” the lawsuit claims. Teachbook, which has not yet commented on the matter, doesn’t appear to imitate Facebook’s design or feel, but Facebook’s whole argument is that it doesn’t want the “-book” suffix to become a social-networking term independent of the Facebook brand. The complaint brings up, among other things, that Teachbook markets itself as a social-networking option for teachers whose schools might have blocked or forbidden access to social networks such as Facebook…
…Read MoreSocial networking your way to a new job
The job-search process has undergone a revolution since the advent of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social networking sites, reports the New York Times. Job hunters today must learn to navigate the sometimes slippery social mores of online discourse—for instance, learning to promote themselves without coming off as self-involved. At the same time, they must be constantly vigilant about managing their online reputation; the slightest slip might discourage potential employers. “It’s almost like social media has replaced the white pages,” said Nancy Halverson, senior vice president for learning and talent development at the recruiting firm MRINetwork. “Recruiters don’t even know how to find you if you don’t have a presence online. It’s nonnegotiable—you have to have a profile on a social networking site.” For many people looking for work, however, the technological requirements of the modern job hunt present a profound hurdle. Increasingly, these people are turning up for help at the career offices and continuing education departments of their local universities and community colleges. “Teaching people how to use these new tools is really becoming one of the main things that we do in career counseling offices,” said Nancy Richmond, assistant director of career counseling and exploration at MIT. “We’re showing them that using social media is a great way to show employers that they’re on the forefront of cutting-edge trends. It can be extremely helpful for their careers.”
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