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.

FCC opens access to social media sites for e-Rate users

In August, the FCC clarified an earlier ruling that led to widespread blocking of social media networks by school districts receiving discounted internet access through federal e-Rate dollars.

Now that even the staid Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has loosened its tight rein on social media networks, it’s time for more educators to use these tools to improve classroom instruction and home-school communications.

In August, the FCC clarified an earlier ruling that led to widespread blocking of social media networks by school districts receiving discounted internet access through federal e-Rate dollars.

According to the ruling, “Although it is possible that certain individual Facebook or MySpace pages could potentially contain material harmful to minors, we do not find that these websites are per se ‘harmful to minors’ or fall into one of the categories that schools and libraries must block.”…Read More

Social media in higher ed: Friend or foe?

One social media researcher was critical of the OnlineEducation.net stats.
Facebook and studying can be an academically toxic combination, lowering grades by up to 20 percent. This is just part of an infographic that has gone viral on the web and grabbed the attention of educators and their students this spring.

The inforgraphic, “Is Social Media Ruining Students?” published in April by OnlineEducation.net, distills reams of social media research and lists the pros and cons of how social sites, especially Twitter and Facebook, are used on campuses.

The potentially devastating impact of checking Facebook notifications while studying for exams, midterms, and finals is among the infographic’s most jarring stats.…Read More

College students use social media to cheat

Student use of cheat sites has decreased.
Social media and content sharing websites account for one-third of plagiarism among college students, and paper mills are far less popular than once thought, according to a report detailing the most common cheating methods in higher education.

iParadigms, creator of anti-plagiarism site Turnitin.com, released a report April 28 documenting where students are turning for research material. Educators submit their students’ research papers and assignments to Turnitin, which then compares the content to three information repositories filled with more than 14 billion current and archived web pages.

The study shows that legitimate educational websites are also among students’ most heavily used internet resources.…Read More

Med students’ cadaver photos under scrutiny after images show up online

In recent months, medical schools around the nation have begun re-examining their ethics codes after a string of disturbing cases in which students photographed or videotaped cadavers and posted the images on Facebook and YouTube, reports the Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. Last month, Stony Brook University Medical Center on Long Island announced it was developing a revised ethics policy after a student posted a photo on Facebook of a classmate posing with a “thumbs up” next to a cadaver. The State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse also is updating its ethics curriculum after a former resident posted a snapshot of an exposed brain on Facebook. Students’ use of social media sites is becoming an increasing concern, according to an anonymous survey of 78 U.S. medical schools published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Nearly 60 percent of schools reported catching students posting unprofessional online content, including several blatant violations of patient confidentiality. “It’s Facebook, Twitter, blogging, MySpace,” said Lauren Hughes, president of the American Medical Student Association, a Virginia-based advocacy group. “Right now, institutions are dealing with this on an individual basis.”

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