Stephen's Untold Stories

The NFL must be taking lessons from a lot of school districts with this level of paranoia.

Last week, Chad Ochocinco revealed his plan to circumvent NFL rules and tweet during games. This afternoon, the NFL informed teams of its social media policy, and it appears Ochocinco’s plot to hand signal a fan in the stands and have him or her update his account for him is now squashed, along with lots of other player and media activities.

As it pertains to Ochocinco, the rule that would seemingly keep him from tweeting reads: “No updates are permitted to be posted by the individual himself or anyone representing him during this prohibited time on his personal Twitter (Twitter), Facebook (Facebook) or any other social media account.”

The prohibited time is not only during the contest, but also 90 minutes before and after the game. It applies to not only players, but coaches, team personnel, and officials. Beyond that, the media is also being put on warning about in-game social media activity:

“Longstanding policies prohibiting play-by-play descriptions of NFL games in progress apply fully to Twitter and other social media platforms. Internet sites may not post detailed information that approximates play-by-play during a game. While a game is in progress, any forms of accounts of the game must be sufficiently time-delayed and limited in amount (e.g., score updates with detail given only in quarterly game updates) so that the accredited organization’s game coverage cannot be used as a substitute for, or otherwise approximate, authorized play-by-play accounts.”

Read the rest here.

One of the best blog posts I’ve read in quite some time.

The internet is a series of connected tools. It’s time to start treating it like that.

No more talking about Facebook. No more explaining Twitter. No more asking about connecting on LinkedIn.

Just talk. Collaborate. Learn. Listen.

We have daily, nearly real time access to the greatest trove of information ever known, yet all we seem to do is talk about who’s using which network, and how to do so.

Link to complete post.

Thanks to Hoke for pointing this one out. I’ve already added his RSS feed.

Almost 4 million views as of this writing.

In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged. They didn’t deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say “no” to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world. United: Song 1 is the first of those songs.

Read more here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

Pretty good stuff here.

A lot to think about here.

Web 2.0 tools have critically elevated the social networking activity and skills of individuals. Not only are young people highly active in social networks, but older individuals are also showing a huge increase in their use of these tools. The attraction of older age groups is, of course, social connection and community building among professional and casual peers and friends.

The most effective pedagogical approach using new technology is social constructivism, as it builds on social interaction and engagement, which is at the heart of Web 2.0 technology.

Read the rest here.

Astronaut Mark Polanksy is Twittering from the Space Shuttle.

http://twitter.com/Astro_127

I don’t care if you have a Twitter account yourself, or even if you hate Twitter. This might change your mind.

It’s true!

Atlanta is embracing Facebook faster than any other major metropolitan area, a new study shows.

The number of Facebook users in the Atlanta area rose 142 percent the last six months, from 535,000 to nearly 1.3 million, according to a digital marketing firm called iStrategyLabs.

Los Angeles (97 percent) and Houston (71 percent) saw the next highest increases.

Peter Corbett, a 2003 Emory grad who founded iStrategyLabs, said he has no solid theories to explain the Atlanta surge. He’s analyzed Facebook usage for two years using data Facebook publicly supplies to its advertisers.

A Facebook spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the last half of 2008, Facebook usage in the Atlanta area rose just 6.5 percent.

Overall, nearly 72 million Americans now use the social networking site, and Facebook’s demographics keep getting older.

People ages 35 to 54 comprise the biggest group, followed by those 25 to 34.

Link to article.

I’ve posted a couple of times recently about how I’ve finally started to “get” Twitter. Here is yet another reason I’m really starting to love this tool.

If you aren’t on twitter, you really should be. Not because it allows you to keep up with the daily goings-on of Khloe Kardashian (although it does!), but because we are seeing for the first time what happens when a government that needs to control information to survive can’t control information. Iranians are using twitter to organize, to share information, and even to discuss which routes to take to rallies to avoid confrontations with the police. Although foreign journalists have mostly been kicked out of Iran, we’re still able to get pictures like this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this.

The regime has more sophisticated ways of stopping the flow of information, but so far at least the Iranians on twitter have stayed remarkably organized, and they’ve found ways to vet information. When false rumors have spread, they’ve been quickly debunked.

So, yeah. Twitter is not about what you had for breakfast, or Khloe Kardashian, or me. It’s about evening the playing field.

Link to article

I’m not sure it will cause a great deal of change, but I’m starting to enjoy it more these days.

The one thing you can say for certain about Twitter is that it makes a terrible first impression. You hear about this new service that lets you send 140-character updates to your “followers,” and you think, Why does the world need this, exactly? It’s not as if we were all sitting around four years ago scratching our heads and saying, “If only there were a technology that would allow me to send a message to my 50 friends, alerting them in real time about my choice of breakfast cereal.”

I, too, was skeptical at first. I had met Evan Williams, Twitter’s co-creator, a couple of times in the dotcom ’90s when he was launching Blogger.com. Back then, what people worried about was the threat that blogging posed to our attention span, with telegraphic, two-paragraph blog posts replacing long-format articles and books. With Twitter, Williams was launching a communications platform that limited you to a couple of sentences at most. What was next? Software that let you send a single punctuation mark to describe your mood?

And yet as millions of devotees have discovered, Twitter turns out to have unsuspected depth. In part this is because hearing about what your friends had for breakfast is actually more interesting than it sounds. The technology writer Clive Thompson calls this “ambient awareness”: by following these quick, abbreviated status reports from members of your extended social network, you get a strangely satisfying glimpse of their daily routines. We don’t think it at all moronic to start a phone call with a friend by asking how her day is going. Twitter gives you the same information without your even having to ask.

Read the rest here.

The more I use Twitter, the more I like it.

• http://technologizer.com/2009/05/11/ten-twitter-mythconceptions

Maybe my favorite one:

Mythconception #3: People who tweet what they had for breakfast are wasting your time.

Reality: Maybe–but only the first time they do it. After that, it’s your own dang fault for continuing to follow someone who you find boring. Twitter, unlike a crowded airplane, is not a place where anyone is forced to listen to someone else blather; you’ve got complete control over whose tweets you do and don’t read.

If you want to see what I had for breakfast (J/K) check me out at http://twitter.com/stephenksu

Great article by Tony Vincent.

• http://azk12.org/blog/archives/46-10-Things-Teachers-Should-Know-to-Get-Started-with-Twitter.html

Very interesting post from the Apophenia Blog.

In Atlanta, I met a shy quiet 14-year-old girl that I’ll call Kaitlyn. She wasn’t particularly interested in talking to me, but she answered my questions diligently. She said that she was on both MySpace and Facebook, but quickly started talking about MySpace as the place where she gathered with her friends. At some point, I asked her if her friends also gathered on Facebook and her face took on a combination of puzzlement and horror before she exclaimed, “Facebook is for old people!” Of course, Kaitlyn still uses Facebook to communicate with her mother, aunt, cousins in Kentucky, and other family members.

Cross-town, I met up with Connor, a well-spoken 17-year-old who is more than comfortable in sharing his opinions with me. His manner of speaking and attitude means that he would’ve fit into Eckert’s “jock” category even though he plays no sport. In fact, Connor is more interested in gadgetry (Macs to be precise), but that no longer has the same geek ring as it once did. Connor tells me about how Facebook is the new thing that everyone is using and that, while he prefers MySpace, he now primarily logs into Facebook. His girlfriend deleted her MySpace profile and most of his friends now spend their time on Facebook. In fact, he can’t think of anyone at school who still actively uses MySpace. Connor is also aware of the presence of adults on Facebook. He messages with his mother and his youth pastor on Facebook and he waxes elegantly about how he thinks that Facebook is just as popular among adults as it is among teens. He believes that the reason that people switched to Facebook was because it was more “mature.”

These two narratives reflect different views about the salience of age in social network site participation. At one level, we can simply read Kaitlyn as rebellious, anti-authoritarian. Yet, that doesn’t quite work. Kaitlyn is not rebelling against her parents or teachers; she simply doesn’t see why interacting with them alongside her friends would make any sense whatsoever. She sees her world as starkly age segregated and she sees this as completely normal. Connor, on the other hand, sees the integration of adults and peers as a natural part of growing up. The difference in their ages is part of the story – Connor is two grades ahead of Kaitlyn.

Read the rest here.

Might want to watch what you put on Facebook or MySpace.

Students, be careful what you post about yourself online: That’s the key lesson taken from a recent survey suggesting that many college admissions officers are looking at students’ online profiles before they make their final decisions.

About a quarter of the colleges and universities polled in a recent survey by the National Association for College Admissions Counseling (NACAC) said their admissions officers research prospective students’ social-networking profiles before extending admission or scholarships. That means a Facebook picture from a weekend party might cost a student a spot on a premier campus.

NACAC released the results of its study last month, documenting how the ubiquity of online social networking–especially on industry giants Facebook and MySpace–is helping campus officials decide which students are rejected and accepted every year. The research did not mention how often a social networking faux pas might influence an admissions decision.

College officials and social-networking experts said reviewing applicants’ online profiles is becoming commonplace in higher education, but a rude comment or questionable picture won’t single-handedly remove a student from consideration.

“I believe most colleges will do whatever it takes to recruit the right type of student to their respective institution,” said Mark D. Weinstein, dean of enrollment and marketing at Grace College in Winona Lake, Ind. “Like anything else, our decisions all have consequences attached to them. If we make a bad decision, there is a consequence we must face. … [But] I would not think we would decline a student based solely on Facebook posts or blogs.”

Read the rest here.

As long as schools continue to erect these barriers, student and teachers will find it more difficult to be productive.

Teachers and students are largely driving the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies in schools, but human and technological barriers are holding back the use of these as learning tools in many classrooms, according to a new study.

Commissioned by Lightspeed Systems and Thinkronize Inc., creator of the kid-friendly search engine netTrekker, the study reveals that Web 2.0 technologies are making inroads into schools–but some of these technologies are being adopted faster than others. Online communication tools for parents and students have caught on quickly, but online social networking for instruction has a long way to go.

According to Lightspeed Systems, there is a persistent gap between how today’s digital natives learn in schools and how they work and interact outside of school–a trend that underscores the need for districts to keep pace with technological advances and adapt to students’ learning needs.

Link to article

I’m not aware of any districts in Georgia that are doing this. I hope that will soon change.

Lee’s Summit R-7 (MO) School District is atwitter over Twitter. A trial period had been proposed through the summer, but after more than a dozen people found the district on the social networking site, officials decided to launch the initiative immediately. Posts are usually about recent awards or links to the district site. It will not be used to announce school closings or other district emergencies.

http://www.schoolcio.com/ShowArticle/17074

Of course this comes as no shock to those of us who work in instructional technology. This is the kind of information that administrators and school boards need to be looking at.

Your teenage daughter is supposed to be doing homework, but you catch her chatting online. She tells you that she’s talking about the math test tomorrow. Before your eyes start rolling, listen up: teens are using social networking sites for more than just gossip, according to a new study by the National School Boards Association.

The students who participated in the online survey, ages 9 to 17, say they spend almost as much time social networking online as they do watching television. And it’s what these kids are talking about on-line that’s causing such a cheer: Education. That’s right. Of the students who participated in the study, 60 percent reported that some of the most popular social networking topics were college planning, learning outside of school, careers, and schoolwork. They also report posting writing and art projects that may have nothing to do with schoolwork.

This is exciting stuff to the National School Board Association, which has promoted the concept of online education long before google and wikipedia were household names.

Ann Flynn, director of education technology for the National School Board Association, says incorporating social networking tools into educational curriculum is the way forward. “Learn it because I said so isn’t effective right now. We need to use the Internet to involve students in project based assignments in the real world, taking place around the world,” she says.

Read the rest here.

I’ve started using it again, and I will continue. But this is annoying.

Some unbelievable statistics.

Facebook has hit the 175,000,000 active user mark, just 5 weeks after it hit 150 million users in January. At this rate, Facebook has been growing by well over 600,000 users per day over the last several weeks, continuing the company’s torrid growth pace.

If Facebook were a country, it would now be the 6th most populous in the world.

• 45% of Facebook’s US audience is now 26 years old or older.
• The fastest growing segment in the US: Women over 55, up 175.3% in the last 120 days. Facebook growing faster with women than men in almost every age group.
• The number of people on Facebook grew by over 10% monthly in 52 countries in January. It grew by over 20% monthly in January in 13 countries.
• Facebook’s monthly growth accelerated by at least 25% in 30 countries in January vs. December 2008.

Read the rest here.