The Kept-Up Academic Librarian

Higher Ed Should Not Be Responsible For Students' Acts Of Digital Piracy

Congress is considering an Internet piracy bill that would hold colleges, including the University of Colorado, culpable if students use school networks to illegally download music and movies. U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Boulder, proposed an amendment to the Stop Online Piracy Act that would have made sure legal responsibility fell only on the individuals who violate copyright laws, but it failed 9-23 in the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday. Polis said cash-strapped universities shouldn't be required to police the Internet. The Polis amendment would have exempted colleges and universities from the cost of complying with the new restrictions and ensured that the individual who violates copyright law is held responsible. Read more at:
http://www.dailycamera.com/cu-news/ci_19558599

Higher Ed Institutions Can Suffer From Their Students' Tweeting

Universities are becoming increasingly vulnerable to publicity scandals caused by the increasing number of students turning to Twitter to broadcast their thoughts. These college-aged tweeters are the second largest group of users when ranked by age and have recently made news for reflecting poorly on their colleges.Cousins said it is hard for universities to separate themselves from the actions of an individual student because the public often perceives the student as a representative of the institution. Read more at:
http://www.usatodayeducate.com/staging/index.php/ccp/student-tweets-causing-controversy-for-universities

IHEs Need To Move Fast To Avoid Being A XXX Institution

Yes, Colleges and Universities are snapping up .XXX Domains left and right. But no, they're not aspiring to be future AVN award winners. Instead, schools like Missouri and Washington University are buying up domains like missouri.xxx and washu.xxx to protect their names. Because there are no trademark or copyright protections for domain names, anyone who beats a brand or institution to a domain name has full control over it. Obviously, higher institutions of learning don't want to be affiliated by mistake with certain sub-cultures in the non-academic sense. Read more at:
http://gizmodo.com/5859296/colleges-and-universities-are-going-on-a-xxx-domain-shopping-spree

College Students Live In The 'Curated Me' Always On Generation

What's changing for young people is changing for all of us. How we connect, how we share. How we present our digital selves.  If we understand that young people's relationship to the web today is already, in many ways, the behavior we're all seeing broadly in the always-on world. Millennials have grown up with a 24/7 news cycle and reality TV. They know the power of branding and publicity. Every day they act as their own digital publicists, curating and monitoring the 'me' brand. Said one young person, "I'm on Twitter all day." And another, "I can't put my phone down." [Includes an interesting short video]. Read more at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-rosenbaum/mtv-and-the-curated-me_b_1032874.html

Admissions Staff Go To Facebook and Google To Check Up On Applicants

The number of college admissions officials using Facebook to learn more about an applicant has quadrupled in the past year, underscoring the effect social media has on U.S. culture and academic life, a survey shows. Googling is nearly as prevalent. Nearly a quarter (24%) of admissions officials at 359 selective colleges say they used Facebook, up from 6% the previous year, and 20% used Google to help evaluate an applicant. Read more at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2011-09-21/facebook-google-college-applicants/50497248/1

Wikipedia Project Works With Faculty And Students To Improve Entries

Teachers who once shunned the idea of students citing Wikipedia on class assignments now are embracing the website as a teaching tool. Dozens of teachers at high schools and universities – including several in California – are assigning their students to write and edit entries for the online encyclopedia. The projects are designed to help students improve their research and writing skills, while adding to the public knowledge. Read more at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/09/teaching-research-through_n_922105.html

BenchPrep Adds Social Networking To Entrance Exam Preparation

Remember studying for the GMATs? Or AP Biology? Or even English 101 your freshman year? How about poring through those old textbooks and every now and then wishing you had a buddy close by you could ask for help on the parts that befuddled you? BenchPrep is making that happen. The Chicago-based startup, backed by Lightbank(whose founders bankrolled Groupon), has been digitizing test prep materials for the last two years. But it’s not just making your SAT or MCAT textbooks more portable. It’s also adding social features that act as a real-time virtual study groups to get you the help you need when you need it.Among the features: The ability to ask questions of other people studying the same textbook as you--whether they’re in the library next door or halfway around the world. Read more at:
http://www.fastcompany.com/1769986/baked-in-how-benchprep-is-turning-textbooks-into-virtual-study-groups 

 

Faculty Researchers Tackle The Challenge Of Saving Internet History

Nelson is an Internet time traveler, one in a small community of scholars and techies who are laboring to build a past for a technology obsessed with the present. In a computing culture accustomed to deleting its Internet history, they are trying to create one. Nelson and some colleagues at Old Dominion and the Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed a sort of Internet time machine called Memento . When attached to a browser, it enables the user to search for a Web site as it appeared on some past date, if an archived page exists. Read more at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/old-dominion-u-professor-is-trying-to-save-internet-history/2011/07/13/gIQAS1EYKI_story.html?wprss=rss_education

Social Media Help Freshman Ease Into Their First Semester

That exchange was part of an online friendship that has continued through summer break. And it's part of the growing trend of universities using social-media methods to help incoming students get acclimated long before they move into a residence hall. Hannan had first helped Whitaker Thompson in March, when she had a question about a visual spatial reasoning test that had to be completed before the STAR date. Having followed the university's Facebook accounts and using them to interact with future classmates, the friends said they would feel more comfortable meeting new people once classes begin this fall. Read more at:
http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20110717/NEWS02/307180006/Social-media-eases-transition-college-students?odyssey=nav|head 

 

New Service Adds Social Networking For Students Seeking Help From Peers

Although there are rival services, like Blackboard, an education software company, Piazza’s platform is specifically designed to speed response times. The site is supported by a system of notification alerts, and the average question on Piazza will receive an answer in 14 minutes. Students post questions to their course page, which peers and educators can then respond to. Instructors moderate the discussion, endorse the best responses and track the popularity of questions in real time. Responses are also color-coded, so students can easily identify the instructor’s comments. Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/04/technology/04piazza.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha26