One of the aspects of the next version of Blackboard (9.1 Service Pack 10, which will go live on production here at Palomar in early January) is the ability to list profile information about yourself, have it follow you between Blackboard environments, and show your profile with other users within Blackboard. The following video from Blackboard describes how and why students might get use from the Profile:   Of course Blackboard also provides a more stodgy “step-by-step” video describing how to create your profile within the system. Watch the Blackboard On Demand video “My Blackboard...

Last semester Haydn and I did a workshop on “Using Twitter to Teach” which was both experimental and interesting.  Today I ran across an excellent study on the effects of using Twitter in academically significant manners, and its findings are that Twitter both increases student engagement and improves student GPAs.  The way I ran across the study, however, tells a tale about our information culture. I found the study in a typically circuitous—if not serendipitous—route so familiar to all Internet users.  I read a blog post in one of the (hundreds) of blogs I follow, Mashable, that...

A blog post back in January was about the use of Twitter in academia. Just recently I came across a Faculty Focus survey, Twitter in Higher Education 2010: Usage Habits and Trends of Today’s College Faculty, which reported on the current use of Twitter in higher education. This report is informative and worth reading as it provides a background and context for each of the survey questions and, particularly helpful, provides the reasons the respondents gave for their responses. The survey found that more higher education professionals are using Twitter compared with last year. From the report:...

David DiSalvo in Scientific American Mind January/February 2010, examines linkages among social networking, social anxiety, narcissism, and loneliness among other topics. DiSalvo makes the observation that “As social networks proliferate, they are changing the way people think about the Internet, from a tool used in solitary anonymity to a medium that touches on questions about human nature and identity: who we are, how we feel about ourselves, and how we act toward one another.” Some of the early conclusions about people who used the internet for social interaction claimed that the...