OpenPrep supplements those courses with open Web resources like Wikipedia articles, Khan Academy tutorials, YouTube videos and more, all pulled in by algorithms tuned to find the most relevant content for your course of study.

"YouTube and Wikipedia are knowledge warehouses, which rival the greatest libraries ever built yet they lack the structure and curriculum required to master a subject," says BenchPrep CEO Ashish Rangnekar. "Our goal is to help students tap into this open knowledge base in an intuitive, convenient and engaging way while maintaining the academic structure of a course."

OpenPrep accomplishes this by using topic detection and ranking algorithms to analyze the test prep material and draw in relevant material from these free Web resources using their APIs. Additional resources from Wolfram Alpha, Pearson, Associated Press and more are coming soon.

Rangnekar says that BenchPrep students have already begun to take advantage of these new open Web options, tweeting and sharing YouTube videos to their friends from within the BenchPrep applications. Social learning is an integral part of BenchPrep's courses, but the new OpenPrep features let students share what they learn with friends outside their courses.

BenchPrep's cross-platform test prep tools are now enhanced by some of the vastest libraries of knowledge available on the Web. Check out some of our past coverage of how educational publishers are adapting to the networks and form factors of the future.

Also check out this study we covered yesterday about how users' love of interactivity and control has made tablets a better way to read and learn.

How do you think social Web technologies in education can supplement face-to-face learning?

The app is also available on Android and the Web, but the previous iOS version required students to work on the device for which a course was purchased. Today's update will sync work across all devices, including test answers and performance as well as notes and other student-created content. Work done offline will sync as soon as the device is connected again.

BenchPress CEO Ashish Rangnekar says social features are part of the company's educational philosophy. "Social learning," as Rangenkar frames it, means using data from student activity to form online study groups, matching students based on their work styles and enabling students to share notes, flash cards or other prep materials. Printed materials and conventional e-books, he says, are "very static. There is no interaction. There is no feedback, there is no analytics, and these things are all part of what we believe learning should be."

Rangnekar says this philosophy comes out of the team's many years as students, rather than a background as educators, but that leads to an app developed with the interests of students at heart.

Test Prep is BenchPrep's Specialty

Currently, the course offerings are mostly for higher education, but Rangnekar says that the app is beginning to reach the high school market as well. "We want students to graduate within the platform," Rangnekar says. Because BenchPrep can offer prep courses across all levels of education, with performance analytics that students can bring with them, Rangnekar envisions a use case for BenchPress that follows a student "throughout the educational life cycle." Subject tests for graduate school usually require students to reach back to high school- or college-level math. Having that old test material, as well as detailed performance analytics, readily available on the same platform would be a great help to students.

The analytics also provide value for the publishers, who can get more meaningful feedback from interactive educational materials than simple print sales figures could provide.

BenchPrep is positioned mostly as a self-prep tool; it doesn't yet offer textbooks or help teachers create curricula, but Rangnekar says BenchPrep is "in the process of building analytics tools for [educators]" to help them monitor their students' test preparation. As a platform, BenchPrep would already be able to deliver textbooks or other in-class material, it just hasn't broken into that kind of content yet.

We offered a round-up of Web-powered test prep services in the past, and Watermelon Express, BenchPrep's predecessor, was first on the list. Other services, such as Grockit, also emphasize social learning, but BenchPrep's integration across platforms and devices stands out.

Toward the Future of Educational Content

BenchPrep's platform seems scalable, and it could conceivably expand beyond the test prep space and have an impact inside the classroom. Chegg and Amazon's Kindle Textbook Rental are well-established in the digital textbook market, but BenchPrep's model could offer textbook publishers a different kind of business for a different kind of content. With its interactive capabilities, and especially with its offline access, BenchPrep could deliver educators and students a new kind of course material, rather than renting static content based on the model of the physical textbook.

How do you think social Web technologies in education can supplement face-to-face learning?

Career Explorer aims to help students chart their potential career paths and to help them build a professional network pre-graduation. Based on data aggregated from LinkedIn's 80 million members, Career Explorer will map out the paths that others in similar fields have taken. It will also offer resources including relevant job opportunities, salary information, and educational and experience required in certain industries or fields.

"LinkedIn is about connecting talent with opportunity at massive scale. Career Explorer is the latest example of how we make that possible by providing one of our fastest growing demographics, students and recent college graduates, unique and valuable insights enabling them to develop the optimal career path," says CEO Jeff Weiner.

While the Career Explorer tool could prove useful for college students in formulating their career paths and building their professional networks, the tool has the added benefit for LinkedIn of convincing college students into becoming frequent users of the site early in their careers.

Career Explorer will be available immediately to students at 60 U.S. universities, and LinkedIn says it plans to expand that over time. Students at those universities will be able to log in to LinkedIn and see the Career Explorer option available to them under "Jobs."

The survey asked over 500 college students nationwide about their experiences with viewing course content over video streamed online. And 78% reported that their professors have used web streaming - either a live feed or videotaped lectures - with nearly a third saying that their professors use web streaming frequently. 21% of students reported that over half their course learning is done by viewing video content online.

Many students admitted that they only show up to class for the exams, and instead borrow notes and tapes from others in their class. 32% say they've asked a friend or classmate to record a class for them so they didn't have to attend in person.

The top benefits college students associate with having their lectures and college courses available via video online are "being able to 'attend' classes even though they are really out of town" (63%) and "being able to attend class when they want, not when the university has it scheduled" (58%). 47% reported that online content made it easier for them to work more hours at their jobs. And 43% touted the benefit of not having to get dressed for class. Only 15% listed "being able to attend more parties" as the main benefit of having their courses available online.

Video Streaming Makes Them Better Students?

Students also said that being able to access course content online gave them the flexibility to learn at their own pace. 64% said that viewing classes via online video lets them fast forward through the parts they do not find useful. More than half also said that online video helps them to spend more time studying by themselves. In addition, many reported that they felt more comfortable asking questions to professors online because they don't have to speak up in front of the class.

Three-quarters of those responding said that having their professors post video online or live stream their lectures would help them be better prepared for exams. And over half said that they think they can learn more effectively when they can watch videos via live streaming than when they sit in a classroom, with 54% saying they've seen their grades improve because of access to video lectures.

A third of those responding admitted that their parents would be upset to hear about the frequency with which they skip class or about their preference for finding alternative ways to access course material. (Only a third?!)

But whether or not parents understand, the results of this study seem to confirm what many already see as higher education's future: it's going to be online. Many students already prefer it that way.

Photo credits: Flickr user Sholeh

That may not be true, as it turns out. A new study coming out of Northwestern University, discovered that college students have a decided lack of Web savvy, especially when it comes to search engines and the ability to determine the credibility of search results. Apparently, the students favor search engine rankings above all other factors. The only thing that matters is that something is the top search result, not that it's legit.

During the study, one of the researchers asked a study participant, "What is this website?" The student answered, "Oh, I don't know. The first thing that came up."

That exchange sums up the overall results from this study: many students trusted in rankings above all else. In fact, a quarter of the students, when assigned information-seeking tasks, said they chose a website because - and only because - it was the first search result.

Only 10% of the students made mention of the site's author or that author's credentials while completing tasks. However, in reviewing the screen-capture footage of those respondents, the researchers found that even in this supposedly savvy minority, none actually followed through to verify the identification or qualifications of the site's authors.

Google was not the only search engine used in the study, but it was one in which the students put a lot of trust. The students felt emotionally tied to the service in some cases, noting how much they loved it and depended on it. (Those who used Yahoo! said they merely "liked" it.)

Regardless the choice of search engine, though, the first step in information-seeking was always the use of such a service, which was typically referred to as a verb. And yes, in addition to "google it," some even said they would "yahoo it."

Wikipedia Not Trusted as Much

Another interesting finding from the study involved the use of Wikipedia. Perhaps because of teachers' insistence over the years that the user-generated encyclopedia is not a credible source of information, only a third of the students used Wikipedia to search for answers when given particular tasks. This is a drop from earlier studies (like Raine & Tancer, 2007) which showed Wikipedia use at 46% among students.

Other popular trusted sources included SparkNotes (a study guide site), WedMD, Planned Parenthood, CNN, BBC, Microsoft (specifically Encarta and Office-related resources) and those sites with a .gov or .edu extension. Some students even thought that .org domain name meant a site was inherently trustworthy - they weren't aware that the .org extension can be freely registered just like .com and is not for nonprofit use only, as may have originally been intended.

Students Need Media Literacy Education

Over 1,000 students were surveyed and then the researchers randomly sampled 102 students from 1,060 students who had participated in the survey. The demographics of the group were both ethnically and racially diverse, reaching a representative sample of first-year college students at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

In summary, the findings showed that students are not always turning to the most relevant clues to determine the credibility of online content, said the researchers Eszter Hargittai, Lindsay Fullerton, Ericka Menchen-Trevino and Kristen Yates Thomas. Further initiatives that help educate people in this domain are needed, they claim.

Image credit in original article: flickr user Paulo Fehlauer

At a kickoff event tonight in Richmond, Virginia, I got to participate in a panel discussion and hear questions from an audience of college students and professors. One of the questions posed was how those in academia can best put the social web to work for themselves. Far beyond Facebook and LinkedIn, how can this community harness the Internet to be smarter, more efficient, and more productive? Read on for our top five ideas.

In almost any field of study, from sociology to physics to arts to media, educators and students can find a group of experts on Twitter, engaging in debate, posting relevant links, sharing their most recent work, and answering questions. With its asymmetrical follower model, this network allows you to keep up with leaders and organizations in your industry of choice without their having to follow you in return. There are lots of tools for finding topic-specific experts on Twitter. WeFollow and Mr. Tweet are two popular applications, and Twitter app store oneforty can provide even more resources for discovering an existing network and staying up to date.

2) Use feeds to stay informed about news, events, and conversations.

Once you've found your network, you may notice that a lot of these individuals and groups maintain blogs. Do a Google search, and focus on finding blogs that speak specifically to your field of interest. For every niche, no matter how obscure, someone out there is curating content. There are wind turbine blogs, turtle breeding blogs, biomedical engineering blogs, economics blogs - you get the gist. Staying updated in your field is as simple as spending 20 minutes a day online once you know how to use feeds.

For those users with a good grasp of RSS, feed readers such as Google Reader can bring clarity, organization, and efficiency to the formerly painful process of staying informed. But even if you don't know RSS from a hole in the ground, there are sites that will allow you to simply put together lists of websites to track, or even bring you news feeds just based on a particular topic. We recommend checking out Lazyfeed and Guzzle.it for getting news by keyword or topic, and for the visually oriented, we also suggest these two dead-simple visual feed readers.

3) Build your website.

If there's one thing students in particular need to worry about, it's Google. Social accounts are fine and dandy to have, but prospective employers are searching for candidates by name when making interviewing and hiring decisions, as was made abundantly clear by a professional recruiter on tonight's panel. Right now, Facebook might have a search engine monopoly on your name; unless that account is the best representation of you, a FirstNameLastName.com website might be a good idea. Here's our list of four what-you-see-is-what-you-get website builders that don't require much or any coding knowledge. You can also use some of the blogging resources mentioned in the next section. Once your site is up, link back to it from all your social profiles to help boost your site's place in search results.

4) Create content.

Now that you know your network and its key players, you're staying informed in your field, and you've got a decent start in representing yourself online, it's time to start giving back. Whether you've got expertise to share or simply more questions to ask, you should be creating content. Tweeting is a great and engaging place to start; many professional and mentoring relationships have begun with a simple @reply. But you also need to blog, create videos, and/or post images or audio to your website.

Not only is this good for SEO, which will help when the aforementioned recruiters start Googling you; it's also essential for deeper participation in the conversation happening all around you online. If visual arts are your thing, for example, a Flickr account is a must, and it's probably a good idea to post any images you create on a separate blog, as well. Ideally, your content should tie in with your FirstNameLastName.com website. Depending on the type of content you choose to create, you might want to look at WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, or Posterous. Post content regularly, and check out this Slate post with tips from some of the most famous bloggers online.

5) Be an early adopter and refine your digital toolkit.

Finally, once you're comfortably participating in the conversation and you're part of a very real community of experts, educators, and students in your field of interest, realize that your journey toward technological proficiency has just begun. The Internet is in a constant state of flux, and learning how to leverage the social web for academic benefit is an ongoing exercise. There are many resources for finding new weapons to add to your digital arsenal; we're sure lots of helpful pointers will come from others in your community. But also, keep an eye on the techies, who are always testing and recommending new products and apps.

Check sites such as ReadWriteStart, AppUseful, and oneforty every now and then to see if there's a better mousetrap than the ones you might currently be using. Stay open-minded and flexible; be willing to try anything three times.

The social web means so much more to academia than finding out which students were really sick on exam day and which just went to a kegger the night before. It also means a lot more than a static resume and a stagnant list of useless "connections." Social web apps, when used intelligently, can make us all as brilliant and resourceful as the brightest stars in our networks, fostering real-world value and reinforcing learning.

Here are a few tools we wish we'd had when we were still dorm-dwelling nobodies. Forward these links on to the collegiate folks in your life, and add your own favorites to the list. Together, we can rid the world of dropped classes and "ramen starvation."

BigWords is a site and iPhone app that source a slew of online retailers to get students the cheapest possible textbooks, taking the legwork out of online comparison shopping. BigWords also claims to optimize prices by looking for multi-item specials, shipping discounts, coupons, and other exceptional deals. Students (or textbook-shopping parents and guardians) can also share "bookbags" with others, and the site claims an average $225 savings on multi-item orders.

Study Socially

When students can use Facebook Connect to sign into an app designed to optimize study time, you know the world has changed. StudyBlue takes advantage of your virtual Rolodex to help you share notes, flashcards, and other study tools. Notes can be recorded as text or as multimedia content - that means you can share audio and video with your class-skipping colleagues. If only it counted as attendance, no? Best of all, the StudyBlue team has announced mobile capabilities for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Another app we like in this space is Quizlet, an online flashcard and quizzing resource that also uses Facebook Connect.

Rent and Return Textbooks

BookRenter soothes the eternal frustration of spending a triple-digit amount on a textbook you'll use for four months and then resell to your college's bookstore for a princely ten bucks. Renters register and have access to the company's catalog of millions of titles. Prices are refreshingly reasonable; shipping options and rental periods are flexible; and return shipping is free.

Situate Yourself

DesignYourDorm is a new-this-year app that allows college students to design their dorm room interiors in 3D and purchase their decor selections online. Not only can students often choose their exact room dimensions and layout from the DYD database and collaborate with dormmates to get rooms furnished based on thorough checklists; parents can also send care packages from a gallery that calls to mind an edible version of 1800Flowers.

Mobilize Your Textbooks

Coursesmart, a leader in the e-textbook game, just released an iPhone app, which we reviewed recently. Their catalog so far includes 7,000 ebooks, and their software works for both Macs and PCs. The desktop apps also allow students to take notes while reading, and both desktop and mobile apps have built-in search function.

Research on the Fly

The mobile version of Wikipedia has long been available for on-the-go consumption, but did you know Wikipedia also just released an official iPhone app, which we recently reviewed? You can also try iPhone apps such as Wapedia, Wikiamo, or Wikipanion.

Get Yourself and Your Group On-Task

Remember the Milk is one app we like for individual or group tasks. This full-featured program allows users to keep track of tasks through RSS feeds, share tasks via email, add tasks via email or SMS, and even assign tasks a specific location. There's an iPhone app, and RTM plays nicely with Gmail, Twitter, and Google Calendar, as well.

Hit 'Em With Your Best Shot

Finally, after all your hard work and study, you'll need to create a certain number of papers, presentations, projects, and perhaps even a website or two during your time in school this year. We have a whole list of code-free website creation tools that range from easy to use to ridiculously easy to use, and with a little finessing, they'll definitely impress a professor or two. For creating multimedia presentations, we like Empressr, Drop.io, and SlideShare, all of which have different social sharing/embedding and multimedia capabilities.

Back to Basics

For staying organized, keeping in touch, taking notes, and generally keeping yourself sane, your old friends are more useful now than ever. And by "old friends," we mean those apps you already use so much you don't even realize they're apps anymore. Try seeing Facebook, Google Docs, Google Notebook, Gmail, Twitter, and Skype as study and communication tools rather than just time-wasters, and you'll notice that you can get a lot done on your favorite sites.

So, what apps are you using to get organized, get smart, get together, or just get it right this year? Let us know in the comments!

Speaking directly to this concern (or phenomenon, depending on your perspective), two students at the New York University Stern School of Business and a former MySpace IT director have started FledgeWing, a new social network that aims to connect aspiring student entrepreneurs with one another as well as with mentors, investors, and industry professionals.

Students present brief descriptions of their projects along with goals and objectives; the UI acts as a light project management, task-tracking app. Others may leave comments or request to join the project.

The case studies are presented as business challenges within the tech/social media world and range from the creation of a retail outlet for Microsoft to the development of a business model for Twitter. Students are encouraged to submit their case studies as comments, attaching any necessary documents to validate or clarify their POV.

The site also has been categorized by areas of interest; and different forums, students, mentors, and companies appear in each category.

Co-founder Lewis Drummond said his team is "bringing together the brightest and most creative minds during a time when then entire structure of business is changing.

"The site has a large database of mentors, companies, and jobs... FledgeWing also regularly hosts all-expenses paid networking events... along with business plan competitions with cash prizes. Entrepreneurial clubs can participate in and host forums, while a feedback-style rating system and comprehensive intellectual property agreement ensure quality control and legal protection for both users and club moderators. Additionally, clubs can create events and have a place for users to collaborate together on specific projects."

In addition to bridging the gap between professional and student entrepreneurialism, the site also intends to encourage more cooperation and collaboration between student entrepreneurs and supporting organizations at different universities.

We find the heavy emphasis on business (as opposed to straight tech) an interesting and valuable approach to the aforementioned structural changes going on in our industries. As we noted in a previous article on IT and journalism student collaboration, bringing different disciplines together with an emphasis on pragmatic creation and measurable action is sure to yield mutually beneficial results for all involved. In this case, from perusing the student projects and comments, we notice a trend toward bootstrappable startups - a welcome mindset in the current economy.

Fledgewing also represents a trend we've noticed toward project-driven social-professional networks that focus on active collaboration and partnership. IBM has recently launched two such sites, one for developers and one for business partners.

What do you think: Is this breed of social-political online groups a valuable networking tool that can lead to successful projects in reality? And is interdisciplinary collaboration the best route to better, more viable startups? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

This is a great idea and we expect that young people who discover it will appreciate it. At first glance it looks better to us than iTunes University. This could genuinely help young people make more informed decisions about what schools to apply to. There's also a lot of great content on the site for anyone to learn from.

Last year we asked "Is YouTube the Next Google?," noting that video search is one of the most compelling types of search online. There is video content online, and on YouTube in particular, about just about anything. College content? That's a no brainer.

If you like academic videos, make sure to check out Academic Earth as well.

Universities such as Duke, Stanford, MIT, and the University of California, among others, already post videos online both to YouTube and in iTunes U, a section of iTunes featuring audio and video podcasts. However, what UNSW is doing is unique - they're providing college credit to those watching the YouTube recordings.

YouTube U

While there's really little difference between physically showing up in a classroom to sit and listen to a lecture and viewing a video of the same lecture, few universities have allowed this type of unstructured remote learning to count as college credit for those who are not already enrolled in the university. Instead, colleges that support distance learning initiatives usually require students to apply for admission and pay tuition, just as any other student attending classes on campus would have to.

The fact that Buckland is not charging the high school students who are remotely attending his courses but is still giving them college credit is what makes what he's doing so different...and perhaps groundbreaking.

The process of UNSW's "YouTube education" is not entirely without structure, though. Only a limited number of high school students are chosen each year for this opportunity. Those who wish to attend must submit a statement as well as an academic reference from a teacher. In other words, receiving college credit for watching the videos isn't something available to anyone, anywhere - there is still a selection process that is adhered to.

Higher Learning or Marketing Campaign?

Colleges who want to follow in UNSW's footsteps could easily take this idea and turn it into a recruiting or marketing campaign for their university. By offering high school students transferable college credits valid at their particular institution, they could encourage the brightest young students to consider their university over others long before it came time to fill out the admissions packet.

No matter what reason a college may have for pursuing this type of remote learning, giving students the chance to work ahead - and at no additional expense to them - is an idea that hopefully spreads to other institutions worldwide.

We had always heard, anecdotally, that the only reason teens today would even bother signing up for an email account was so they could register with social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. However, 36% of those surveyed said they use email alerts to stay on top of what's happening on the social networks. In other words, they don't just create emails to sign up - the emails actually become a part of how they interact with the networks they join.

When it came time to pick their email provider, Gmail was the clear favorite. Nearly one-third (32%) of college students choose Gmail, while 19% use Yahoo, 18% use MSN/Hotmail and about 17% use their school email.

How Often They Check the Inbox

Students also regularly check their email inboxes. More than two-thirds of students say they check email at least once per day, and 55% of those check more than 3 times per day. This is especially interesting when you compare this data to that that came out of the Pew Internet Project (PDF) only a few months ago. In that study, Pew found that half of corporate employees checked their email constantly, while only 32% of those who work in small businesses did.

Comparing those numbers with the data on the students seems to imply that the only people who become email-obsessed are those for whom email is the major, and sometimes only, form of communication. That's definitely the case in big corporations where the people you need to speak to are buildings, cities, states, or even half a world away. For everyone else, there are other alternatives. In small businesses, for example, there are probably more chances to have face-to-face time. For the students there are social networks and, of course, text messaging.

Mobile Communications

Only 12% of students currently check email on their mobile, but eROI predicts that number will increase quickly, especially given the recent explosion of smartphones on the market. In the meantime, though, it's text messaging that remains supreme with 37% selecting that as their preferred method of communication. Email is second at 26% followed by social networking IM (15%) , IM (11%), and social networking email (11%). We're also surprised to see social networking networking email rated last - we always imagined students using social networks more for communication purposes. Then again, it appears that the survey neglected to ask about Wall posts and profile comments - those are also important ways to communicate. We wonder where they would have fit in.

In the end, the survey finds that students do use email - perhaps even more than we realized - but if you really want to reach them, you should do it via text or IM. For marketers, this means that the easy method of sending out newsletters and coupons to mass email lists may become a thing of the past - only 16% of students read marketing email. Companies will have to come up with new ways to to advertise to this demographic. May we suggest social media? 

The woman, Stacy Snyder, sued Millersville in 2007. Snyder was student-teaching at a high school, but had received poor evaluations regarding her professionalism in the classroom. Before her semester-long teaching assignment was up, she was barred from campus. However, it was not the negative reviews that caused her to be barred nor were they responsible for the loss of her degree. It was a MySpace photo.

In the photo, Synder was posed standing with a cocktail. The caption read "drunken pirate." It was accompanied by a note which made reference to her supervising teacher. That led to the school's decision to end her assignment, which in turn meant she now no longer qualified for her bachelor's degree in education.

Instead, the university reclassified some academic credits and gave Synder a degree in English. She appealed the decision and lost. She then decided to sue. The judge, Paul S. Diamond of the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, dismissed her free-speech claims, saying that employees' free speech is only protected if it relates to matters of public concern. Synder's criticism of her supervisor did not.

University president, Francine McNairy, agreed with the decision. "This was not about First Amendment rights, it was about performance, and she clearly did not do what was necessary in order to earn a degree in education," she said.

Was The Photo Really To Blame?

Given Synder's history in this case, the photo of her drinking and the accompanying note may not be really to blame for her lack of degree. In a way, they were just the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. If Synder had been a good employee (student teacher) up until the point the photo had been discovered, she probably would have been disciplined, but not let go, and thus would not not have lost her degree.

However, given her prior negative reviews, the photo simply gave the school an excuse for what they wanted to do all along - fire Stacy Synder. It was tangible evidence of her unprofessionalism in a way that subjective performance reviews are not. She may have been able to argue with the university that her supervisor had a personal problem with her, or something of the like, had her negative reviews come up in a decision regarding her degree. A photo is not as easy to explain away.

Lesson Learned: Use Privacy Controls On Your Social Network Profile

Synder's real mistake in this situation was not knowing or choosing to turn on any sort of privacy controls on her social network profile page. Given that the photo was found on her MySpace profile, it could have easily been kept out of sight from her supervisors and administrators at the university. It never needed to come into play.

MySpace profiles can easily be set to "private" which would have prevented anyone except those who were accepted as Synder's friends to have access to the items she posted. Facebook also offers extensive privacy controls that should be configured, especially if your profile is being used for more business networking type purposes.

Don't Be So Quick To Criticize

Although it may be easy to criticize Synder based on the information we've learned so far - negative performance reviews, distasteful photos - the truth is that many younger teachers disagree with their their older supervisors, which could have led to the bad reviews.

In fact, if you take the time to review the judge's decision (PDF), you'll see that Synder's "unprofessionalism" that was cited in those reviews came from accusations that she exhibited "over-familiarity with her students," and "had difficulty maintaining a formal teaching manner." Really? A college student teaching a high school class? Shocking. In addition, it seems that students knew of her MySpace page and checked it regularly, another unseemly violation of a teacher's ethical code, in the eyes of her supervisor.

Ironically, one of Synder's MySpace postings in question began,

I have nothing to hide. I am over 21, and I don't say anything that will hurt me (in the long run). Plus, I don't think that they would stoop that low as to mess with my future.

MySpace Lost Synder Her Degree

Synder may have needed more coaching in how to be a professional - the very thing that student-teaching is designed for - but it hardly negates her years of completed course work towards her education degree. So in the end, it really was her MySpace mistake that lost her the degree after all. And if that isn't a tale that has you rushing out to manage your profile page's privacy settings right now, then it's hard to imagine what will.

Image Credits: Computer Eye, Mikey G. Ottowa; privacy please, bejealousofme, Oihan, SVG Creations

The college reached this decision after first looking into outsourcing their email to the cloud. They considered offering from both Google and Microsoft, but eventually decided against both in lieu of the new forwarding option.

A Smart Decision

While the Boston College decision may have been made for cost-saving reasons more than anything, we can easily imagine this as being the start of a new trend.

Can you even imagine a U.S. college student who didn't have an email address of their own by the time they were a freshman? It's practically unheard of. Today's students are digital natives who have been immersed in technology from the day they were born. It simply doesn't make sense to give them yet another account to manage when they enter college.

Some Challenges

By going this route, there are still some challenges to overcome, though. For example, a student who changes their email carrier will probably forget to alert the institution to the change and could then miss out on important messages from the university pertaining to their courses, scholarship, and disciplinary and/or safety information.

However, it can easily be argued that a change of (email) address is a student's responsibility to handle, not the institution's. If a student changed their address or phone number, would they not alert the affected parties? The same should hold true for email. And if the end result is more efficient and effective communication with the student body as a whole, the outliers who didn't follow through on managing their email transition are ultimately the ones at fault for any missed messages.

The only danger in drawing a hard line like that would be if the college or university was in the habit of sending out critical safety information utilizing the students' email addresses. If that was the institution's main way of communicating this urgent info, they may want to devise another solution. Urgent messages should ideally be sent out using multiple pathways: email, IM, text messages, and, these days, Twitter alerts would also be a valuable tool to use, too. In fact, Omnilert's e2Campus emergency notification system  already integrates with Twitter and Facebook as well as email, SMS, and RSS.

In the end, we think the decision Boston College made could easily be the start of a new trend, especially for smaller institutions looking to reduce I.T. infrastructure and support costs. We're sure the students like it, too.

The SMC is meant to supplement, not replace, the face-to-face interaction that occurs in the classroom. According to Howard, when he tried to introduce new media tools into his first Wi-Fi-equipped classroom, he was surprised by the blank looks on so many of the students' faces when he told them that he expected them to blog and edit the wiki. Since he was so familiar with the power of Web 2.0 tools and was surrounded by people who felt the same, he hadn't realized how many college students didn't actually have experience using these types of 21st century tools. This sparked an idea to build a new social media platform designed specifically for use in an educational setting. And thus, the Social Media Classroom was born.

What's Included

The SMC includes all the familiar social media tools from blogs to RSS to videos and wikis and even microblogging. All are integrated into one seamless environment where the different applications are available from navigational tabs at the top of the page just like any ordinary web site has. Everyone who is a member of a particular instance of the Social Media Classroom will initially see a personalized start page upon login that aggregates their own different posts to the various parts of the site.

The SMC will be available to educators both an installable version for self-hosting and as a hosted version (coming soon) for those less tech-savvy.

The Classroom and The Collaboratory

The project itself has two components called The Classroom and The Collaboratory. The The Collaboratory (or Colab) is simply the web service part of the project which is also made available to anyone, even non-educators. It includes both the downloadable install file and the soon-to-launch hosted service.

The Classroom, on the other hand, is the entire web site available at www.socialmediaclassroom.com which contains, among other things, the curriculum materials. In these materials you'll find all sorts of information about the different types of social media as well as links to various resources across the web.

21st Century Education

Social media and the participatory web have had a greater impact on our world beyond just how we connect and socialize with our friends online. The base concepts surrounding how these interactions take place has influenced a whole new generation of web users who now expect to participate in discussions and not be dictated to...whether online or offline. We've seen this influence occur in the workplace, where millennial employees demand to know "why" they're being asked to do something instead of just doing it. We've also seen it effect the business of marketing as social media users now feel strongly that brands (companies) should be listening and conversing with them in an open, transparent matter. So why not bring the social media revolution to the classroom, too? It only makes sense.

Those involved with this project believe that today's students need more than a class where a professor lectures for an hour - that has no hope of engaging their interest. Students need a classroom where learning is a more participatory experience and where the tools they use in their everyday lives - social networking, videos, chat, aren't checked at the door. The Social Media Classroom is an important project to make those types of tools available to educators who might not be as up to speed with the latest technology, while also simplifying the use of those tools through the introduction of a single platform that integrates the best of the Web 2.0 world.

Perhaps the project doesn't introduce anything new that hasn't already been available to the tech-savvy, but its ease-of-use and educational slant make its introduction an impressive and potentially game-changing move for the educational system as we know it.

Due to the transparency of college networks, students are an easy target for the RIAA's resistant efforts. However, don't get it twisted. Colleges are not about to start defending the students that actually violate copyright laws. For not only are these students violating the laws of the music industry, but also those of the college. With that being said, colleges are fighting back because they feel that the resources and time spent on chasing these students is cutting into better things that faculty members could be doing.

The Costs and Efforts of the Hunt

So what exactly does it cost colleges to hunt down these students? With the increasing number of subpoenas and "cease-and-desist" letters coming from the RIAA, it's become a full-time job for college administration to keep up with students across their network, especially if the campus is huge. This has resulted in some colleges having to hire more full-time employees to monitor the networks and make sure the correct correspondents are actually violating the law and receive their notices. Talk about a time-consuming job! Not only that, colleges have also had to install more software to help track and monitor illegal network activities, which results in yet another software that IT employees have to get a handle on.

Just Not Worth All the Effort

In the end, it's understandable for some colleges to simply stop helping out the RIAA. Their efforts are costing them a ton of money and time. Instead, colleges are opting to focus their efforts towards their school's mission statements and to the academic well-being of their students. Colleges could spend more time better educating their students on the most current software, upgrading their own systems to reflect these teachings, and overall helping their students in a variety of other ways. We're sure students will be happy to hear this, but we'd like to warn college students once again that campus efforts to stop piracy will not stop completely.