Friday, December 12, 2014

Weekly Reader

How to Manage Social Media in Higher Education
"Managing Social Media in Higher Education is no easy task. There is a lot of pressure to stay on top of current trends and strategies, maintain consistency in many channels, and ultimately build genuine digital relationships with our students that result in brand loyalty. Liz Gross, author of “How to Manage Social Media in Higher Education: A Guide for Campus Administrators”, joins us to give insight and tips on how to succeed in the fast-paced world of social media management." -- Amy Jorgensen, Higher Ed Live, 12/11/14

#TAGS New Homepage for Twitter Archiving Google Sheet
"Here at ProfHacker we’ve written quite a bit about Twitter over the years (as our archive of posts with the twitter tag reveals). One Twitter topic that we’ve addressed often is how best to maintain an archive of Tweets, whether your own or those associated with a particular hashtag. In two different posts, Mark introduced readers to what is, arguably, the best free solution for this: Martin Hawksey’s TAGS, “a free Google Sheet template which lets you setup and run automated collection of search results from Twitter.” -- George Williams, ProfHacker, 12/11/14 *

* Note: there's a great comment on this article with links to using IFTTT for this purpose.

BookCon To Partner With We Need Diverse Books For 2015 Conference
"BookCon and We Need Diverse Books are teaming up in 2015 for two panels highlighting diversity in literature. The panels, organized by ReedPop, the producer of BookCon, in partnership with We Need Diverse Books, will include prominent authors of color such as Jacqueline Woodson and Sherman Alexie. One of the panels will focus on children’s literature, while another will center on diversity in science fiction and fantasy." -- Claire Fallon, HuffPost Books, 12/11/14

Twitter 2014 Year in Review
"It was a big year for Twitter in 2014. Their first year after going public, people expected them to make the news on the regular—which they did. From a brand new look to being banned in Turkey, Twitter was a regular feature in the headlines.Here is a brief review of the year that was for Twitter." -- Evan LePage, Hootsuite, 12/8/14


New YouTube Tool Tells You If Your Video's Song Is Copyrighted
"Music copyright issues often get YouTube videos muted or even blocked. Now the service launched a new feature that lets video creators check those song rights before uploading, the company announced in a blog post on Monday." -- Stephanie Chan, ReadWrite, 12/9/14

Acing the Interview
"Job market candidates can spend months preparing written materials such as research statements and teaching philosophies, but invitations to interview usually leave candidates with only weeks or even days to prepare. What are the most important things to do before and during an interview? " -- Melissa Dennihy, Inside HigherEd | Career Advice, 12/3/14

Friday, December 05, 2014

Weekly Reader

The Pain of the Watermelon Joke
"AS a child in South Carolina, I spent summers like so many children — sitting on my grandparents’ back porch with my siblings, spitting watermelon seeds into the garden or, even worse, swallowing them and trembling as my older brother and sister spoke of the vine that was probably already growing in my belly.It was the late ’60s and early ’70s, and even though Jim Crow was supposed to be far behind us, we spent our days in the all-black community called Nicholtown in a still segregated South." - Jacqueline Wilson, New York Times Op Ed, 11/28/14

Is it Time to Get Rid of Grades?
"In the past few years since teachers and their principals have been reduced to numbers on a their yearly evaluations there have been many discussions revolving around the idea that educators are more than numbers. It doesn't feel good to get one number that is supposed to represent all of our hard work throughout a year. It feels disingenuous and arbitrary. Unfortunately, for many years before accountability and mandates, students were reduced to numbers and we did not do a lot about it. That is most likely due to the fact that we were reduced to numbers when we were students in school. Numbers have been a part of schooling for many decades." -- Peter DeWitt, Finding Common Ground | Education Week, 12/2/14

Five Reasons to Allow Digital Devices in Your Classroom
"Amidst reports of Steve Jobs and other Silicon Valley CEOs imposing extremely strict technology rules on their children, the debate around technology use in the classroom has caught fire once again. One of the strongest arguments for banning technology in the classroom came earlier this fall, from media pundit Clay Shirky in a piece titled “Why I Just Asked My Students To Put Their Laptops Away.” -- Natascha Chtena, GradHacker | Inside Higher Ed, 11/30/14

Who Will Log You Out When You're Gone?
"I long ago exceeded my capacity to remember passwords, especially for my institutional accounts which require password changes at regular intervals. As a result, I use a password manager to keep up with all my passwords. As it happens, I use 1Password, which syncs everywhere, generates and keeps track of preposterously complex passwords, and keeps other kinds of information, such as credit card numbers, passport information, and more secure yet available. It’s a neat thing." -- Jason B. Jones,  ProfHacker | Chronicle, 12/1/14