Posting assignments, announcements and other ‘informative’ stuff on social media sites such as Facebook has become the norm. Teachers seem to have found an easy and effective way to interact with their students. On the students part, they now are able to even ask help in solving problems or pose any questions with their teachers. Is this ‘connection’ right in a moral sense or has some barrier been crossed?

There is no doubt that keeping the lines of communication open will indeed be useful in the classroom and will be a great help in taking care of the academic needs of each student. But there are other problems that have emerged.

As a former Abington educator heads to court following allegations of inappropriate interaction with teenagers on Facebook, school districts that do not have policies governing online social networking are working to complete them as soon as possible.

Schools officials say they want not only to protect students from predators, but also to protect teachers who have good intentions from getting involved in students’ lives in inappropriate ways or ways that create the appearance of impropriety.

The problem comes in drawing the line between what is an acceptable student-teacher relationship and what is inappropriate. Having personal information and photos available to teachers may be the start of the development of improper relationships.

Is prohibiting staff from accepting Facebook friend requests an extreme measure though? It depends on whose side you look at it. For innocent teachers who just want to help their students and students who just want to be helped, it may ‘bad thing’. On the other hand, think about those predators out there, just waiting for another victim and those innocent kids who become their prey-doesn’t your blood boil?!

Their is no other way for school authorities to protect their students and teachers as well.  Though teachers should know better what to do and say on Facebook, it may turn out to be an ‘unnecessary temptation’. Besides, how did they fare when there was no Facebook or Internet for that matter? Maybe, it’s better keep things traditional.

Read more here.

If you’ve already got all the social media sites that you think you need, you may not be quite interested in getting one more. Google +  currently has about 5M users in the short time it has been introduced. Is it just like the other social media sites though? There are a couple of features that make it quite unique.

Circles not Just Friends

With Facebook, we all know how it works- it’s either you’re friends or not. Though you can share specific things with specific people, the process of editing every one of these settings and customizing who gets to see them is really cumbersome.

Google + has come up with a really interesting and practical solution to this problem. You can create your own circles and share different things with each or your circles. With your High School friends, all those party pics would be something to share. For closer friends, you can share your updates, feelings or whatever. Only those in that circle get to see what you share with them!

This is a huge revolution when it comes to how you share stuff with. The good thing is they don’t get to know under what circle you’ve put them in so it really stays personal and is far more realistic.

Keeping Privacy up

With the way Google + works, you can really sift the groups of people you want to share stuff with. Down to  your updates! Instead of having a single status message, you can have several that can be seen by different circles. This will help you keep your ‘private’ information PRIVATE.

Updates with Spark

This is a feature that allows you to get information on whatever things interests you. It as good as brings the power of Google alerts into your site. This is definitely something other social media sites don’t have.

All in One

If you’re thinking Facebook still has an edge with the video thing it’s started-think again! You can both chat and video chat with friends using ‘Hangouts’. And so can you connect your Google+ account to your mobile phone just like all the other Social media sites.

You may have thought that Google+ is a super professional site that will be no fun at all but this isn’t at all the case! It’s everything all your social media sites have to offer and much more. It isn’t JUST another social media site.

Read more here.

With all the negative feedback about the dangers about social media, you may wonder if it’s really worth it. If you’ve already had an account on all the recent social networking sites for some time, without seeing anything happening. So is it really worth it? The time, the privacy issues and all. Just why should you bother with Social media anyway?

It’s with the way you can convert all those ‘followers’ into customers. This doesn’t come automatically though. You really have to work for it. In short, it will be waste of time and effort and all the other ‘negative’ things if you allow it to.

The key is coming up with strategies. Don’t expect that simply having a profile will be good enough for you to benefit from your social media. Know where to get an account, take care of your account, be interactive.

If you want to make sure that your followers don’t stay passive but really get engaged in your business is to make things fun. You can post for example some competition on your wall that will have some perk in store for them. Give them reason to want to get and keep connected to you.

It’s always about ‘what will this do for me’ so make it interesting.

Look at what your doing right now with your social media efforts and ask yourself this question – What could I do that would entice some percentage of my followers to willingly and joyfully give me their email address? – answer that and you’ll turn your social media efforts into a powerful lead generation machine.

Read more here.

Credit:geeksontime.com

No matter how ‘not so social’ you may think you are, you probably have a Facebook account. If you are a businessman, all your employees also probably have their own personal accounts as well. If  you have seen the advantage of allowing the use of Facebook while at work, what can you do to protect your company’s information?

We know how powerful social media has become so it really is a huge problem if you aren’t able to protect your company. Here are a few tips that will help.

• Keep applications up-to-date. The applications we are talking about here are those anti-virus and web protection programs that you obviously have. This will make sure no information leaks into the web from some bad software. Keeping these updated will protect your information and your employees from cyber criminals.
• Get your network secured. Though networking has a lot of benefits, the truth is it makes it easier for information to leak. Make sure you have an extremely secure network. Get hold of all the security applications you may need.
• Set limitations for your employees. Have clear guidelines as to what you will and will not allow to be done during office hours. Try and cultivate a feeling of responsibility in your employees so they know what is expected of them.

Boasting more than 500 million active users worldwide, the social networking site is now being targeted by cybercriminals. For example, last year spammers exploited two Facebook bugs in a week. The bugs allowed spammers to flood the service with messages promoting scams, such as links to a website where they could “win” an iPhone by filling in their personal information.

Read more here.