Distance Learning, mLearning, Digital Education, Technology

For all of the conversation occurring among educators about PLNs, there has been surprisingly little academic research on PLNs. With many educators using this term to describe their own informal learning habits, it is important for educational researchers to investigate exactly what this concept means to those who are using it as a term to describe a learning activity

As a microblogging and social networking platform, Twitter provides endless possibilities for teachers' professional development. From attending world EdTech conferences through the use of hashtags to creating PLNs to fall back on when looking for help or crowdsourcing resources for a particular research project, Twitter-literacy is absolutely an important literacy for the 21st century connected educator. We have written a lot on the importance of Twitter in education and have also reviewed several tools and apps to use for this purpose. In today's post we are sharing with you some of the best Twitter tools and extensions we have reviewed in 2015. If you haven't had a chance to see them before check them out below. Enjoy.

Christopher Torres-Lugo, Kai-Cheng Yang, Filippo Menczer

A growing body of evidence points to critical vulnerabilities of social media, such as the emergence of partisan echo chambers and the viral spread of misinformation. We show that these vulnerabilities are amplified by abusive behaviors associated with so-called ''follow trains'' on Twitter, in which long lists of like-minded accounts are mentioned for others to follow. This leads to the formation of highly dense and hierarchical echo chambers. We present the first systematic analysis of U.S. political train networks, which involve many thousands of hyper-partisan accounts. These accounts engage in various suspicious behaviors, including some that violate platform policies: we find evidence of inauthentic automated accounts, artificial inflation of friends and followers, and abnormal content deletion. The networks are also responsible for amplifying toxic content from low-credibility and conspiratorial sources. Platforms may be reluctant to curb this kind of abuse for fear of being accused of political bias. As a result, the political echo chambers manufactured by follow trains grow denser and train accounts accumulate influence; even political leaders occasionally engage with them.

BY MATTHEW LYNCH

Gwyneth Jones writes: "Sometimes, when you're sharing the benefits of a professional Social Media presence, it can become a bit bewildering and overwhelming."

Twitter’s 280 character limit has now been rolled out to everyone. In this post I’ll give you a few tweet ideas on how you can use the new update for your brand or business.

Personally, I really liked the 140 character limit, and after being in this industry for some time, I'd gotten good at chopping down long-form text to fit the platform's restrictions. I loved the challenge, and I also think it's been a big part of the appeal of Twitter - you know you're logging on to short thoughts and not long rants.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

https://www.scoop.it/t/social-media-and-its-influence/?&tag=Twitter

Nice Threads

We’ve made it easy to create a thread by adding a plus button in the composer, so you can connect your thoughts and publish your threaded Tweets all at the same time. You can continue adding more Tweets to your published thread at any time with the new “Add another Tweet” button. Additionally, it’s now simpler to spot a thread – we’ve added an obvious “Show this thread” label.

A few weeks ago, we expanded our character count to make it easier for people to fit what they’re thinking into a Tweet. But we know people also may want to serialize a longer storyor thought, or provide ongoing commentary on an event or topic. That’s where this update to threads comes in!

You’ve been using threads in creative ways like these for years – the ways and reasons to thread your Tweets are limited only by your imagination.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

https://www.scoop.it/t/social-media-and-its-influence/?&tag=Twitter

As the old saying goes “Every day’s a learning day’.  Social Media including Twitter seems to be always changing things. Whilst introducing new features in the main can be useful, they sometimes pass you by.  For me it was saving a draft of a Tweet. How did I miss that?! This post highlights some tips that I hope you will find useful. For keyboard shortcut fans there are a list of commands towards the end of the post.

Shubham Agarwal

If you're one of the many people who doesn't like the new Twitter interface, I'm one of them, you don't have to use it in order to still enjoy connecting with others through Twitter. First, you can do what I did and switch to using Tweet Deck to view new Tweets, replies, mentions, and to post your own new Tweets. Tweet Deck lets you see Tweets separated into columns of mentions, hashtags, and lists that you've created in Twitter.

Twitter has long positioned itself as the “global town square” in which the world comes together to have a shared conversation across geographic and cultural boundaries. Such was the early vision of last decade's social platforms, that they would bring us together as a society and overcome the ability of elites to dictate the global conversation. Instead, even as Twitter’s CEO touted his company’s global reach in 2013, the platform’s growth had leveled off and over the half-decade since, Twitter has shrunk almost in half, shed its vaunted geotagged resolution, centralized around an ever-older set of elite accounts and transitioned from a place to hear from the world to a place to retweet from afar. What does this mean for the future of the global town square?

The great dream of social media was that it would give everyone a voice. From heads of state to ordinary citizens, everyone, no matter where they lived, what they looked like, what their background or place in society was, would be equal. Most importantly, these social platforms would be free to publish to and consume and would not preference the wealthy and powerful over the traditionally disenfranchised.

Elites would no longer control the global conversation. We would finally have our long-elusive vision of communicative democracy.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

https://www.scoop.it/t/social-media-and-its-influence/?&tag=Twitter

Ready to start off the 2018-2019 school year with a Professional Learning Network (PLN) of highly recommended educators from around the world? Crowd-sourced and set to go, we’ve curated a list of highly recommended educators to follow as shared by educators just like you! In a matter of 60 minutes this past week in the #whatisschool Twitter chat, we asked classroom teachers, administrators, tech coaches, librarians, and more to share individuals that positively influence and inform practice and that make a difference in education through their work and support within our PLN.

If you want to be a successful digital marketer, then you should be aware of the latest updates related to social media. Being one of the most widely used social media platforms out there, Twitter keeps on redefining itself. A while back, it announced the latest update regarding the 280 character limit for tweets. The update was certainly a big relief to many as almost all the marketers used to struggle with the previous 140 character limit.

Now, you can easily level up your social media marketing game on Twitter and reach out to a wider audience for sure. To make things easier for you, I have come up with some expert suggestions that will help you make the most of the Twitter’s latest update.

Details of Twitter’s new update (in a nutshell)
For almost a year now, there have been speculations about the Twitter’s new character limit. It was in the last quarter of 2017 when Twitter finally announced the 280-character update for posting tweets. For languages except Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, Twitter has increased the character limit for tweets from 140 to 280 characters. The attached photos, GIFs, polls, etc. won’t be counted as characters. Though, if you will include a URL, then it will increase the character count. Therefore, it is still recommended to use a URL shortening service while including website links in tweets.

12 ways to make the most of Twitter’s new update
Now when you can tweet in 280 characters, you don’t need to double-check every word you write. Furthermore, it can help you answer customer queries or explain a product to your audience. Here are some interesting ways to use Twitter’s new update.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=press

Embedding in Google Sites has evolved within the past few months to allow full websites displays as well as embedding media feeds such as your Twitter. Here are a few steps on getting your Twitter feed embedded on your new Google Site! Step 1: Accessing your Twitter Settings Within Twitter locate your profile image and…