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Tag Archives: Social media
You won’t believe these words trending for #teens
Guess what’s trending for #teens?
I discovered a helpful tool for twitter, a free site called hashtagify.me that lets you search trending hashtags.
You can easily search any hashtag and you’ll get instant results for the top ten hashtags words related to that word.
Easy enough.
So, I put in #teens in the search bar and the terms come up in a graphic resembling typical mind map visuals.
In addition, you can hover over each word to determine how popular the term is.
Do you want to take a guess what words came up?
#School? #Jobs? #Internships? #College? #Scholarships?
No on all counts.
Here’s the list in order of popularity from highest to lowest. Caution given before proceeding…
- porn
- sex
- sexy
- xxx
- teen
- girls
- tits
- hardcore
- freeporn
- parenting
Sure, the hashtag search is a very basic measure of who is searching for what, but when talking about teens being on twitter, it might be interesting to note what they’re searching for.
So, care to conclude anything based on these results?
Certainly, the list seems to represent more boys’ interests than girls. And those interests fall pretty much in a limited area related to hormones.
That being said, it’s interesting that #parenting made to the list.
Go parents! for giving the list a reality check and being concerned about your #teens!
Related articles
- 4 Secrets for Picking Effective Hashtags (business2community.com)
- Hashtag: Where Did This #phenomenon Begin and Why Do We #love it (but only on Twitter)? (lifehack.org)
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Teens: Watch Your Social Media Presence
twitter logo map 09 (Photo credit: The Next Web)
This advice is not a recommendation from a public relations firm, or from a head hunter, or from a corporate policy book on social media. Nor was it taken from a how-to book on political life.
None of those sources would be surprising.
The quote above is from a sign posted in a Minnesota high school locker room in response to the rampant posting of students taking part in illegal activities online.
Some students, turning against friends, are giving coaches and teachers pictures of them in ‘compromising’ situations at drinking parties and participating in other illegal activities.
Sports scholarships have been pulled based on information coaches glean on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
In a previous post, I wrote that teens’ should make sure their online profiles are clean and scrubbed when applying to college. As with other things, everything moves down a bit, and what teens do in high school is not exempt from a close look by interested parties.
Opportunities may be in jeopardy based on discoveries online. Scholarships, nominations, recommendations…..all come into play mostly in the junior year of high school, but since online identities don’t disappear, it’s never too early to start thinking about this issue.
We know that checking someone out online is very tempting and all too easy.
So, for all the teens out there: think about who you are online. Does it match who you want to be? What will you need to do to make the image you want equal to the one you have? Would you feel comfortable if a scholarship committee saw your posts? Think about the quote at the beginning of this post.
To Parents: The advice above is worth sharing with your teen as part of a frank conversation about public and private identity, social media privacy settings, limit setting, trust and more.
Related articles
- Facebook Still Reigns Supreme With Teens, But Social Media Interest Dwindling (techcrunch.com)
- Website helps teens remove private photos from internet (updatednews.ca)
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Israeli teens use cell phones in class: What we can learn
Cell phones: not an opt-out tool for most teeens
According to a recent University of Haifa poll, over 94% of Israeli High School students use social networks in class (via cell phones). Mostly, they’re not checking facts, but Facebook profiles.
This came to my inbox today, a day after I wrote a blog from a cell phone’s point of view.
In that blog, I mentioned that Jewish teens may not be aware of the rich Jewish resources available for the taking from such a small device. I also referred to the fact that teachers sometimes take away cell phones all together.
I was once a proponent of this.
I thought that (much like the practice at summer camps of instituting a ‘cell phone fast’ for campers to increase the ‘here and now’ opportunities) keeping phones out of the class increased class connections between students and teacher.
I don’t think in those black and white terms any more.
What I believe now, is that like any good educational tool, media needs to be mediated.
In this light, it’s particularly interesting to examine the findings of the poll, which states that the more permissive a teacher is, the less that cell phones will be used in class.
Interesting, no?
Conversely, the study results also showed that the more authoritarian the teacher–those with a more rigid approach, the more students will use cell phones in class.
So, what are the boundaries that teachers should put in place? What are the school’s policies that should not be broken, but bent to advance the curriculum? These are things that need to be thought through before the school year. From a student’s point of view.
So, this what I learned, none of which strikes me as so illuminating, but for me, the benefits were a game changer:
1. It is very difficult to separate teens from their phones, as some teens see it as their lifeline.
2. Teachers need to figure out ways of using the phones as tools, to expand teen’s horizons about the subject area.
3. The way in which this is handled, can be crucial when building community in the class, and respect from students.
Photo credit: wikipedia
Related articles
- A Q & A : with a Jewish teen’s cell phone (ruthschapira.wordpress.com)
- Va. school district encourages cell phone use in class (wtvr.com)
- Cell Phone Addiction May Be Contagious (fox8.com)
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Who are you on the web? If you’re applying to college, you should know
Should colleges check you out on Facebook?
For Teens, Their Parents, and Jewish Educators:
An article in Education Week noted what most of us already know: college admissions officers are not clueless when it comes to checking up on potential applicants.
There is an increase in the number of admissions officers who are digging deeper into social media as a way to gain a more rounded profile of student applicants. Kaplan Test Prep noted that this activity has more than quadrupled.
“Most kids have no idea how important it is that their profile[s] online — Twitter, Facebook, other social media spaces — need to be appropriate for the admissions process,” said Dean Skarlis, president of The College Advisor of New York. “Most kids don’t even realize what’s appropriate and what’s not because they’re 16, 17 and their idea of what might be appropriate is very different than that of a college admissions person.”
Unfortunately, social media users are experiencing less control of what content gets posted.
Appear in a picture, and your ability to remove it may be very limited.
How can you go about cleaning up your act?
Here are three really quick things to do now:
1. Conduct a search on yourself. Enter your name into various search engines and social media platforms to see what comes up.
2. Make sure your account is ‘clean’: free of postings that are inappropriate (get advice as to what inappropriate).
3. Do a search of your friend’s accounts, there may be content there that you would want removed.
4. Go into settings, and redo your privacy preferences so only your friends can see your posts..
Why is this post written for Parents, teens, and Jewish educators? As Jewish educators, we can use our setting to our advantage. Most of us meet with students in a trusting and casual environment. In those settings we have a unique opportunity to open discussions with our students that may rarely take place elsewhere. Moreover, helping students be more aware of the consequences of their actions is exactly within our mission.
Photo credit: Wikipedia
Related articles
- Students shouldn’t air their “digital dirty laundry” as more college admissions officers are looking (blogs.ajc.com)
- College Bound? Study Finds More Admissions Officers Reviewing Applicants’ Facebook, Social Media Profiles (losangeles.cbslocal.com)
- Social Media Can Hurt Your College Bid (abcnews.go.com)
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World-Wide WordPress
Why didn’t you tell me that people in Malaysia read your blog?
That’s what someone recently said to me who was poopooing the very idea of a blog or that anyone might be interested in what I have to say about such a niche group like Jewish teenagers.
(Come to think of it, would those readers know the word poopoo? For those in Malaysia, it means to mildly deprecate or dismiss something as not important).
So you can imagine how funny it is when I check my ‘stats’ on WordPress to see a map of the world (similar to the one above) with readers distributed in far-flung countries that don’t even seem to have a Jewish population at all, let alone Jewish teens.
This is very funny to me. Talk about reach.
But really, this is hard to fathom.
I’ve written before about how Jewish teens enrolled in Jewish education after the typical age of drop-off (bar/bat mitzvah) are off the Jewish communal radar.
They seem to be the “forgotten few” — for foundations seem to favor those teens that attend summer camps or day schools.
I mean, where are these statistics coming from? Are these actual readers? Or are wires crossed somewhere?
I’m still giddy at the idea that someone out there reads this blog and the issues I care about.
Recently, I ran into someone who I haven’t been in touch with for quite some time and she nonchalantly said, “Oh, I know what you’re up to, I read your blog.” (really? and you don’t comment? or follow?)
Where are your readers? Is this surprising to you too?
Related articles
- Jewish Teens:The Young and (thankfully) Restless (ruthschapira.wordpress.com)
- Jewish Teens: Lost? (ruthschapira.wordpress.com)
- Jewish Teens Reinvent the Synagogue (ruthschapira.wordpress.com)
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The Twitter Connection
Image via Wikipedia
The world-wide web (wow, I actually enjoy writing those words as it makes me focus on this mini miracle machine that allows me to enter that world through this blog) was once a static platform. Interactivity was minimal.
Now, web 2.0 is for the prosumer, and is an active-oriented, creative and interactive platform where even the smallest voice gets heard.
So how did the concept of a Twitter “Follow” ever stick?
I’m surely not the first person to think or write about this. I haven’t googled this to find the endless number of blogs about this topic, but for me, this has become an issue when I try to acknowledge people who are (choke) following me.
My aversion to this word is in direct disproportion to how I feel about the platform itself, which exists on people following other people.
I am a twitter follower. I’ve been on twitter since March and have learned so much from so many well-respected and talented educators who constitute my PLN. I’ve learned about resources, websites, tools and received ideas and encouragement.
Hashtags, chats, bitly, tweetdeck, hootsuite, twuffer, are tools that I could not do without. RT’s, MT’s, HT’s are de-mystified as I go about my tweeting.
Why then, do I literally crunch up my shoulders and cringe when I check my account to see who my “Followers” are?
Here’s my dilemma: I certainly ‘Follow’ people on Twitter. Yet when I find out that someone has ‘followed’ me I just can’t do what others have done.
I can’t thank them for “following” me–it feels absurd and I just can’t get the word out. So, instead I thank them for connecting.
So much more comfortable. So much more web 2.0.
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