The positive impact of social networking sites on society.

Social networking is now a massive part of our lives, it is difficult for the society to function without social media. Decades ago it was impossible to connect with people, it could take several months for letters to get to family and friends who resides miles away. But today the use of digital technology like mobile phones has changed the society. We get so busy with work and family obligations that we hardly have time to chat on the phone. Social media like Facebook, twitter has made it much easier to interact with friends it takes less than 30 seconds to send a brief  message and reaches friends in no time. Social networking sites have made the world a smaller place. Read more on

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/positive-impact-social-networking-sites-society-opinion/

Benefits and challenges of social media

Social media has increased the growth of business relationships with customers, companies do benefit from social media by engaging in market research, this enables feedback from customers thereby improving on their products. Social media sites also connect companies to their customers and potential customer. Though social media has tremendously improved businesses, it also has its challenges. Companies face challenges like security; sharing too much information online could have negative impact on the company. Privacy is also an issue; companies are exposed to hackers who could have access to both customers and business information. They are also faced with complains by unhappy customers, this could have detrimental effect on the company's reputation. Read more

http://www.canadabusiness.ca/eng/page/2655/

Risks and Challenges of Social Media

Risks and Challenges of Social Media
This article talks about the risk of social media in healthcare field. Privacy is a key factor in healthcare, we all have to be cautious of information we share on social media sites particularly medical practitioners, whatever is posted on open sites is publicly available. Confidentiality is important in healthcare, nurses don't have the right to share patients information with anyone without the patient's consent. An incident happened in Wisconsin, two nurses were terminated from their positions for taking pictures of a patient's X-ray showing the patient's body parts. One of the nurses actually posted this photo on her Facebook page.
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/731336_4

Copetitive educational mobile apps in the future for Africa.

The Co-Creation Hub (CCHUB) is a company with aims to capture the attention of Nigerian youths through social media. Unfortunately, the country has seen a decline in the status of the post-secondary education in the country and this company hopes to boost the status by releasing a new application called EIFKO, which is a mobile application which generates quizzes to be completed by students and offers students a chance to share their scores, adding an element of competition among peers. Along, in its trial run in Nigeria, if successful the company wishes to also release the application to other West African nations.

For the full article place click here

Penn States trials social media integration for the future

This article by Daniel George and Cheryl Dellasega, explains the results of their project which aimed to integrate social media tools into the curriculum of two electives offered to 4th year students at Penn State College. The authors carried out their project by using a large variety of social media, including Twitter, YouTube and Flickr .The results of their project were that students do in fact highly favour learning through social media and, interestingly named a few strengths and weaknesses named on previous blogs (ie. concerns about privacy and lack of facility with technology and  real time communication , connecting with medical experts and collaborative opportunities). The authors concluded that social media can bring about many learning opportunities however educational facilities must be willing to put forth the man power and resources to integrate social media into their curriculum.

For the full research article, click here

FOAM or "free open access meducation"

This article exposes the idea of a single form of media that anyone across the world may access for free. Unfortunately, problems stated with this were, once again similar to those listed in past blogs where social media was used in medicine, privacy, lack of staff, unwillingness if staff and, newly, lack of peer reviewed content. The idea that this article brought forth was FOAM or "free open access meducation". the basic idea of FOAM was to create a form a media where anyone, anywhere can access medical advise, the only problem was, as mention, lack of peer reviewed content, which is essential in the medical world. Due to that many medical educators shyyed away from using a site where essentially, anyone can put anything. Fortunately, this concept is still in its trial phases and will be subject to change and improvement which may change the mind of many medical educators in the future, making FOAM something to look out for in the upcomming years.

For complete information on FOAM, click here

Education and Social Networking

The article here researched that 94 percent used the internet, 82 percent go online at home and 77 percent had a profile on a social networking site. When asked what they learn from using social networking sites, the students listed technology skills as the top lesson, followed by creativity, being open to new or diverse views and communication skills. Students are reported that they checked networking sites from home and other places. Participation in educational activities may have increased both at home and schools if students would have had greater exposure  and access to social media. For example, Facebook can be used to discuss school topics or incorporating Twitter  for projects or parties.