2.

) Academics
A lot of criticism has been leveled at social media and the effect it has
on the way students process and retain information, as well as how
distracting it can be. {07161821} However, social media offers plenty
of opportunities for learning and interactivity, and if you take a
moment to think about it, its not too hard to see how students benefit
from using social media. As younger generations use such technology
in the classroom, they remake the educational landscape.
Students are experiencing the world through more than just books and
assignments; they are learning and adapting to the world using a
relatively new form of communication. In a world where connections
are important, graduates are coming into the workplace with a lot to
offer. But what exactly are they learning?
Connections
Social media networks are designed for the purpose of communal
connections. Todays students are accessing Facebook, Twitter and
even Instagram to connect and share with those around them. One of
the most interesting things about social media is that users can
interact and engage with each other solely through a Web presence,
perhaps never even meeting in person.

Knowledge
Social media users share among themselves day in and day out, giving
and receiving information at rapid speeds. This information is more
than funny cat videos; they share views and opinions; tips, tricks, and
even DIY projects; and, among students, helpful information for
classes. Their ability to assess, analyze, retain and share information is
skyrocketing and they often dont even realize theyre developing
these skills. only people born before the Internet was invented are
likely to understand the magnitude of this new style of communication.
Our students have become prone to frequent fluctuations in mood and
self-control. If one of a students friends posted about his or her
present relationship with someone, then other friends are pressed to
do the same thing. Actions that attract more public attention hold more
value, even despite some of them being immoral or illegal. We even
see that many students are worried about their looks, and so they
always try to upload nicer pictures than their friends. A recent survey
has stated that whenever someone uploads a profile picture, it
immediately affects the moods of friends. It often produces stress,
anxiety or fear about their identities as people. Consistently thinking in
this way can sometimes lead to depression.
The system generates a competition to make as many new friends as
possible and the so-called social quotient of a person is decided by
how many friends they have and not on how good-natured and
congenial the person really is. Often, students who are not old enough
to accurately analyze the world like or comment on social or political
issues, and this leads sometimes to serious controversies {06408634}
The negative effects of these social networking sites overweigh the
positive ones. These sites have caused some potential harm to society.
The students become victims of social networks more often than
anyone else. This is because of the reason that when they are studying
or searching their course material online, they get attracted to these
sites to kill the boredom in their study time, diverting their attention
from their work. Other negative side effects of social networking
websites include the following:
 Sub headings
E-Learning
Learning is the process of absorbing information and retaining it with
the goal of increasing skills and abilities in order to achieve goals but
it's more than that. Learning is what we go through when we want to
be equipped for non-specific and unexpected situations and the two
are not mutually exclusive{07179032} while you do learn to do
something specific, you are also inadvertently equipped with the
knowledge and/or skills to face future challenges. In essence, learning
is all about equipping a person to tackle not just today's issues, but
preparing him/her to creatively come up with ways to tackle
tomorrow's issues.
E-learning allows both students and business executives to learn
anywhere and at any time. You can learn from 25 virtually any place
with a computer or mobile device and internet connection, meaning
you can study from home, on vacation or in your break. But e-learning
is more than about convenience and there are fundamental differences
between e-learning in the corporate sector and in education.
E-learning is here to stay. As computer ownership grows across the
globe e-learning becomes increasingly viable and accessible. Internet
connection speeds are increasing, and with that, opportunities for more
multimedia training methods arise. With the immense improvement of
mobile networks in the past few years and the increase in
telecommuting, taking all the awesome features of e-learning on the
road is a reality with smartphones and other portable devices.
Technologies such as social media are also transforming education
constantly. Generally speaking, learning is expensive, takes a long time
and the results can vary. E-learning has been trying for years now to
complement the way we learn to make it more effective and
measurable. The result now being that there are a number of tools that
help create interactive courses, standardize the learning process
and/or inject informal elements to otherwise formal learning processes.
Several e-learning trends give us a view to how e-learning and learning
tools will be shaped in the future:

Micro-learning
Focuses on the design of micro learning activities through micro-steps
in digital media environments, which already is a daily reality for
today's knowledge workers. {07141821} these activities can be
incorporated into a learner's daily routines. Unlike "traditional" e-
learning approaches, micro-learning often tends towards push
technology through push media, which reduces the cognitive load on
the learners. Therefore, the selection of micro-learning objects and also
pace and timing of micro-learning activities are of importance for
didactical designs. Micro-learning is an important paradigm shift that
avoids the need to have separate learning sessions since the learning
process is embedded in the daily routine of the end-user. It is also
perfectly suited for mobile devices where long courses can be overkill.
Gamification
The use of game thinking and game mechanics in a non-game context
to engage users and solve problems. Personalized Learning is the
tailoring of pedagogy, curriculum and learning environments to meet
the needs and aspirations of individual learners. Personalization is
broader than just individualization or differentiation in that it affords
the learner a degree of choice about what is learned, when it is learned
and how it is learned. This may not indicate unlimited choice since
learners will still have targets to be met. However, it may provide
learners the opportunity to learn in ways that suit their individual
learning styles and multiple intelligences.

Digital Libraries
The term Digital Library is used in articles for the first time in the
early 1 990s. Since then research and practice in Digital Libraries has
become standard. Plenty research funding, especially in the United
States and United Kingdom, has made sure that both researchers and
librarians have been actively involved in Digital Libraries projects.
{07118184} Conferences and journals in the topic are thriving. A
search in Google on the exact phrase Digital Libraries returns almost
2 million hits in early 2006. But what has happened in these 1 5 years
since the term first was used, that forced this explosive activity? And
what does the concept Digital Library really mean? Well, to answer
the first question, what happened was that the flow of information got
even worse as the Internet established itself as the number one
channel for exchanging data. The World Wide Web (WWW) and the
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) became the communication tool of
choice and made producing and disseminating data so much easier. In
the early 1 990s the first web-browser appeared, pioneered by Tim
Berners-Lee at CERN. With the web-browser came the capability to use
hyperlinks. In the middle of the 1 990s
Netscape made browsing a possibility for everyone. At the start of the
new millennium we have, at least in the developed countries, enough
bandwidth and connection possibilities, for sending and exchanging
very heavy loads of data.
The backbone of any Digital Library is of course computer
software, hardware and the reliance on high speed networks. Any
Digital Library would rely on components such as local networks with
connections to the Internet; databases with user friendly interfaces for
searching and administrative purposes which can index full text
documents for fast access. The OPACs (Open Public Access
Catalogue) of most libraries are systems that embrace all kinds of
content and functions of the organization in one single system. This is
not necessarily true for the Digital Library that most likely is a
collection of different systems and resources connected through a
network and searched and reached by a web-interface Building the
Collection {06408634}
One of the major issues of Digital Libraries at the moment is the
question of creating a digital collection with some sort of scope and
critical mass. This is especially true when it comes to offering full-text
records. Building the collection usually means four things:
Acquiring original digital works created by original authors. This
could be articles, books, conference proceedings, pictures etc.
Converting paper originals into digital format.
 Purchasing or using free external material by either incorporating
the material, such as electronic books and journals, or creating
pointers to external websites.
Dealing with rights management issues, such as keeping track of
copyright of the digital material, identifying and authenticating
users and their access to the material.

Digital Library types and content

The Digital Library community is clearly increasing in number and
volume as more and more people get connected to high speed internet
connections, more people get involved in distance learning, more
people get used to online communication, governments, institutions
and commercial companies realize the potential in digital deliveries.
Developments like these have prepared the ground for a large number
of different types of Digital Libraries throughout the world. {06756369
It is difficult to classify a phenomenon with a definition still under
debate but for the purpose of this short introduction I would like to
group Digital Libraries into 5 types and give a few examples of each:
Digital Libraries at scientific societies or organizations
Digital Libraries at Commercial publishers
Digital Libraries at National Libraries
Digital Libraries at Universities
Digital Libraries at Museums and other cultural heritage
organizations

Research work
Social network has played a very major role in research work as the
rapid rise in popularity of online social networking has been followed
by a slew of services aimed at an academic audience. This project
sought to explore network structure in these sites, and to explore
trends in network structure by surveying participants about their use of
sites and motivations for making connections. Social network analysis
revealed that discipline was influential in defining community
structure, while academic seniority was linked to the position of nodes
within the network.
Social network analysis (SNA) is well suited to the research questions
as it allows new insights to be gained by visualising complex networks
(Borgatti, et al., 2009; Edwards, 2010). However, as the research
questions are not only concerned with network structure, {07492741}
but also with gaining an understanding of the processes which led to
their creation, a mixed methods SNA approach was used (Edwards,
2010). Mixed methods SNA is a research methodology based on
traditional SNA, acknowledging the benefits but also limitations in
approaching social phenomena by examining network structure
without investigating the motivations of individuals or social processes
which created the network. As such, this approach combines SNA with
other qualitative or quantitative research methods to gain a fuller
understanding. {07463764}
Three of the largest academic SNS were chosen for inclusion in the
study; Academia.edu, Mendeley and Zotero (Figure 1). Although the
number of users was not available for Zotero, it was included as its
Web ranking (28,505) was high enough to suggest it would be part of
the popular, highly ranked cluster. {07048169} ResearchGate.net is also
part of the cluster but its terms of service prevented data collection.
The site was approached to take part in the study, but declined. At
each of the three academic SNS, profiles were selected for inclusion on
the basis of being affiliated with the U.K. Open University (OU). This
offered the opportunity to explore a similar network across three
different sites, and the possibility to conduct follow-up research with
participants while keeping the amount of data practical for analysis.
The networks sampled from each sit are summarized in Table 1.
 Group Discussion
Many social networking sites incorporate an instant messaging feature,
which lets people exchange information in real-time via a chat. This is
a great feature for teachers to use to facilitate classroom
discussions because it lets them utilize the vast store of information
available on the Web. {06542243} this can be a great time saver for
the teacher - since students no longer need to visit a library to conduct
research- and it can be a great way to engage distracted learners.
School is not the only setting where this type of real-time information
sharing can be beneficial. Social networking can provide a tool for
managers to utilize in team meetings, for conference organizers to use
to update attendees and for business people to use as a means of
interacting with clients or prospects. Some leaders are going so far as
to include Tweets or other social media updates during presentations.
This approach can make events more interactive and help the
presenter reach a larger audience.
Web-based learning has made learning content much more freely and
instantaneously available to students who can download course notes and
readings with a single mouse click. Facebook is one of many Web 2.0 tools
wikis, delicious, YouTube, podcasts that are listed as having potential
applications for teaching and learning. Moreover, it has been argued that the
current generation of youth, often described as Net Genres or Digital Natives,
may be resistant to traditional methods of teaching and learning.