Last year, I wrote a defense of high school senioritis as a useful break from academic drudgery. This made me, briefly, a hero to teenagers across the country. Then I returned to my usual theme that classes leading up to that last semester of the senior year should still be tougher, not easier, with less time for play, not more.

I was stuck on the fact that teenagers spend on average two hours a day watching television, compared with less than an hour a day doing homework. When Washington area parents or students complained about school stress, I acknowledged that many of them had a point in this affluent region full of kids who dream of the Ivy League. But elsewhere, the majority of high school students were not studying much at all. As a consequence, reading and math scores for 17-year-olds had seen little improvement in a generation.

Yet it is spring again, a good time to ponder the balance of hard work and fun throughout high school. In last year’s piece, I wrote: “High-octane students play it safe. Textbook pages are still memorized. Old exams are mastered. Anything less than a perfect score is cause for concern. Such students need to discover that that is not the way creative and productive work is done in college, or in life. The important part of the learning process is not pounding in the material but thinking it over, talking about it, coming up with new and intriguing ways of connecting it to the rest of the world.”

Coaching for standardized college admission tests yields relatively small average gains of about 30 points overall, according to a study released today that nevertheless urges students to prepare, because even a slight improvement can boost their chances of getting into some schools.

The report, commissioned by the nonprofit National Association for College Admission Counseling in Arlington, also urges schools to be cautious about using the SAT and the ACT — the most widely accepted college entrance exams — to “make fine-grained distinctions between applicants.”

“This is important because a 20-point . . . difference between two college applicants could be explained by measurement error, differential access to coaching or both,” the report said. “It is strongly recommended that admissions counselors receive training that emphasizes this point.”

Source: latimes.com

By: Mark Milian

The mastermind behind Twitter isn’t denying that his website has a problem keeping new users. The issue came up in an April report from Nielsen saying 60% of Twitter neophytes don’t come back after the first month.

Twitter is brainstorming ways to improve the service so newbies get hooked right away, said site [...]

Source: nytimes.com

By: Marshall Kirkpatrick

Given how much user activity goes on every day on Facebook, the company has to be working on some kinds of recommendation technologies. Charming invisible robots that say, “If you like this, then you’ll like that.” Full-time Facebook watcher Nick O’Neil thought he spotted one in the wild this morning, but his [...]

Source: nytimes.com

By: Claire Cain Miller

In a new ad campaign, Starbucks wants to tell its message to a new generation of coffee drinkers and then recruit them to retell the story online.

The coffeehouse chain is putting up new advertising posters in six major cities. To further spread its message, it is trying to harness the [...]

The Art of Twitterature Means Making 140 Characters Count

Source: washingtonpost.com

By: Monica Hesse

The whole world is on Twitter. Yawn.

Tweets, people will tell you, rot our brains. They ruin our attention spans, inflate our egos. Maureen Dowd would rather be eaten alive by ants than be Twittering, or so she said in a recent column.

So let’s keep [...]

Alongside the explosive growth of online video over the last six years, time spent on social networks surpassed that for e-mail for the first time in February, signaling a paradigm shift in consumer engagement with the Internet.

According to a report released in April by Nielsen, Internet use for “short-tail” sites with large audience reach has evolved since 2003. The change is from portal-oriented sites, like shopping directories and Internet tools like Microsoft Passport, to social networks, YouTube and providers of niche content.

Brian Green’s experience with not-so-secret questions began when he logged on to his World of Warcraft account in March of this year and found all of his characters in their underwear. Someone had stolen the account and sold off all of his virtual equipment.

“My first thought was that I might have a keylogger on my computer,” Green wrote in a description of the event. Yet his own research into the incident–and the attacker’s ability to change his account passwords multiple times–led Green, who is himself a game designer, to a different conclusion: “My ’secret question’ has an all-too-common answer . . . This wasn’t something I considered when I filled it out way back when.”

The tears shed by a schoolmate reminded McClintock High School sophomore Austin Arredondo that words can pack a punch, even when wielded by a faceless author whose pen is a keyboard and delivery service is the Internet.

Earlier this year, Austin, 15, said he heard classmates whispering about an unfounded rumor placed on a social media Web site. The rumor had made the rounds by the next day, when he saw the female subject of the gossip crying at school.

Internet technology and an increasingly computer-savvy generation has fueled the popularity of sites such as MySpace and Facebook, not to mention increased use of older, more-traditional communication methods like text messaging and e-mail. OAS_AD(’ArticleFlex_1′)

Austin said he has never seen or been the target of online threats, but realizes how the tool could make intimidating others easier.

After much hesitation, I finally set up a Facebook account.

So I wouldn’t be seen as a dinosaur, I’ve also registered on Twitter.com. I haven’t been tweeting much, but I’m now part of the throng of folks socializing with their keyboards.

Like many other columnists, I share personal stories to make a point. However, on the social networks I’ve limited my communication to my professional persona. For example, I don’t list my date of birth. Heck, my kids are not even sure how old I am. I’ve been 29 for many years. If I want my friends to know where I’m vacationing, I’ll call them. Ditto on my dinner plans.

My fans or critics will just have to contend with professional conversation because, in a nutshell, I’m paranoid. And you should be too if you’re gabbing about your life on various online social networks. Like a pickpocket working a crowded public venue, cyber thieves may be collecting information that makes victimizing you so much easier with all the personal data you provide.