The end of summer is nearing for many. The only indicator is the start date of classes bearing down upon us; Lord knows it’s not the weather. If your first day of class is coming up, take a minute to think through what you’d like your semester, year, or entire college experience to look like and maybe heed the advice of those of us who made enough mistakes to offer you a few useful tips.

1. Don’t write off the first day of class as “pass out the syllabus day.” Many of us assumed it was a pointless day that guaranteed early release and that’s all we focused on. Instead, listen closely, ask questions, and if needed, go directly to the registrar’s after class and drop it while it’s still refundable.

If it’s early in your college career, you can replace that class with another credit – one that’s worth your time, one that you’ll care more about. Those classes are expensive and time consuming; if you don’t jive well with the professor or care enough about the content, find a class that better suits you. Read the rest of this entry »

A new video is gaining a lot of attention on YouTube. The video, called “Facebook Parenting: For the troubled teen,” features a dad who is quite upset with something his daughter posted to Facebook.

In the video, the father, Tommy, reads a letter that his daughter, Hannah, posted to Facebook a few days ago. In the letter, Hannah rants about all of the chores her parents ask her to do…and by rant, I do mean rant. The video drags along for the first six minutes as Tommy reads the letter and expresses how upset he is about what Hannah wrote.

To be fair to Tommy, Hannah was very disrespectful towards her parents and used language that is not acceptable. Many kids today do feel too entitled and it does not make sense that a child should be paid because she is asked to help her family. I agree with almost everything Tommy says up until about the seventh-minute of the film. However, this is when things get a little too crazy for me.

At this time, Tommy gets out of his chair, shows us Hannah’s laptop, and proceeds to put nine bullets in the laptop from his shotgun. This seems like a bit of an over-reaction to me. If Tommy wanted to take her computer away from her and sell it, I’d be perfectly okay with that. However, he is acting immaturely and his actions are not any better than what Hannah wrote on Facebook. Instead, I think Tommy should have reacted in a more mature way by setting Hannah down, telling her what she did was hurtful and disrespectful, and then punishing her by taking away her computer and grounding her. By destroying her computer, he is reacting in a childish way that is just going to perpetuate the battle that is going on between them.

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Most students have a Facebook account. If not a Facebook account, they probably have some other form of social media that they use to stay connected with their friends, follow trends, and network themselves.

However, would you be surprised if 100 percent of U.S. schools that were polled say they are also using social media to do the same things? Well, according to a recent study conducted at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, you shouldn’t be surprised at all because this is completely true.

“Prospective students, parents, current students, alumni – one common area in which they are all present in one or another is on Facebook,” said Kevin Morrow, the executive director of public affairs at Syracuse University. This explains why 98 percent of the universities surveyed said they have a presence on this social media website.

So, most schools are using social media to reach a large audience. But the ways they are using it vary by school and by purpose.

“The book hasn’t been written [on how to use social media],” said Michael Kaltenmark, director of web marketing and communications at Butler University. “We’re still figuring it out on a daily basis.”

So how are schools using social media? Hint, they are not just posting pictures from last weekend’s football game. Here are the top seven ways they are connecting with their “fans” on a daily basis:

1. Read the rest of this entry »

Falling in love is great! There are so many great moments: your first kiss, the first time you introduce him/her to your friends, the first time you meet his/her parents, and the moment when you get a Facebook notification that he/she wants you to confirm your relationship.

Sadly though, most relationships do come to an end at some time. And then come the difficult questions: Should you untag yourself from every picture of the two of you? Should you unfriend him/her? Is it okay to break up with him/her by changing your relationship status to single without telling him/her first? Welcome to the drama that is Facebook relationships.

Luckily, 200 Boston teens recently got together to discuss this sticky subject during a “healthy breakups” one-day conference that was sponsored by the Boston Public Health Commission.

“No one talks to young people about this aspect of relationships,” said one of the conference organizers, Nicole Daley. “We’re here to change that.”

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Last year, the popular social media app foursquare announced plans to officially partner with more than 20 universities across the nation to help students explore their college campuses and learn about their school’s traditions. The program was a huge success and now than 10 million users joined in on the fun. Now foursquare is making the program even bigger and better with a new and improved version called Universities 2.0.

Universities 2.0 will have all of the fun features that the original foursquare for universities had, such as the ability to check in at various locations on campus, learn about traditions and folklore, and see what your friends thought about various things related to your campus. However, Universities 2.0 will have something that the original program did not have: badges. These badges will represent the schools on foursquare and also could be used on college campuses to advertise that the campus is a foursquare-friendly zone.

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High school students use the least amount of words to send text messages. BTW (by the way,) IDK ( I don’t know,) or TTYL (talk to you later) are just a few abbreviated phrases text speakers use to get their text message across.

Finding out ways to communicate by using as little words as possible is an efficient way to communicate with buds. However, teachers are finding out that this chat-room lingo is making its way into the classroom.

“I think that students don’t even realize that they’re doing it,” said Allie Sakowicz, a senior at Maine South High School in Park Ridge, Ill. “When we’re using all this social media we’re not thinking about spelling words right, so naturally that’s going to translate into the classroom.”

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Days after the announcement that Time Magazine named Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg their prestigious, notable and coveted “Person of the Year,” reports have arisen that Generation Y, the generation of Mark Zuckerberg, uses his program twice as much as they watch television and/or read local or national newspapers.

Generation Y is the demographic that is typically described as Americans born between 1975 and 2000 with a heavier statistical focus on the birth rates of 1982 through 1995. Also commonly known as the Echo Boomers, Millennial Generation, Millennials, Generation Net and Generation Next, a large majority of Generation Y are children born of the previous generation known as the baby boomers.

The report also showed that 81% of Generation Y users log into their Facebook accounts daily to check up on their friends, news, brands they “like”, upload pictures and videos, RSVP to events and for general communication purposes.

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The Team at YourCampus360 are New York City-based experts in higher education marketing technology. The company leads the industry in creating virtual experiences that connect schools with prospective students across all of the most popular platforms: EDU websites, mobile devices, Facebook, YouTube, and more.

Higher education institutions have always been trailblazers of interactivity in marketing. In fact – yes, it’s true – colleges and universities adopted social media (Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter) into their existing marketing plans at an even faster rate than most traditional Fortune 500 and Inc. 500 companies. Marketing to teens, theirs is a perpetually changing landscape. So what’s new on the scene?

It should come as no surprise that these places of learning are filled with great learners, researching, testing and adapting as each new generation’s needs and expectations change. With so many college-bound high school students researching colleges online, from their laptop, their iPad, their smartphone, schools are learning to meet prospective students where they tend to spend most of their time, and integrate this message across platforms. Interactive maps, virtual campus tours, high quality video, and mobile and Facebook applications have become the new hot higher education marketing tools.
But it’s also easy to get too bogged down in the details: whether Android is beating Apple this week; whether teens care about Twitter; which gadgets are giving students online access in a newer, sleeker skin. It’s not that the details are disposable…it’s just that they’re more malleable than you might think.

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Edu in Review has reported previously about students being rewarded or bribed with money for exceptional grades, and even social media programs that offer similar themed programs, but now half a world away comes a different reward: plastic surgery.

Teenagers have long coveted plastic surgery across the world. Unhappy with their physical appearance and perhaps the pressures and self esteem troubles often associated with the years of a developing adolescence, teenage surgeries account for a substantial number of procedures in today’s culture.

As a result of this, many South Korean parents have chosen to reward good grades, above average standardized test scoring, college admission acceptance or even college or high school completion, with their student’s desired plastic surgery procedure.

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The very technology that was developed to bring us closer together is posing some serious side effects. For years now, inquiring minds throughout the world have asked whether social media is creating socially-stunted youth. Has the internet and text messaging bred a generation of people who would prefer to avoid one-on-one social situations and conversations? Has the age of convenience caused our obesity rates to skyrocket? Are young adults losing their sense of self, panicking when they don’t have constant contact with their friends? Now we’re forced to ask another question: Is technology snatching precious hours of sleep from our kids?

Why, yes it is, says researchers from the JFK Medical Center. It turns out that teens, on average, are texting 34 times each night. This texting-activity takes place in the middle of the night, after the teens have gone to sleep. Teenagers, sleeping with their cell phones under their pillow or on their nightstands, are neglecting to consider that this late-night texting is interrupting their sleep cycles. I wonder how many of them know that insufficient amounts and poor quality of sleep can cause: Read the rest of this entry »