It was August 26, 2009. That evening I receive a phone call from someone in Japan looking to create free online math and science courses on mobile devices for youth in India using existing shared online video. The following day, I get an email from a colleague at a university in Canada who had just read my new book, The World Is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education. Many points made in the book seemed to resonate with him except for my advocacy of YouTube videos in teaching. Like most faculty members, he was very reluctant to show the YouTube homepage to his class because an offensive video might be featured.

If you are part of a social network, you may have already had this experience: a current or former student attempts to "friend" you online. Whether you keep a professional profile or offer a more casual representation of yourself online, keep the following teaching concerns in mind.

Social presence, “the degree to which a medium is perceived as representing the presence of communication participants,” is an important factor in students’ learning and satisfaction. With online learning reaching across cultures, Judy Teng, educational technologist at the College of Saint Rose, studied how ethnicity affects student perceptions of social presence.

Results are in from the Faculty Focus survey on Twitter usage and trends among college faculty. The survey of approximately 2,000 higher education professionals found that nearly one-third (30.7 percent) of the 1,958 respondents say they use Twitter in some capacity. More than half, (56.4 percent) say they’ve never used Twitter.

Academic advisers, be they professionals who do advising full-time or faculty, can do much to enhance a student’s experience in college. But students never benefit unless they seek out advisers. In surveys, students acknowledge the importance of receiving advice, but many do not receive it—34 percent in one survey reported that never during their academic careers had they met with an adviser. As seniors, only 19 percent reported that they had met three or more times with an adviser.

A recent informal poll conducted by Magna Publications asked, “Would you like to see student affairs work more closely with academic affairs on your campus? What is preventing—or encouraging—collaboration on your campus?”

In the world of grant writing there are two ways to begin: 1.) You can develop an idea that will solve a critical problem or concern on your campus and then look for an agency or other funding source with a similar vision; or 2.) You can research funding sources to see who has money to spend and use the RFP as inspiration to bring about change.

When faculty members receive phone calls from parents about their children’s academic work, the response is often, “Our contract is with the students, not the parents,” says Marjorie Savage, parent program director at the University of Minnesota.

To the harshest critics, today’s students would rather text than talk; prefer social networking sites to socializing with the person sitting next to them; and figure if it can’t be downloaded to their iPod, it’s not worth their time.