NETUCATION Blog

Blog

  • SA school violence inbred: study

    Security fences and metal detectors will not end violence in schools because such violence is often inbred, a study on the issue revealed on Wednesday.

    “Schools in some provinces are putting up security fences and security lighting… to try and stop people from coming into schools… It is not going to be enough,” executive director of the Centre for Justice and Crime Prevention (CJCP), Patrick Burton, said in Johannesburg.

    “One of the key factors is that… classrooms are the primary site where most of the violence occurs… Violence is usually perpetrated by a classmate.”

    He was speaking at the release of the centre’s study on violence in South African schools conducted in the 12 months between August 2011 and August 2012. The centre first conducted the study in 2008.

    The study found one in five secondary school pupils had experienced some form of violence at school.

    A total of 121 high schools across the country were randomly selected and 5939 children, 121 principals and 239 teachers were surveyed. The study focused on four specific types of violence — threats of violence, assault, sexual assault, and robbery.

    Director of the Centre for Child Law at the University of Pretoria, Prof Ann Skelton, said pupils were entitled to feel safe at schools.

    “We need to ensure that our classrooms are safe… it can only be done once the person in charge takes responsibility,” Skelton said.

    She said a United Nations Children’s Fund study showed violence in a society contributed to violence in schools.

    Burton said government should find a solution for crime prevention. A national framework was needed to give pupils a voice to say where at school they felt unsafe and to provide a reporting mechanism.

    Random searches should be conducted in schools, Burton said.

    “Somebody has to take responsibility for what is happening in schools.”

    Schools should be embedded within a community because children exposed to violence were more likely to become violent, Burton said.

    Click here to read the full article

    source:  Times LIVE / Sapa

     

  • Facebook’s message charge shows how to make money out of desperate fans

    Facebook is on to a good thing with its £11 charge for fans to contact their idols. But here’s a way for celebrities to cash in too

    Taylor Swift: hundreds of unopened fan letters were discovered in a dumpster in Nashville in March. Photograph: Getty Images for TAS

    One of Facebook’s strangest revenue-building schemes of recent times is its new decision to charge civilians to send messages to celebrities. Messaging Tom Daley, for instance, will cost nearly £11. Miranda Hart, meanwhile, is 71p.

    Facebook’s aim, it selflessly claims, is to reduce the amount of spam in celebrities’ mailboxes, but in tacitly purporting to provide a direct route to Jessie J’s eyeballs, it disregards the reality of social media for even the remotely famous. A celebrity‘s experience of social media is completely different from our own, bombarded as they are with praise, fury, demands and inanity with each hour that passes. Also, many of the miniature missives pinged at notable names come from desperate fans who are so obsessed that £11 will seem like a small price to pay.

    Even traditional fanmail has historically been hard to keep up with, and the volume of that medium is naturally subdued by the effort associated with pens, paper, stamps and postboxes. Yet still it comes, by the sackload. It’s harrowing to witness the piles of letters, cards and gifts that pile up in the dressing room of any moderately successful chart act as they tour from city to city. This mail is frequently never even glimpsed by the intended recipient and is often swept, unopened, into a black binbag by a tour manager at the end of the night. In it all goes: poetry, lovingly sketched artwork, teddies and trinkets on which pocket money has been trustingly spent.

    It’s a predicament that hit Taylor Swift a month ago when a box containing hundreds of her unopened fan letters was found unceremoniously ditched in a Nashville dumpster. Now, before you become too angry, the act wasn’t completely uncaring – the letters had at least been placed in the recycling section. But it’s hard not to feel a twinge of heartbreak when faced with the spectacle of hundreds of trashed communiques which, as the Daily Mail noted, were “covered with pictures, hearts and sparkles”. HEARTS AND SPARKLES. In the aftermath of bingate, a Swift spokesperson noted that Taylor received thousands of fan letters daily and that these were opened, read and recycled. If true, this is certainly an impressive commitment to fan relations: opening and reading 2,000 letters daily would be a full-time job for four people, and that’s before a single reply is sent.

    Click here to read the full article

    source:  The Guardian

     

  • How Smart Phones Make You Smarter

    by Markham Heid April 10, 2013, 12:05 pm EDT

    Playing with your phone has never been so productive

    Boost your brainpower with Bejeweled. Spending a few minutes gaming on your phone can make you smarter, finds new research published inPLoS ONE.

    After 4 weeks of playing phone-based games for an hour a day, 75 people significantly improved their working memory, focus, spatial memory, or multitasking ability, the research shows. At the end of the study period, the participants’ scores in multiple areas of cognition jumped by as much as 40 percent compared to pre-videogame levels.

    Just as weight training pumps up your biceps, some video games are a workout for your brain, the study suggests. And you don’t have to bury your face in your phone for a full 60 minutes a day to experience the benefits, says study coauthor Michael Patterson, Ph.D., of Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. A few minutes whenever you can squeeze them in should be enough to do the trick, he says. 

    That brain boost can last from a few months to 2 years, says study coauthor Adam Oei, a graduate student at NTU. But you have to choose the right game to match your desired brain benefit:

    • First-person shooters and action games like Modern Combat: Sandstorm ($4.99, iOS and Android) enhance your brain’s ability to quickly assess and disregard irrelevant information or distractions, according to the study. Referred to as “cognitive control,” this skill will help you ignore all the time-wasters in your inbox—or the 95 percent of that quarterly report that isn’t relevant to your job.
    • To improve attention and multi-tasking ability, try shape-manipulation puzzlers like Bejeweled ($.99, iOS and Android). These games involve complex tasks that hone your brain’s ability to store and retrieve short-term memories, and also switch quickly between challenges without losing focus, the study authors say.
    • Hidden-object games like Everest: Hidden Expedition (Free, iOS) improve visual search ability, the study finds. This will help your eyes more quickly locate and recognize what they’re searching for, whether you’re playing outfield and trying to hit your cut-off man or hunting for lost keys.
    • Memory games like Matrix Brain (Free, iOS), boost spatial working memory. You use that brain function to remember your way around a new neighborhood or city—or to break down complex diagrams or visual data, the study explains.

    source: Men’s Health News

  • Twitter and Facebook ‘addicts’ suffer withdrawal symptoms

    Facebook and Twitter users suffered withdrawal symptoms when forced to go cold turkey as part of a scientific study into the addictiveness of social media, academics have found.

    Going cold turkey caused many of the participants to suffer withdrawal symptoms Photo: CORBIS

    By 

    1:33PM BST 11 Apr 2013

    In a study by researchers at the University of Winchester, ten self-confessed Facebook “addicts” and ten prolific tweeters were asked to stop using their accounts for four weeks. Many quickly became isolated from friends and family and reported feeling “cut off from the world”.

    One female participant from Yorkshire said: “So much of my life was organised via Facebook. I haven’t communicated with my family all week.”

    Another volunteer said: “I’ve felt alone and cut off from the world. My fingers seem to be programmed to seek out the Facebook app every time I pick up my phone.”

    But Dr David Giles, a reader in media psychology who led the study, said that heavy use of social networks is not necessarily dangerous. “Some people would argue this addiction to social media is eating away at people’s lives, but what most of these so-called addicts are doing online is profoundly social,” he said.

    “The average internet user today is not the bedroom hermit of the 1990s but a savvy individual with a smartphone who openly manages his or her entire social life and personal relationships online.”

    Moderation could be key, however. Complete abstinence caused many of the participants to suffer withdrawal symptoms, but not all of the effects were negative. One woman from Wales said being forced off Facebook allowed her to catch-up on household chores, while another volunteer confessed that the ban had allowed her to spend more time with her daughter.

    The study, commissioned by first direct, also showed that those who had avoided social media in the past could find it useful and enjoyable. Researchers took ten people with inactive Twitter and Facebook accounts, and ten who had never used social media at all, and asked them to regularly tweet and update their Facebook status for four weeks.

    One participant said: “I thought I would find using Facebook every day dull and pointless, but I’m finding that I’m quite enjoying it. I’m actually seeing my friends more now.”

    The research showed that Twitter users coped better than their Facebook counterparts with being cut off from their accounts, which researchers put down to Twitter’s less “social” nature.

    Dr Giles believes that more people will eventually be forced to accept using social media as a fact of life. Life is getting more difficult for people who lack an email address or Facebook profile, and companies increasingly treat them as the “vagrants of the digital age”, he said.

    The research also highlighted 12 distinct types of social media users, from occasional “dippers” who only occasionally log-in to post an update to full-blown “ultras” who are habitual participants. Click here to see which tribe you belong to.

    source: The Telegraph

  • Afghan Guys And Gals Meet Facebook To Facebook

    By Farangis Najibullah

    April 11, 2013

    High-school student Muhammad Akbar has never dated a girl in real life, but he’s got plenty of girlfriends on Facebook.With social and religious taboos restricting face-to-face contact between unrelated members of the opposite sex, Facebook’s popularity has skyrocketed as a virtual meeting place in Afghanistan.Akbar spends nearly an hour every evening in a packed Internet cafe near his home in Kabul’s Shah Shahid area to chat with his female “friends.” To pay for his online habit, which costs about 100 afghanis ($2) an hour, he has taken a part-time job as a garage assistant.”In Afghanistan, we don’t have disco clubs to meet with girls. It’s not allowed here to go on a date with girls, to meet and talk with them face to face,” Akbar says. “Marriage is the only way to have a relationship with a woman, but many people can’t easily afford to get married. Facebook has solved that problem for many.”

    Bright Spot

    Akbar says chatting with girls online has made life in the war-torn, poverty stricken country “a lot less frustrating.”

    While being seen chatting to an unrelated boy in public can tarnish a girl’s reputation, “with Facebook, there is no risk of being beaten up by your female friend’s relatives,” he reasons.

    Such advantages have fueled a sharp rise in new Facebook accounts.

    According to the Communication and Information Ministry, there are now more than 470,000 registered Facebook accounts in Afghanistan, compared to 6,000 in 2008.

    Some 2 million of Afghanistan’s 30 million people have access to the Internet, according to the ministry, mostly through Internet cafes and mobile phones.

    About two years ago, Ahmad Sipehr learned about Facebook when a classmate at a Kabul university helped him join the social network. The revelation prompted him to open up his own Internet cafe.

    “I would travel several kilometers to the nearest Internet cafe just to use Facebook,” Sipehr says. “Then I decided to open an Internet cafe myself. It was Facebook that prompted me to open this business.”

    The 21-year-old journalism student now runs one of the busiest Internet cafes in downtown Kabul. Sipehr frequently helps visitors open Facebook accounts for the first time, and before long they are regular customers.

    Click here to read the full article

    source:  rferl.org / Farangis Najibullah

  • SA banks warn of new scam

    simonok, sxc.hu

    Banking authorities warned consumers on Monday against a new scam designed to trick people into compromising their personal information.

    “The latest scam targets home computer users and masquerades as legitimate telephonic calls from reputable computer software stores,” the SA Banking Risk information Centre (Sabric) said on Monday.

    The “stores” advised victims their systems were faulty or compromised and needed urgent remedial action, Sabric said in a statement.

    “The victims are then tricked during these telephone calls to divulge their personal information and to unwittingly install or accept malware on their computers,” said Sabric commercial crime general manager Susan Potgieter.

    This malware enabled the criminals to access their victims’ personal information, and use it to steal money from their accounts.

    “Criminals always think of clever ways to sell bank customers believable stories in order to trick them into compromising their banking details and any unsolicited approaches should be treated with caution irrespective of the plausibility,” said Potgieter.

    source: iAfrica.com

  • Yahoo’s teen app millionaire

    London schoolboy Nick D’Aloisio, who’s just sold his smartphone news app to Yahoo for a reported $30m. (Pic: Forbes.com)

    London – Got a tech idea and want to make a fortune before you’re out of your teens? Just do it, is the advice of the London schoolboy who’s just sold his smartphone news app to Yahoo for a reported $30m.

    The money is there, just waiting for clever new moves, said 17-year-old Nick D’Aloisio, who can point to a roster of early backers for his Summly app that includes Yoko Ono and Rupert Murdoch.

    “If you have a good idea, or you think there’s a gap in the market, just go out and launch it because there are investors across the world right now looking for companies to invest in,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview late on Monday.

    The terms of the sale, four months after Summly was launched for the iPhone, have not been disclosed and D’Aloisio, who is still studying for school exams while joining Yahoo as its youngest employee, was not saying. But technology blog AllThingsD said Yahoo paid roughly $30m.

    D’Aloisio said he was the majority owner of Summly and would now invest the money from the sale, though his age imposes legal limits for now on his access to it.

    “I’m happy with that and working with my parents to go through that whole process,” he said.

    D’Aloisio, who lives in the prosperous London suburb of Wimbledon, highlights the support of family and school, which gave him time off, but also, critically, the ideas that came with enthusiastic financial backers.

    He had first dreamt up the mobile software while revising for a history exam two years ago, going on to create a prototype of the app that distils news stories into chunks of text readable on small smartphone screens.

    He was inspired, he said, by the frustrating experience of trawling through Google searches and separate websites to find information when revising for the test.

    Trimit was an early version of the app, which is powered by an algorithm that automatically boils down articles to about 400 characters. It caught the eye of Horizons Ventures, a venture capital firm owned by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, which put in $250 000.

    Click here to read the full article

    source:  Fin24

     

  • Your Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn popularity may land you a job, cos look for well-connected people

    Your Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn popularity may land you a job

    MELBOURNE: Your popularity on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn may help you bag a job as companies are increasingly looking for well-connected and influential people, experts say.

    Digital experts say social media and recruitment now largely go hand in hand.

    While at the most basic level, companies check up on prospective employees to see if they make unsavoury postings online, they are also using LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to find new employees – both by listing opportunities and by increasing the chatter between recruiters and the people looking for jobs, website stuff.co.nz reported.

    “Social media has become an essential part of any organisation’s recruitment strategy. It is easier to generate talent through social media. A lot easier than it was four or five years ago,” said Hays RecruitmentNew Zealand managing director Jason Walker.

    Walker said in a recent survey of 270 employers across New Zealand the company found that 64 per cent of employers used LinkedIn to find new employees, 50 per cent used Facebook and 10 per cent used Twitter.

    Of those looking for jobs 74 per cent use LinkedIn, 24 per cent used Facebook, and 7 per cent used Twitter, Fairfax NZ news reported.

    Tom Bates, the social influence director for digital strategists Contagion, said employers would look at a prospective employee’s social media presence to validate what the candidate was saying about their online profile.

    “If someone says that they are influential and they are not even on Twitter, or don’t use social media well, then they are not being authentic or honest,” Bates said.

    “When I am recruiting I look first and foremost on LinkedIn. I look at the experience people have, their connections, because it gives a really open, transparent, easy way to source relevant people,” Bates added.

    “I also look at all their other social media identities to get more of a sense of who they are, outside of the one-hour interview I may have with them. I look at their Facebook and Twitter and potentially Instagram and beyond to make sure there is a good cultural fit,” Bates said.

    source: The Economic Times

  • Why I Don’t Care What My Facebook Friends Like

    Facebook will launch a new messaging system aimed at enhancing its social media product to its 500 million users. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

    By now, we’ve all heard about Facebook’s Graph Search announcement. Does this mean I’ll finally be living in a utopian society where social media will guide my searches based on what my Facebook friends think about products? Will I finally be living a life of bliss when my online connections serve as my life compass?

    If my sarcasm is any indication of my personal view, my answer is no. Should I feel bad that I don’t care what 90 percent of Facebook friends think about stuff?

    The thought of online not being a true driver of recommendations isn’t just my wacky idea. According to Ed Keller, co-author of The Face-to-Face Book: Why Real Relationships Rule in a Digital Marketplace, 90 percent of real-world conversations about brands, products and services happen offline. This statistic indicates that true product recommendations require a dialogue and the ability to ask qualifying questions, such as “Why did you like that?” — not just a one-way endorsement of “Hey, I had a really good experience with this widget and you will too, because we’re Facebook friends!”

    Before you start thinking I don’t care about the rich data social media offers, I do. I do so much that I run a social media advertising agency called Rocket XL. At the risk of alienating clients like Unilever and PepsiCo, here’s a telling example of why companies should not rely on quantiative social data without the qualitative insight.

    Say I’m planning to download a movie from Vudu. My Facebook feed might tell me that “Chasing Mavericks” is the most popular new release among my friends. This must be something I have to see immediately, right? But if I were to speak to these friends face-to-face and ask them why they liked the movie, perhaps they’d reveal: “The hot blonde surfer chicks” or “Gerard Butler…hot.”

    In other words, they’d be happy to watch the movie on mute just for the eye candy, not because the movie is any good.

    Before I get accused of living offline in the last century, the area I think social product opinions can work very well is in the difficult art of selecting a gift for a friend, family member or colleague. If Facebook, or some other future algorithm, can tell me what’s popular with a friend and accurately suggest gift ideas, that’s brilliant because I’m clueless when it comes to giving gifts and I’ve yet to see a service truly succeed with social gifting recommendations. I can’t wait to see who cracks it first.

    Until then, I publicly apologize to all my online connections.  Just because we’re Facebook friends doesn’t mean that I care about your social media likes. It’s not you, it’s me.

    source: Forbes

  • Video Games Help Treat Kids With Chronic Pain

    Camille Bautista

    The Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., opened a new pain care complex on April 3, aiming to eliminate pain in young patients by using video games.

    Utilizing specially designed games combined with Microsoft’s Kinect technology, participants can improve their health without realizing they’re receiving treatment. The gamification places kids in an intergalactic world where they can paint, play and exercise, all while doctors analyze their range of motion.

    The program changes the way medical professionals address pain medicine, says Dr. Sarah Rebstock, clinical director and a leader in the initiative. It’s often difficult to understand pain, particularly in children, due to its subjective nature. Usually, doctors only have measurements on a scale of one to ten to use as reference, and patients are released with improved conditions but still suffer from discomfort.

    The video games serve as a distraction for the children but also target their bodies the same way a physical therapy session would. Not only can doctors monitor heart rate or motion, but based on the observations, they can change treatment and therapy in real-time to adjust to kids’ abilities.

    If a child can only stretch his or her shoulder a few inches during a game, the Kinect software will detect the motion in degrees and indicate a problem area. The gaming system is able to target and track 24 musculoskeletal points in the body.

    “Pain is one of the most underserved areas in medicine in general,” Rebstock tells Mashable. “Until now, it has been impossible to quantitatively measure and monitor chronic pain in children … This is one of the largest advancements in pain medicine in the last several years.”

    Most children with chronic pain undergo lengthy, expensive evaluations before receiving treatment, and one in four parents of patients have quit their job or reduced working hours to care for them. With the new technology, families will be able to save time and money, Rebstock says.

    Compared to therapy sessions in a gym, patients who used the video game had a better range of motion and reported greater distraction from pain. Data collected as a part of the initiative will be used to optimize care for individuals and also help evaluate the success of past treatments.

    What do you think of healthcare centers using video games for treatment? Let us know in the comments.

    Image courtesy of Children’s National Medical Center

    source: Mashable