Culled from the responses of 694 randomly selected educators, including librarians, teachers, and principals, the study compares findings with those from a similar survey conducted in 2009.

According to the report, “2012 Survey of K-12 educators on Social Networking, Online Communities, and Web 2.0 Tools,” 82 percent of all K-12 educators now use social networking for personal and professional use, up from 61 percent in 2009.

The study provides information about educators’ favorite sites by category and reveals social networking patterns by age and frequency of use. It also reveals educators’ concerns about privacy and provides information about school district technology access policies for students and teachers.

Facebook, Edmodo, and the Discovery Education Network most popular in their categories

Facebook is the most used social networking venue among respondents, with 85 percent using the site, the same percentage as in 2009.

LinkedIn is the second most popular, accessed by 41 percent of respondents, up from 14 percent in 2009. Twitter is third, at 39 percent, followed by Google+ (27percent), Ning (11percent), and MySpace (20 percent).

Younger educators network the most, with 97 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds networking online, as opposed to 75 percent of respondents who are 55-plus, according to the report.

Among education-focused sites, Edmodo has the most members, accessed by 27 percent of respondents, followed by edWeb.net (15 percent), ASCD EDge (9 percent), Classroom 2.0 (9 percent), We are Teachers (6 percent), Teacher 2.0 (5 percent), NSTA Learning Center (4 percent), and Educators PLN (3 percent).

Librarians use the first four of these education-focused sites more than teachers or principals, according to the study. Looking forward, 31 percent of librarians say that they will likely join a new networking and PD site in the next year, as opposed to 22 percent of teachers and 31 percent of principals.

For librarians, the top five branded online communities are the Discovery Education Network (49 percent), Edutopia (31 percent), PBS Teachers (30 percent), Thinkfinity (25 percent), and BrainPOP Educators  (24 percent).

Webinars are the most popular networking tool among educators, while document sharing is the most used in classrooms.

Concern over privacy and restrictive school policies

Forty five percent of respondents express concern about privacy on education sites, while 26 percent worry about inappropriate relationships with students. Twenty six percent are concerned that affiliation with a social network “might head to an incident that would jeopardize my job,” according to the report. Among those surveyed, 80 percent keep their personal and professional accounts separate most of the time.

Twenty-three percent believe that their school or district’s policy on Web 2.0 tools is restrictive to teachers, and 47 percent think their schools’ regulations are a hindrance to students.

Fifty four percent of respondents work in districts that allow kids to bring their own devices to school, but only five percent of those schools allow students to use them with no restrictions. 64 percent of educators think it likely that their districts will “open up policies on BYOD in the future.”

“There is growing awareness that online communities help teachers create an extended personal learning network and access a wealth of professional development resources—often at no cost to the teacher,” a press release connected to the report states.

The press release adds that the U. S. Department of Education has encouraged educators to access online resources by declaring August 2012 “Connected Educator Month,” along with initiatives including the 2010 National Education Technology Plan and the Connected Online Communities of Practice Project (COCP).

1. Research Tools: Google Books Ngram Viewer 2.0

Utilizing the Google Books corpus of scanned books (more than 20 million at last count), the Ngram viewer reveals how a searched word or phrase has been used over hundreds of years. Originally designed for linguists and historians, this useful, fun tool appeals to a wide range of users.

2. Meet the Climate Change Denier who Became the Voice of Hurricane Sandy on Wikipedia

Chronicling how a Wikipedia contributor initially characterized the hurricane—with no mention of climate change—this article reveals some of the site’s potential pitfalls regarding accuracy and bias. Raises interesting discussion points, regardless of one’s view of Wikipedia or climate change. The updated Wikipedia entry reveals a more balanced perspective.

3. An EPUB Reader Overview

The GHacks blog offers a roundup of 10 tools to assist with reading and creating EPUB format ebooks and documents.

4. Motion Pictures: A Digital Collection of Historical Film Industry Materials from the AMPAS Library

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts (AMPAS)—the people behind the Oscar Academy Awards—have digitized thousands of historic items from its library, making them available through the Margaret Herrick Library Digital Collections, with more to come. Especially useful to media classes, but also relevant to history curricula.

5. New: A Massive Compilation of Facebook Facts and Statistics

If you want to wow your students and staff with your knowledge of Facebook, this vast compilation of facts and stats from the Website-Monitoring blog about the social media giant is a must.

Moderator Jen Hubert-Swan, a blogger at ReadingRants and middle school librarian at New York’s Little Red School House, began the conversation by bringing up a recent Slate.com article, “Against Enthusiasm: The Epidemic of Niceness in Online Book Culture, ” which took aim at online book culture for creating an atmosphere in which “retweets, likes, favorites…make any critique stick out sorely” and which has resulted in bloggers who are reluctant to negatively review novels.

Although the panelists agreed that reviewers should honestly critique novels, Betsy Bird, a youth materials specialist at New York Public Library, pointed to a few who would rather limit themselves to writing about titles they enjoyed. Bird, who blogs for SLJ at Fuse #8, says she considers them cheerleaders rather than reviewers. However, Bird cautioned against writing nasty or mean-spirited reviews.

Similarly, Liz Burns, a librarian at New Jersey’s National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped and who blogs for SLJ at A Chair, A Fireplace & a Tea Cozy, advised that a critical review should be supported by quotes or references to the text. She also stated that a reviewer can apply critical analysis to books they appreciate as well as to those they dislike.

Monica Edinger, fourth grade teacher at the Dalton School, a private school in New York, and who blogs at Educating Alice, put the conversation into historical context. She brought up past authors and literary critics, such as E.B. White and Dorothy Parker, who regularly reviewed each other’s work—and often resulted in feuds and arguments. Edinger believes that the world of social media is simply making the relationships between authors and reviewers more public.

Hubert-Swan questioned whether a blogger can have a friendship with a writer and still review their work. Freelance writer Marjorie Ingall, who also writes at her self-titled blog, doesn’t “friend” or follow any authors because her journalism background makes her more sensitive to potential conflicts of interest.

On the other hand, Burns distinguished between knowing an author personally and following them on Twitter, stressing that a relationship based only on social media wouldn’t affect reviews. Above all, she emphasized the importance of transparency and stated that if she’s reviewing a book written by a friend, she always discloses their relationship in the blog-post.

Bird said she often receives responses from authors or editors who take issue with her negative reviews of their work. Similarly, Hubert-Swan talked about her experience writing critical commentary of books on Goodreads. She said she removes her negative comments if contacted by authors because she would rather not start a debate in a public forum.

The panelists concluded that many authors dealing with Internet commentary need more guidance from publishers. Sheila Barry, blogger at Making Books for Children and co-publisher of Groundwood, said that as an editor, she’s often had to reassure authors who were unhappy at receiving negative reviews. As both a blogger and a young adult author, Maureen Johnson finds herself in a unique position. She drew upon her personal experience, stating that confronting the world of online reviews is incredibly daunting for a first-time author. However, she emphasized that authors must refrain from replying to negative responses to their work to ensure that reviewers feel comfortable voicing their opinions.