Catch up-Date with Karine: High School Student Survey, Alumni Emails, Social Networking Survey, Twitter Clone & Chrome

September 7th, 2008 Karine Joly No Comments

Here’s the second edition of this series “Catch up-Date with Karine” aiming at fighting the information overload. Please let me know if you find it useful by leaving a comment or sending an email at karine@collegewebeditor.com.

Get in the mind of US high school students with “The 2008-2009 State Of Our Nation’s Youth,” a survey report published by Horatio Alger Association in August 2008 (via mStoner blog)

Here are a couple of interesting points I found in the 8-page report summary (PDF) and the full 80-page report (PDF)

  • Today’s teenagers spend an average of 11.6 hours a week using the Internet more time than they spend watching television (9.8 hours per week), talking on a cell phone (12.9 hours per week), and doing homework (8.9 hours per week).
  • Time spent on the Internet per week for
    homework: 4.5 hr
    browsing social networking websites: 6.2 hr
    entertainment: 7.1 hr.
  • 70% of today’s high school students plan to attend a four year college or university sometime after completing high school, 10% a two-year college, 7% a community college, and 6% a vocational or technical school

Looking to reconnect with long-lost alumni? Follow UNT example with its “Six Degrees of UNT” campaign (via UB Buzz)

In the Six Degrees of UNT program, the university will contact constituents via e-mail invitation, and ask them to forward the invitation to former UNT classmates, faculty, staff and supporters. Subsequent e-mails ask each invitee to provide current contact information.

Successful execution means UNT will have more reliable and efficient means to contact the more than 190,000 people in its contributor relations database. This, in turn, can save the university time and money, from returned, undeliverable print mail and dead-end e-mail addresses.

The program will be executed over six weeks beginning Thursday, Sept. 4.

I’ll try to find out how this program worked out in October – will keep you updated.


Trying to prove to decision makers that social networking is a real trend? Look closely at the report about social networking published last week by Synovate (via eMarketer newsletter)

  • While 58% of the 13,000 people aged 18-65 from 17 countries don’t know what social networking is, 70% of surveyed Americans do.
  • While only 26% across the markets surveyed are members of social networking sites, the proportion reaches 44% in Canada and 40% in the US (not the majority, true, but the under 18 aren’t counted here)

Looking for a private Twitter clone for your team? Check out Edmodo
Created for teachers and students, Edmodo is a free private microblogging platform you can use to send notes, links, files, alerts, and events to each other. You can create private groups for you and your colleagues to collaborate.

Unless you were really sleeping under a rock last week, you know that Google launched its own Internet browser, Chrome, but do you know that Dimitri Glazkov (ex-CTO at Estrada who presented at several of higher ed conferences and even guest blogged for this blog) has joined the Chrome team at Google?
Well, you know it, now.
Congratulations to my favorite Russian!

Got a question or comment?