Again I say: there but for the grace of All Things Holy go I. A phone call to my parental units might be in order so I can thank them excessively for bringing me into this world at a time when computers took up entire rooms, tiny technology was available only in science fiction books, and social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook hadn’t yet been conceived of.

By no means was I an over-the-top party girl in high school or college, but I feel confident that had the technology been in place, I could have certainly captured some detrimental moments for posterity. Any number of which, I can guarantee, would somehow, somewhere, have been unearthed by a prospective employer.

Bowling Green’s online newspaper has an article up about the increasingly standard use employers make of sites like Facebook and MySpace to screen job applicants. I don’t agree with the practice, and part of me feels like it’s an invasion of privacy for employers to go digging around online for information. Which brings me around to the impossible-to-refute point that nothing posted online where the whole world can see it can be considered personal or private.

It sucks that teens and twenty-somethings have to work harder that any other generation since the Victorian age to mind their reputations, but all this technology is probably here to stay. Don’t put s**t out there that you don’t want people to see. Like all things logical, it’s elegant in its simplicity. So either keep your proverbial pants on or mark the “friends only” box on your chosen social networking site. Good luck.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

UCLA does an annual survey of incoming American undergrads.

The CIRP Freshman Survey is part of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) and is administered by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. The 2007 freshman norms are based on the responses of 272,036 first-time, full-time students at 356 of the nation’s baccalaureate colleges and universities. The data have been statistically adjusted to reflect the responses of the 1.4 million first-time, full-time students entering four-year colleges and universities as freshmen in 2007.

The 2007 results came out recently and the info on helicopter parenting has me concerned. Either we’ve all been wrong about helicopter parents and their over-involvement in their kids’ education, or the young’uns in question like being helicoptered. Here’s what the survey found out about

Parental Involvement:

While college officials nationwide say they have seen an increase in parents who are heavily involved in the college experiences of their children, a strong majority of today’s college freshmen believe their parents are involved the “right amount,” according to UCLA’s annual survey of the nation’s entering undergraduates.

The report suggests freshmen show a dependency on parents when making college-related decisions.

“When parents intervene in their children’s college life and decision-making, students may not necessarily develop their own problem-solving skills, which may limit developmental gains in their learning experiences,” said John H. Pryor, a co-author of the report and director of CIRP.

A majority of freshmen considered their parents’ participation in their college careers to be the “right amount,” with 84 percent reporting the “right amount” of parental involvement in their decision to go to college, 80.5 percent in their decision to attend the college at which they enrolled and 77.5 percent in dealing with college officials.

Conversely, nearly one in four freshmen (24 percent) report that their parents displayed “too little” involvement in helping them select college courses, and 22.5 percent say their parents were not involved enough in helping choose college activities.

Along with parental involvement, the survey also covered:

“Habits of Mind” for Learning:

The report identifies a troubling pattern in students’ study habits for lifelong learning. While a large majority of freshmen report that they use the Internet on a daily basis to seek information, only a few within the classroom are cultivating the essential “habit of mind” of checking the accuracy and reliability of the information they receive.

“Students’ frequent use of the Internet shows a preference for information that is easily accessible, but that information is not necessarily reliable and accurate,” Hurtado said. “Learning how to evaluate knowledge claims is an essential part of a liberal education, and we expect that colleges will have to be more intentional about integrating information literacy in the education of college students today.”

Impact of Social Networking Sites:

While the popularity of social networking Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace runs high — 86.3 percent of incoming freshmen report that during the last year of high school they spent at least some time on such sites each week — students still spend relatively more time in an average week studying, working and “live” socializing.

Time spent on social networking sites appears, however, to be related not to less “live” socializing but to more time spent in other social activities. Students who used social networking Web sites more often were also more likely to socialize with friends and attend parties. This did not seem to have any significant impact on the number of hours a week students spent studying.

Diversity-Related Issues:

Attitudes about diversity continue to change among incoming first-year students: 36.7 percent of students expressed the personal goal of helping to promote racial understanding, a 2.7 percentage-point increase from 2006 and the highest this figure has been since 1994. Not surprisingly, the figure escalates among students at black colleges and universities, where 64 percent see this as an essential or very important personal goal.

Interest in the global community is advancing as well. When this item was first placed on the questionnaire in 2002, following the attacks of Sept. 11, 43.2 percent of students reported that they had an interest in improving their understanding of other countries and cultures; in 2007 that proportion became a majority, at 52.3 percent.

Freshman support for same-sex marriages has expanded steadily, from 50.9 percent 1997 to 63.5 percent in 2007. The issue, however, reveals a wide gender gap: 55.3 percent of male freshmen report that same-sex couples should have the right to legal marital status, compared with 70.3 percent of female students. Gender differences appear on other issues, as well: More than half of all males (53.7 percent) agree with the statement that undocumented immigrants should be denied access to public education, compared with 43.5 percent of all female students; 43.3 percent of males and 39.2 percent of females at black colleges agreed.

Reasons to Attend College:

Academic quality remained the top reason for choosing a college, cited by 63 percent of students — a 5.6 percentage-point jump from 2006 and the highest this figure has been in 35 years. And college affordability is now more than ever a priority for students, with the importance of being awarded financial assistance increasing 5.1 percentage points from 2006 to 39.4 percent in 2007, also the highest this figure has been in 35 years.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

We’ve done several posts on web tools for students. Larry Ferlazzo recently posted his top 14 list here. Ferlazzo’s top rated Web 2.0 tool is called Tumblr. Tumblr’s technology helps you make a “tumblelog.” What is that? Well, here’s how Tumblr defines it, “If blogs are journals, tumblelogs are scrapbooks.”

Basically, tumblelogs are a place where you can quickly add information in multiple mediums. The creators say, “Blogs are great, but they can be a lot of work. And they’re really built to handle longer-form text posts. Tumblelogs, on the other hand, let you easily and quickly post and share anything you find or create.”

Check it out and let us know what you think.

Next Student also has a top ten list. Their number one suggested tool is called Bookfinder. Bookfinder, Next Student says lets you search through “125 million books for sale from 4,000 sellers.” I’ve always used AddAll for this but BookFinder seems to include more sellers.

And if you’re curious about our own Web 2.0 recommendations, check out our old posts here and here.

Posted By Sindya Bhanoo

Thanks to the Internet, we all have an infinite number of options for screwing over our future selves. This is probably the only exception to my general crankiness regarding the timing of my birth. Being born in the 70s means I am less inclined to be physically or emotionally attached to my MacBook than a tween, teen or twenty-something would be. Added to that, I’m probably more aware of the negative implications of the Net only because it’s more of a new and strange occurence in my life than it would be for someone born safely on this side of the Polyester Era. I notice it because for most of my life it wasn’t there at all. I typed my book reports on a damn typewriter. A manual one. You had to be a man (or a tomboy girl) to whang those keys hard enough. Too hard, and the periods would make their point right through the paper. I know. Old school minus any hint of the ‘cool’ connotation.

I had a Mac Classic II when I was a freshman in college. The one with the postcard-sized screen. Badass, I’m well aware. And, no, it was not hooked up to the Internet. I swear on all things sacred that I had never sent an e-mail by the time I hit the dorms. And yet, I’m here to tell the tale. Did you get that that was sarcasm? It’s hard to get sarcasm across on the Internet. I need a special Sarcasm Font or something.

But do you know what’s super easy to get out there into the world so’s everyone can take a gander? Drunken nakedness, foul language (the title I originally wrote for this article had a very bad (and much funnier) word) and overall stupidity can be recorded for posterity so easily and then sucked into the Net, easily retrievable by anyone who takes the time to search out the dirt on idiotic, drunken freshman you.

Once again, I reel with the closeness of that call. I’m thanking the fates and sheer dumb luck that my ungraceful moments came and went before they ended up on the Internet. Because now, being so mature and wise beyond my years I never act rashly and do things I might regret.

Anyway, if you’re young and foolish and tend to say or do things you later wish you hadn’t (or can only vaguely recall), please remember that you and everyone you know with a computer and a recording device will be capable of making you either infamous or incredibly uncomfortable someday when your parents/kids/voters/prospective boss/potential mate cyber-vet you into cringing oblivion. Yes, I was dumb. But no one recorded it, so only a teensy fraction of the population has to know. And they were less than sober, too, so their recall would be lacking.

More stuff to read about cyber-vetting:

The rights and wrongs of cyber-vetting

The world of work: how cyber-vetting catches job liars

Ever been cyber-vetted?

‘Cyber-vetting’ and your ‘net rep’

Your digital dirt can come back to haunt you

Posted by Alexa Harrington