Social Scholarship in Action: Social Media as Authority

Two terrific resources that support my belief that we must tap into emerging sources of scholarly and/or credible information have come across my Google Reader in the last 24 hours.  As a high school librarian, I am very interested in the concepts of authority and emerging forms of social scholarship, but I am also intrigued by these ideas because they will tie into my first unit of study in August for my Media 21 Capstone project.

Here are two must read/see/watch resources:

Social networking changes everything – NeverEndingSearch – Blog on School Library Journal via kwout

Joyce Valenza pens a thoughtful and poignant post about the power of social media and the resources we might use as we help our students research and understand the current happenings in Iran.

Thanks to the “Free Technology for Teachers” blog, I was alerted to this powerful video by Clay Shirky on TED Talks called, “How  Cellphones,  Twitter,  and Facebook Can Make History”—while his video is not about the current events in Iran, the very principles he discusses apply.  I will be showing this video to mine and Susan Lester’s students come August!