The CUNY Academic Commons Twitter account (@cunycommons) was created to promote and share the work of the CUNY Academic Commons community with the rest of the Twitterverse. Instead of limiting our Twitter use to tweeting out new activity on the Commons, when we come across something from one of our Twitter followers that we believe to be relevant to the CUNY community, we retweet the heck out of it! With that being said, welcome to the first ever ‘Retweets of the Week’  — enjoy!

RT @citytechopenlab: This Week in the Open Lab: End of the Year Edition!: http://t.co/UQhRJ9jZQc

— CUNY Academic Commons (@cunycommons) May 13, 2013

RT @jitpedagogy: The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy Issue 3 now available http://t.co/HMj0JQkwUy

— CUNY Academic Commons (@cunycommons) May 15, 2013

RT @jetmirtroshani: List of Magazine Creators @cunycommons http://t.co/0YajQ6OW9L #edtech

— CUNY Academic Commons (@cunycommons) May 15, 2013

MT @jitpedagogy: Special Video Feature: Behind the Seams w/ James Richardson – on the path from submission to… http://t.co/Q5BjpPHbBy

— CUNY Academic Commons (@cunycommons) May 15, 2013

RT @mkgold: RT @gdonovan: Read my #dissertation, hear my defense, browse my #research – http://t.co/URY9cg6BOI @CUNYGradCenter #digitalgc

— CUNY Academic Commons (@cunycommons) May 15, 2013

MT @gc_philosophy: Great things are happening in CUNY Philosophy! Our Newsletter: http://t.co/a4wVNRGEWX

— CUNY Academic Commons (@cunycommons) May 16, 2013

RT @erikaherzog: .@cunycommons 🙂
CUNY Academic Commons #swag #yay @ CUNY Graduate Center http://t.co/xiZ03j0Its

— CUNY Academic Commons (@cunycommons) May 18, 2013

We encourage you to follow all of the folks who were retweeted here:  @citytechopenlab, @jitpedagogy, @jetmirtroshani, @mkgold, @gdonovan, @gc_philosophy, & @erikaherzog_. Don’t forget to check back next week to see if your tweet made the list! You can also visit the CUNY on Twitter Wiki page to browse different CUNY Twitter accounts.

With more and more CUNY faculty and staff connecting every which way on the world-wide-web, the Commons is still committed “to grow in a flexible manner” by making sure that conversations aren’t happening in silos. Part of doing that is by posting updates and sharing resources across multiple social networking sites. And, being the total nerdbot that I am, I happily agreed to maintain our social media presence on both  Twitter and Facebook.

Every day the Commons brings me news of a new event, resource, or CFP, and I love being able to share that with as many people as possible. For example, since the CUNY Instructional Design group is public I was able view the group update from Chandra Hanke (@chanke) with details about the CUNY Instructional Design Council’s first meeting. I then posted that information on both Facebook and Twitter linking directly to the group update in an effort to help spread the word about their meeting. The CUNY Instructional Design group was only created about a month ago and it’s great to see so many members on the Commons, who might not necessarily be instructional designers on their campus, take an interest and join this group (there are currently 25 members).

I started to incorporate the #cunyevents hashtag (shown above) to help people find different events taking place across CUNY. If you’re posting about an event at CUNY on the Commons, I will try my best to help promote it by creating an event on Facebook and using the #cunyevents hashtag on Twitter. (A special note to my fellow CUNY twitterers: please feel free to use the #cunyevents hashtag if you are posting about an event at a CUNY campus to help us all stay connected!!)

As a shout out to our growing Math Matters group, I’d like to share some numbers with everyone. To date, we have nearly 100 Facebook fans and over 400 followers on Twitter. Clearly, Twitter is the big winner among CUNY grad students, faculty, and staff. I think this is because Facebook and Twitter are used in different ways. Facebook is a way to connect to friends and family and Twitter is a way to find people and connect to content. Also, I’d say that a decent amount of @cunycommons Twitter followers span the national academic community — a trend I haven’t found in Facebook.

Since many people use Twitter to stream live from conferences using themed hashtags, it’s easier for academics to connect with people and ideas from across the globe. And, with so many great ideas and resources bouncing around the Commons, it’s nice to be able to showcase what we are up to! Speaking of showcasing, Scott Voth created a new page on the Commons News blog called “Commons Buzz”, which highlights recent press coverage of the Commons. If you have a few minutes I would highly recommend checking it out!!

One of the advantages of posting roughly 140-character summaries on new happenings across the Commons is that I’m able to keep up on all-things-CUNY. That being said, if you’re having difficulty looking for something you saw on the Commons last week, last month –  hit me up!

I have to admit that before I began tweeting regularly for the Commons, I was a total Facebook fangirl and didn’t log-in to my Twitter account regularly. In fact, my second blog post on the Commons touched on my (then) use of Facebook and Twitter. Anyway, after reading different blog posts on the Commons about Twitter and coming across some great #ePortfolio resources by using #hashtags, I began to see the value among academics. Also, after reading the NYTimes article, “Twitter Puts Spotlight on Secret F.B.I. subpoenas,” Twitter scored some bonus points (and Facebook lost some). Needless to say I have been spending more time on Twitter and less on Facebook.

Recently, I’ve started to use Hootsuite to manage the various social networking accounts that I oversee. What I like about it (besides for the fact that it’s free!)  is that I can easily schedule updates without having to log-in to multiple websites or applications. Most definitely a time saver!

Hootsuite Screenshot

One of my long term Twitter goals is to build a robust “follow list” of CUNY twitterers (both inside and outside the Commons). I started by building off the initial @mkgold/cuny list (thanks @admin!) by going through members profiles on the Commons to see if they had a Twitter handle posted on the profile page. I was also able to follow a few new CUNYites through their networks; and as of today we have 202 members on the list!

On another note, February marked our 500th tweet and we just made our 1,000th tweet this past month. I’m really excited about this because it means that I’ve already achieved one of my goals of having our 1,000th tweet by the next scheduled CUNY Pie trip — #winning! OK, I promise that will be my last Charlie Sheen reference ever. (Promise.)

Lastly, as a follow up to my original shout out to the Math Matters group, I would like to extend that shout out to all CUNYites (both inside and outside the Commons) and invite you to not only follow us on Twitter and Facebook, but also follow each other. You can start by browsing the @cunycommons/cuny follow list!

Have questions or suggestions? Please post in a comment below or reach out to me via email at smorgano01001 (at) gmail (dot) com.

Hello CUNYs and happy MLK day!  While most of you are enjoying some well deserved time off to relax and prepare for the upcoming semester, some of you have been quite busy on the Commons (which, of course, I love because it gives me something to write about!) OK, on to my favorites of the week… While major media outlets have been focusing on the vitriol of politics and “the man with the golden voice”, this week I’d like to focus on educational technology related postings, updates, and threads on the Commons.  

My first favorite of 2011 is the latest post from Alevtina Verovetskaya’s  Reading Log.  

Aptly titled January 6, this post highlights a terrific article from latest issue of Clarion (the newspaper of the PSC) entitled, “Meet the new academic superstars: Faculty librarians ideal guides for info age”. After seeing this post, I searched through my recently delivered mail to find the Jan. ’11 Issue. This highly informative article discusses (among other things) how academic librarians, like Jill Cirasella @cirasella from Brooklyn College, routinely assist faculty with scholarly work, noting:    

“Their expect knowledge of specialized databases, public documents, historical archives, online search stategies, and library resources at CUNY… can make them ideal partners for other faculty members’ research projects.”  

The article also highlights the impact of applied research at CUNY. For instance, Maura Smale and Mariana Regaldo are in the middle of a three year study on the scholarly habits of students at six CUNY campuses and, as a result of their initial findings, have already reconfigured the study areas at City Tech’s library to support additional privacy for students. What I really liked about this article was the overall theme of sharing and collaboration which, according to Cirasella, “are what  librarians are all about”.  

After coming to terms with the fact that newspapers do not have a long shelve life in my home (due to my compulsory nature to over-recycle), I had to figure out another way to keep this article handy for future reading and reflection. Lightbulb! I decided that this would be a great addition to the iBooks on my iPad. To save this document to my iPad, I navigated to Jan. ’11 issue of Clarion (http://www.psc-cuny.org/Clarion/ClarionJanuary2011.pdf), which opened as a PDF document, then selected “open in iBooks” on the upper-right side of the screen. Now I can access this issue anytime without having to be online. (*This works on any iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch running the iBooks application.) 

While we’re on the topic of libarians, I wanted to share an update posted in the CUNY Games Network  by City Tech’s librarian Maura Smale @msmale.  

Hosted by Christopher Jason Smith and the CUNY Games Network Steering Committee, this full-day tabletop games event will be held at LaGuardia Community College on Friday, January 21st and is open to all CUNYs. While this very first tabletop game event will primarily feature mainstream games such as Battlestar Galactica, Magic the Gathering, and Diplomacy,  Maura notes that a few educational games are likely to be thrown into the mix. Those who attend will also be given a  short tour of the ”Games Library” created at LaGuardia to help CUNY faculty examine games for research purposes. If you’d like to stop by for a couple of hours or intend to particpate throughout the day, please try to email cunygamesadmin@googlegroups.com with your name to help the CUNY Games Steering Committee keep a headcount. 

Speaking of  committees, according to an update posted by Adam Wandt @awandt on the  Academic Technology Research and Development Group (a new subcommittee of the CUNY Committee on Academic Technology), Skunkworks will hold their first meeting on January 20th at 10am via Elluminate.  

 Established by CUNY faculty and staff, its mission is to research, test, and recommend new technologies from the perspective of classroom needs and pedagogical effectiveness. I signed up as a volunteer shortly after Chandra Hanke, Phil Pecorino, and Adam Wandt presented “CUNY CAT Academic Technology Research and Development Group: The ‘Skunkworks'” at the 9th annual CUNY IT Conference. I’m really excited about testing new technologies and sharing our results with the CUNY community and cannot wait to use Elluminate for the first time at our first meeting! 

 My next favorite this week stays with the theme of “collaboration”. Daniel Bachhuber @danielbachhuber posted an update that he is searching for other CUNYs to work on WordPress as a learning management system. 

 Most of you probably already know my thoughts on Blackboard, so I think it’s really important for CUNY to explore additional options for learning management systems. Since many CUNY students are already familiar with WordPress through course blogs or blogs that they’ve created on their own, it seems that WordPress would be a viable platform to consider as an LMS. If you’re interested in exploring the pros and cons of WordPress as an LMS, I’m sure Daniel would be happy to hear from you! 

 Speaking of WordPress, my last favorite this week is a forum thread from the WordPress HELP!!! group. 

After Giulia Guarnieri @giulia started the forum thread “Help with my new blog” asking general questions about how to configure the WP-Creativix 1.5.5 theme on her blog, Scott Voth @scottvoth gave some great instructions on how to use CSS to give Giulia the look and feel that she was going for. I thought it was really cool that Scott has a “sandbox” blog dedicated to testing out new themes and features on WordPress and have since done the same. (*This blog’s theme is Magatheme 1.0.4.)

Well that’s it for this week, but please keep those updates, posts, and forum threads coming!

Hello CUNYs and welcome to my last “my favorites” of the year — brrrr!!! I hope none of you were among the 400 stranded on the A train yesterday! I also hope that everyone was able to share the holidays with the ones they love. Speaking of which, I wanted to show some love for my last favorites of 2010…

Starting off the ‘2010 Blizzard Edition’ is a blog post from Anthony Picciano (@apicciano), in which he shares some great pics from his POV of the epic blizzard of 2010.

I'd rather be holding this box of pizza than stuck in that stranded minivan!

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My next favorite is an update from Daisy Dominguez (@daisilla) where she sends Maura Smale (@msmale) a public message about incorporating the Academic Commons feed into her RockMelt Web Browser.

Having never heard of RockMelt, I was eager to do some exploring. I was a little bummed to learn that I couldn’t download the web 2.0 enhancing web browser immediately, but happy to read a conversation between Maura and Daisy in which Daisy explains:

RockMelt keeps me from having to log onto FB & Twitter multiple times since I can kind of see what’s going on with their navigation. They even have a navigation thing on the right for CUNY Academic Commons so I can see what other people are up to kinda like on FB so I like that, too. I have trouble logging onto it sometimes, though, especially from my PC at work.

Thanks for posting about this time saving web 2.0 tool, Daisy. I look forward to receiving my invitation and posting about my experience as well.

---

Next up is a forum topic from the Open Access group entitled: OA presentation at the CUNY IT Conference.

Maura Smale (@msmale) shares some slides and handouts from the Open Access presentations at the #CUNYIT Conference held at John Jay College on December 3, 2010. Many thanks for sharing some great OA resources, Maura! If you want to learn more about the Day 1 session, please check out @valeriefutch’s terrific blog post where she highlights different sessions throughout the day.

Speaking of conferences (or rather “unconferences”), my last favorite of this week (and year) is a forum topic in the Digital Humanities Initiative group entitled: THATCamp New York.

In this post, grad student Jonathan Eskew (@toomanywords) reaches out to fellow CUNYs to find out who would be interested in putting together a cross-university THATCamp in New York. From the looks of the THATCamp website, the “unconference” will take place November 11th & 12 of next year and from the looks of the forum thread, there are a lot of interested CUNYs!

Well, that’s all for 2010… May you all have a wonderful New Year!

See you next year!! = )

As Matt Gold highlighted back  in the summer of 2009, the CUNY Academic Commons  rolled out an issues website where the development team could keep track of bugs and issues that are causing problems on the Commons.

The site is an installation of Redmine, a robust open-access project management solution which allows the community and development teams to report and keep track of bugs, feature requests, and support tickets. What I really like about the site is that you only have to log in to report an issue, which means that our work on the Commons is completely transparent. Below is a snapshot of the main page where you can access the CUNY Academic Commons project: Overview, Activity; Roadmap; Issues; News; Documents; and Files.

As a quick case in point of how this project management site is used, I wanted to share an experience from an issue that I recently reported…

After reading @brianfoote’s summary of changes for groups associated with the upgrade to version 1.1 on the Commons, I was excited to add the external blog posts feature to one of my groups. I was not as excited to learn that everyone in my group was sent an email notification for every single blog post associated with the external blog. I quickly reported this issue to the development team and Boone @boonebgorges just as quickly disabled the notifications associated with external blogs posts. Now, members will access the external blog posts directly through the group’s activity stream.

Speaking of reporting issues, after the development team  rolled out some recent upgrades to the site I noticed that issues are not only being reported by the community team, but also by members of the Commons. It’s great to see members participating in the back-end process that helps us maintain and enhance the CUNY Academic Commons, especially since we depend on individual feedback to improve the overall experience for all members. Have you come across something  odd while navigating the Commons? Please don’t hesitate to submit an issue associated with your account or the site. It’s quick and painless, just like the homepage states:

“We invite you to submit any bugs that you find as you’re using the site. To submit bugs and track their progress as we fix them, you’ll need to register for an account on the bug-tracking site (it’s quick and painless).”

You will just need to choose a login ID and password, fill out your first and last name, and email address.

Whether you report a bug through Redmine or via email, we invite you to help us make the bugs go SPLAT!

Thanksgiving has come and gone and this year I am thankful for many things — including my favorites of the week!

The first favorite I am thankful for is an update from Donna Gruber (@dygruber), linking to Queen College’s Hybrid Bootcamp Winter 2011: Call for Participants page.

Queens College’s Center for Teaching and Learning is inviting faculty to participate in the second round of their mentoring program that focuses on the development of hybrid courses to be taught Fall 2011.  If you have any questions, please contact Michelle Fraboni (@mfraboni, michelle.fraboni@qc.cuny.edu, 718.997.5324). The deadline is Wednesday, December 15th so be sure to mark your calendar!

Speaking of of which, you should also mark your calendar for my next favorite posted on the CUNY Games Network — a demo of an Emergency Shelter Course in Second Life.

On Wednesday, December 15th Andrew Bowarsky from CUNY School of Professional Studies will co-present with Anders Gronstedt from the Grondtedt Group on NYC’s Emergency Management course, which utilizes the Second Life platform. Second Life is a 3D virtual world where multiple users can connect in real time. Attend the presentation either  in-person at the Graduate Center or participate online as an avatar in Second Life at 11a.m. on December 15th. Those interested, please contact @aboyarsky at aboyarsky@gc.cuny.edu.

My next favorite this week is from Maura Smale, who also posted on the CUNY Games Network. 

Maura started a forum thread about a recently launched Web site called Play the Past (http://www.playthepast.org). This collaboratively edited site is:

dedicated to thoughtfully exploring and discussing the intersection of cultural heritage (very broadly defined) and games/meaningful play (equally broadly defined).

Authors not only span many academic fields, but across the entire country — representing multiple perspectives on complex cultural and technological issues. Thanks for sharing @msmale!

Next up this week is a helpful post from Shawn M. on the WordPress HELP!! forum.

Soon after member @shirablum posted a question about problems she was experiencing installing the Google Calendar plug-in on her WordPress blog, Shawn and I worked together on the forum to trouble-shoot. Shawn posted some great instructions which laid out how to activate the plug-in as a sidebar widget and I explained how to display events on a specific page. If you’re interested in activating this plug-in on your blog, I would highly recommend reading this helpful forum thread. Many thanks @shawnm!

The last favorite activity that I am thankful for a wiki edit from Lee Hachadorian (@leehach) on the Educational Blogs wiki page.

Many thanks Lee for not only have a fantastically great profile picture, but for contributing some great links to the Education Blogs wiki!

And now for some Cherpumple Monster Pie – is your stomach turning too?!

Hello CUNYs and welcome to the second installment of “Favorites of the Week” (minus the video bonus). With so many great activities running rampant on the Commons I admit that it took some time to narrow my favorites down to five this week… so I decided to go with seven!

First up is an update posted by CUNY’s University Director on Academic Technology, George Otte.

George posts about the Agenda for Day 1 and the Agenda for Day 2 for the 9th Annual CUNY IT Conference. I’m certainly looking forward to presenting at John Jay on 12/3 and attending the 12/14 event at the Grad Center. Thanks for posting @gotte, hope to see you there!

Next up is an update from Donna Gruber, who posted an update about a Tech Tuesday presentation at Queens College on 11/9.

In her update, Donna links to a fantastic presentation from Rowena Lee @rowenali. Professor Lee’s presentation highlights social media’s role in reshaping instruction — from communication transformation to challenges facing both instructors and learners (and much more). Even though I was not able to attend the presentation at Queens College, I’m grateful that Donna posted this update so I could view this wonderful presentation. Thanks @dygruber!

My next favorite this week is an update posted by, well… me. I posted an update in which I mentioned @msmale, thus sending her a public message on the Commons.

I wrote to Maura about not being able to attend the Rip: Remix Manifesto film screening during Open Access Week 2010 and, because Maura is awesome, she replied to my update posting a link to the film that I missed. You’re a champion for the cause @msmale, thanks for sharing!

Next up is a forum post from CUNY Academic Commons Project Director Matt Gold to the group Creative Commons & Copyright: Resources for Teaching Faculty.

In this forum post Matt explains to the group members that their group is now the featured group on the Commons home page, thus bringing some well deserved attention to the wiki page: Creative Commons Copyright  Resources WIKI. This wiki page is a collaborative resource that was started by the LaGuardia Center for Teaching and Learning and the Library. Of course there’s always room for more resources on any wiki page, so feel free to add to this list!

My next favorite this week is a wiki edit from Charlie Edwards called Blogs to Follow.

I’m very grateful to have come across this page, which was created as part of the Digital Humanities Resource Guide. This wiki page includes a brief selection of assorted bloggers, blogs for Center/Institutions, and CUNY blogs. I’m definitely going to add some of these to my blogroll! Readers, please help build out this list, by discipline/area of focus.

The next favorite on my list is a blog post from Rob Laurich called Pat’s Papers – a unique scanning of today’s newspapers.

Rob posts about NY1’s Pat Kiernan bringing his In the Papers segment to the Web. The website Pat’s Papers delivers the best daily stories ranging from international news to domestic politics to science to gossip. Thanks for sharing @madlibrarian!

Wrapping up my favorites this week is a forum post by John Boy to the group Open Access Publishing Network at CUNY.

Posting the topic “A Free Culture chapter at the Grad Center?“, John reaches out to other Graduate Center students, academics and activists passionate about creating a participatory and innovative society. For more information, visit: http://opencuny.org/freeculture/2010/11/10/free-culture-chapter. If anyone is interested in getting involved, please send a message to @jboy or post a reply to the group.

Well that covers my seven favorite activities this week (but not necessarily from this week). So, why seven instead of five? In case you don’t remember my answer from the beginning of this post, I’ll let Jerry Seinfeld explain…

One of the nifty features that @boonebgorges added to the CUNY Academic Commons towards the end of last semester is called My Favorites. This BuddyPress plug-in allows members to go through the activity stream of “My Commons” and the News page marking items of interest for further reading — thus extending their personal learning network.  

I like to take a few minutes each day to look through the news activity stream and bookmark group updates, wiki edits, forum threads, blog posts and mentions so I can look at them more closely when I have some free time. And, now that I have some free time, I wanted to share with you my favorites this week. Please feel free to watch the webisode, read the blog or both!

(click here to subscribe to the iTunes podcast)

 First up is a forum post for the CUNY Games Network, posted by Kimon Keramidas. 

Cutting to the chase, Kimon posts some great resources about “gamification”. The article from the Chronical of Higher Education explains,  

“it’s hard to deny that structuring learning experiences around frustration/reward dynamics can lead to engaged learners”.  

The second article from Kotaku.com challenges the notion that gamers are typically lazy and unmotivated, indicating,  

  “The “gamer brain” is rather good at getting things done. We’re mentally trained to hang in until we accomplish our objectives.” 

Both of these articles discuss the benefits of “gamification”, which utilizes game design concepts to get people to participate and enjoy things that they normally wouldn’t. The second article, written by Leigh Alexander, highlights her fear about people not being able to exist spontaneously because they will become too dependant on these receiving positive feedback for everything. 

Great forum post, thanks for sharing @kkeramidas! 

My next favorite is a blog post written by our very own community facilitator Brian Foote entitled “Statement of Purpose“.   

In his ideological post, Brian states that “open source” is not a new idea, explaining: 

  “I don’t think it’s a stretch to think back to CUNY’s free days as something akin to analog open-source.” 

While CUNY is no longer “free” for New Yorkers, open-source has found a new expression at CUNY in the form of the CUNY Academic Commons. Brian also stresses the importance of feedback noting, 

“your feedback on the site tells us the directions to go in and what we can do to make things better.” 

  Well put @brianfoote! 

While we’re on the topic of open-source, my next favorite is a forum post by Rebecca Brown Cesarani from the group, Open Education at CUNY.Rebecca shares and summarizes the NYTimes article “Why Innovation isn’t a Matter of Left of Right” written by Steven Johnson. The author subverts the conventional wisdom that market forces drive innovation. Johnson notes the importance of the “fourth quadrant”, which is: 

“the space of collaborative, nonproprietary innovation, exemplified in recent years by the Internet and the Web, two groundbreaking innovations not owned by anyone.”    

Johnson explains that while the incentives for innovation in the fourth quadrant are low so are the barriers — noting,  

“The Internet is the ultimate example of how fourth-quadrant innovation actually supports market developments: a platform built by a loosely affiliated group of public-sector and university visionaries that has become one of the most powerful engines of wealth creation in modern times.”    

Very insightful @rbcesarani! 

Next up is the activity of Scott Voth, who edited the wiki page “Privacy on the Commons“. 

This wiki page in the “Help” category has a lot of great information for members about Wiki Privacy, Blog Privacy and Group Privacy. Now if I need to get information about privacy on the Commons I know just where to go, thanks @scottvoth! 

I’ll end my Favorites of the Week on a blog post written by Rob Laurich entitled “Will Newsweek Survive?”. 

In his post, Rob explains that the magazine Newsweek was recently sold for an entire dollar to 92 year old tycoon Sidney Harman. He also links to New York Magazine’s article “Newsboy“, where author Steve Fishman explains the drama behind the deal and leaves us wondering about Newsweek’s uncertain future. 

Thanks for blogging about this @madlibrarian! 

In staying with the whole “sharing is caring” theme of this blog, what are some of your Favorites?? Please feel free to share one by adding your comment below!

Well it’s officially November — do you know what that means? A new project of mine called MY FAVORITES of the Week — a series of posts and podcasts which will highlight my favorite things happening on the CUNY Academic Commons.

My Favorite things — a familiar term, not simply because you’ve memorized all the lyrics from The Sound of Music movie, but because MY FAVORITES is a feature on the CUNY Academic Commons! Watch the video below to learn more about this time-saving aggregating plug-in…

Be sure to check back this weekend for my first MY FAVORITES of the Week post!

With so much content available online 24/7 it can sometimes be overwhelming to get a good sense of what’s new in the world. At the Commons, we’ve tried to make it a little easier for members to get their news (without the fluff). Next time you log into the Commons please take some time to check out the News or “activity” tab, which allows you to see what’s new with your friends, your groups or across the entire community. If you are searching for something specific simply use the drop-down filter where you can narrow your search to:

• updates;
• blog posts;
• blog comments;
• new forum topics;
• forum replies;
• new groups;
• new group memberships;
• friendship connections;
• new members or
• wiki edits

…whew!

If you find yourself without an abundance of free time just scroll through the activity stream and select the “Favorite” tab under the items you want to bookmark for future reference. You can access these bookmarked items by selecting the “My Favorites” tab.

Don’t want to search through the activity stream, but want to find out what’s new? We’ve got you covered! On the right side of the News page you can view recent posts from the Academic Commons News blog, Academic Commons Development blog and Twitter feed.