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Secondary schools do not have the same technical resources and capabilities as universities. They usually need to rely on ready-to-use tools to fulfill their information and communication technology ( ICT) structure. Social networking site ( SNS) has emerged as a practical solution to this need. However, few have collected empirical data on the application of SNS in a secondary school setting. This paper probes into the current condition of SNS usage among secondary school students using a sample of 851 students in Macau, a Special Administrative Region ( SAR) of China. Data in terms of access, profile and activities are collected. The activities on SNSs are analyzed by regression techniques to produce a prediction model relating perceived academic benefit and SNS activities. The model yields a strong positive relationship between that benefit and activities such as raising questions and engaging in study-related discussions. The model also yields a weak dependency on activities such as searching for information and entertainment. The paper also evaluates the actual academic utilization of a Facebook Group for one class of secondary school students for a period of one year. At the end of the year, various opinion parameters are measured, and improvements are observed in most parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the nature of educational studies is considered and discussed. Following some introductory comments, the paper deals with philosophy, psychology and sociology in relation to education. This is followed by a section on social psychology and the paper ends with a section on the history of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary immigration to the United States and the formation of new ethnic groups are the complex and unintended social consequences of the expansion of the nation to its post-World War II position of global hegemony. Immigrant communities in the United States today are related to a history of American military, political, economic, and cultural involvement and intervention in the sending countries, especially in Asia and the Caribbean Basin, and to the linkages that are formed in the process that open a variety of legal and illegal migration pathways. The 19.8 million foreign-born persons counted in the 1990 U.S. census formed the largest immigrant population in the world, though in relative terms, only 7.9% of the U.S. population was foreign-born, a lower proportion than earlier in this century. Today's immigrants are extraordinarily diverse, a reflection of polar-opposite types of migrations embedded in very different historical and structural contexts. Also, unlike the expanding economy that absorbed earlier flows from Europe, since the 1970s new immigrants have entered an "hourglass" economy with reduced opportunities for social mobility, particularly among the less educated, and new waves of refugees have entered a welfare state with expanded opportunities for public assistance. This paper seeks to make sense of the new diversify. A typology of contemporary immigrants is presented, and their patterns of settlement, their distinctive social and economic characteristics compared to major native-born racial-ethnic groups, and their different modes of incorporation in - and consequences for - American society are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]