Educational benefits of social networking sites

Today, technology provides a lot of opportunities for education that can be accessed by everyone around the globe. The educational field has completely transformed ever since the Internet and technology are included into the equation.

Due to the growth in social networking websites, educators are looking for their potential for use in education, having the conscious that social networking sites may have the ability to endorse both collaboration and active learning.

Thus, the affirmative effects of social networking in education are perceptive. Social networking sites not only assist students but also offer great opportunities for communication among administrators and teachers.

 Using social networking sites, teachers can able to improve the involvement of their students in studies and education, improve technological ability, provide a great sense of collaboration in classroom and make good communication skills.

The University of Minnesota had a research on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook and found that the social networking sites have a great impact for educational growth for students in high school.

Christine Greenhow, the principal investigator in the study, has elaborated the impact of social networking sites on education. She has done her research on students, aged from 16 to 18, studying in urban school, located at Midwest.

The study showed that, 94 percent of the observed students used the Internet, 77 percent had their account on social networking sites and 82 percent of the students went online at home.

The surveyed students said that they have learned many important skills such as technological skills, communication skills, creativity and being open for diverse opinions and views, which are all important for 21^st century. Moreover, teachers can also be able to make the school more linked, appropriate and meaning to the students.

Also, the study showed that, the students are using latest technology systems, updating web content and also having idea about web design and layout. They share their creative work like films, poetries, etc., and also carry out the responsible use of Information as well as Technology. Few among these students are also aware of professional networking opportunities that social networking websites usually provide.

As a result of this study, Greenhow told that social networking sites provide more than just social exploitation. It offers wide opportunities to give support what the educators learn on the websites.

 Therefore, social networking websites are considered as an ideal source that helps us to widen our knowledge. Recent survey says that millions of people accessing social networking sites for their educational requirements. Thus, the field of education has undergone a drastic shift and hence gained a new dimension for the past decade.

The following are the popular social networking websites that have effective educational benefits:

EDMODO:  Edmodo is the largest social networking website used mainly for education purposes. As per the survey, more than 13 million people are using this website effectively. Edmodo provides great security for all its users. If an institute is using this website, then the institute will get a security code from this website. Hence, the institute can share the code to the people whomever it wants to access the website. This is how the website provides great security to its users. Edmodo encourages other activities such as posting assignments, conducting surveys and sharing images and videos.

ENGLISH BABY: Teaching conversational English is the main objective of the English Baby website. The analysis showed that nearly 1.5 million people across the globe are using this website. This website is very famous among the Chinese people still the website is also used by Americans, Japanese, Indians, Egyptians, etc. However, only the premium users get rights to access this website.

LIVEMOCHA:  Livemocha is a social networking website used to teach various languages to the website users. As per the analysis, nearly 1.2 million people around the world are using this website. The website consists of a collection of course material available in more than 38 different languages. The users of this website can perform activities such as posting content and reviewing content.

ACADMIA.EDU: Acadmia.edu is a science-related website built specially for scientists and the respective college students. As per the study, more than 1.9 million people are using the website all over the world. It is a platform mainly for academic researchers and aficionados to share research materials and research papers to other website users. Using this website, the users can able to share their research papers with other users in the same field, have contact with experts of a field and get their help in a research. The website also shows the number of people accessed the papers and their reviews to the users who post their research papers.

EPERNICUS: Epernicus is another social networking website, focuses on social networking aspect, built mainly for scientists and researchers. Unlike Acadmia.edu, it doesn’t allow users to share their research papers and materials. It allows users to post questions and get suitable answers from recognized experts. The users of the website can participate on any topic related to science and research and hence the website is quite informative for its users.

COURSE CRACKER: Course Cracker is a network that enables students, teachers and parents to connect with each other resulting in the refinement of the learning process. The main objective of this site is to improve the educational experience of users by using latest web applications and web tools. This website allows the users to post their course material, quizzes, assignments and other sources related to education and also give them permission to access the posted content.

STUDENTS CIRCLE NETWORK: Social circle network is one among the latest editions to the club of social networking sites, consists of different course materials in the field of science, business, engineering, computing and humanities. The website consists of nearly 10,400 intellectual courses, targeting mainly students and teachers.

9^TH PERIOD: The main focus of this website is on web applications and online tools. Thus, it facilitates education to its users, such as students, teachers and universities, through the Internet.  This website allows users who have similar interest to interact with each other without any discrepancies.

THE SYNAPSE: This website mainly concentrates on biology students, tutors and researchers all over the globe. This website acts as a great source of latest happenings and development in biology, generally built on Ning platform.

THE MOLECULAR FORCES: It is another website built on Ning platform, focuses on physics and chemistry students, teachers and researchers. Teachers can able to distribute their study materials and learning approaches in this website. The website also acts as a great platform for sharing and asking questions on new ideas.

The following are the most popular social networking websites that promote education:

WIKIPEDIA: A popular social networking website that consists of a great repository of informative articles, generally used by millions of users every one hour. When you see in the discussion board, you can find many people sharing their views and opinions in a forum based settings. Also, they ask questions, review, modify, mention references, give feedbacks and share their knowledge gained from the article.

FACEBOOK: Facebook is a famous social networking site that has nearly a billion users all over the world. This website is considered to be the best website for promoting education. In this modern generation, you can find almost every student has an account in Facebook. The Facebook groups are formed for schools and classes and thus the website allows both the teachers and students to share their information, post queries and answers, set reminders about upcoming events, etc. The eminent Facebook groups that are available are Wikieducators , E-Learning in developing and developed countries, Teaching Critical Thinking and Active Learning.

LINKEDIN: LinkedIn is one of the largest website created mainly for business relationships and networking. This website is used by nearly a million of companies and professionals across the globe. Not only LinkedIn educates its users, but also provides advantageous benefits to employers and job seekers. Like Facebook, LinkedIn also has so many groups for educators.

These are the top 20 social networking websites that advances educations:

1.      Twitter

2.      Classroom 2.0

3.      Facebook

4.      Google Plus

5.      Plurk

6.      Educator’s PLN

7.      Sophia

8.      Learn Central

9.      ISTE Community

10.  WhoTeachers

11.  Edutopia

12.  Technology Integration in Education

13.  The 21^st Century Teacher

14.  Better Lesson

15.  Diipo

16.  Intel Education Teachers Engage Community

17.  Everloop

18.  Edudemic

19.  K12 Advantage

20.  Collaborative Translation

How social networking sites assist individual educators?

•          Promotes creativity
•          Enhances communication skills
•          Develops collaboration and team work
•          Provides access to information
•          Increases awareness
•          Develops social connection

By using social networking sites, students get the following benefits:

•          Improvement of communication skills
•          Improvement of technology skills
•          Increase in the exposure of diverse views
•          Develop a positive image
•          Increase the engagement of learning

By using social networking sites, teachers get the following benefits:

•          Increase the access to resources
•          Collaborate with other staffs
•          Exchange information and lesson plans
•          Reach parents who are not able to come to school
•          Form partnership with schools in different states and countries
•          Get feedback about school and events
•          Communicate with parents effectively

 As it is easy to access and use Social networking websites from anywhere in the world and at any time, they have gained more popularity among people. Moreover, social media sites provide a vast amount of information useful for educators and thus make students learn dexterously discriminate between what information is useful for them and what is not.

Despite promoting education among students, social networking sites also helps them for successful employment. Students who enter into the workforce can able to use social networking sites to network and thus find employment too.

Thus, social networking sites not only play a vital role in connecting people but also play an escalating role in education.

Starting Off On Web Design, Basic Suggestions That Could Move Things Upward - By K2B Solutions

So you have decided to become a web designer, but you don’t have any idea where to start off. Don’t panic! As you think, it is not so hard to design a website. You are just required to spend some effort and time - That’s it!

Generally, web designers build the visual elements of a website. You just need to have a very good grasp of design prerequisites and also learn how to use the chief design software. Also, you must have the specific field of knowledge and the technical skills.

As everyone knows, creating a good first impression is extremely vital. Therefore, it is mandatory to build best websites that help you to increase the number of visitors to your website.

Before start building a web design, you need to have a basic idea about the important things that have to be implemented in the web design.

The following suggestions are targeted at neophyte web designers that help them to create a web design:

• Use similar field websites as references: To get a general idea of what to do with your website, first you need to refer other relevant websites. You can use other websites as your references but at the same time, you need to make sure that you don’t copy the same. If you have seen any attractive web design, color, layout or scheme, then try to use it as the beginning point of your website.

• Build an inimitable web design: To gain more number of visitors to your website, you need to think something innovative and create a unique web design that attracts your visitors. You need to ensure that the web design must not contain too much of animations and graphics. 

• Create pertinent and utile content: Create a content that is relevant to your website and ensure that the content is useful for the website visitors. When creating the content, you should have the conscious that the content should not be too lengthy, which requires the visitors to do much scrolling.

• Use content supportive images: The graphic that you use in your website must not overlook the content. It should always give a great support to the content present in your website. Always avoid using too much graphics on your website because unnecessary dumping of graphics may disturb your visitors’ concentration and thus make them leave the website immediately.

• Ensure limited file size: So many factors are there affecting the website loading time but still you need to make sure that the large files are not the reason. If the file you use is less in size, then your website loads very fast in the Internet and thus results in high Google ranking.  

• Create your website that is easily acquired by visitors: Build your website that is easily reachable and acquirable by visitors across the globe. This makes the visitors to easily meander across the web pages of your website.

• Use good fonts, metaphors and backgrounds: Use very good fonts, metaphors and backgrounds in your website based on your clients’ preference and also make sure that these components fit well to your website. Also, ensure that the font you are using for your website is easily readable and easily obtainable by everyone.

• Don’t use shouting colors: Website color scheme, the tool used for building color combinations, is a very important component of web design. When creating your website, avoid using shouting colors like red, yellow, green, etc. Always try to use the most common color schemes such as Blue, orange and white – Red, yellow and white – Yellow, grey and white – Red, grey and white – Blue and white.

• Use the maximum existing space: Always try to utilize almost all the available spaces and also ensure that the website doesn’t looks congested as well. On the other hand, never leave empty spaces in your website. Instead of leaving empty spaces, you can add some relevant graphics in your website that attracts more visitors. 

• Ensure no white spots: In your website, make sure that there are no white spots left out as such. Always fill up with images and text on all the sides of your webpage. Every spot of your website must have its own things and they should not interrupt the website visitors too.

• Avoid broken links: Ensure that all the links in your website are working properly. A good website shouldn't have any broken links. The broken links give a bad impression to your website and also make your website valueless during the Search Engine Optimization process. As a result, the visitors may lose the chance of viewing your website.

• Don’t forget to add site search option: Site search option is an imperative option that has to be added in your website. Because, the clients generally use the search option when they look for something in your website.      

• Have clear and simple navigation: Ensure that you are using a clear and uncomplicated navigation menu. If you use intricate Flash-based menus or some other tiered menus, then the visitors will not know how to use those menus and ultimately leave your website.

• Avoid using excessive banner advertisements: Instead of using too many advertisements banners, give more relevant content and also its links into your website. Because, visitors don’t like to spend much time on advertisements. So, avoid using unnecessary advertisements in your website.

• Follow proper HTML standards: You should always follow the appropriate HTML standards to make your website HTML-compliant. So that your website will work properly in all browsers.

Hope, the above mentioned suggestions would definitely give you more confidence in tackling web design. 

Business Benefits of Offshoring or Nearshoring.

In these tough financial times, many organizations are expecting far-flung destinations for their business or IT processes to take advantage of lower wages, lower infrastructure costs and lower operational costs.

Outsourcing is one of the best practices proven as a great business model for increasing profit margin, reducing operating costs and maintaining high-quality customer service. The business model is generally scalable and it allows companies in any business market to adjust resource allocation especially during the business conditions change.

In order to increase profits and reduce expenses, many companies choose for out-of-country outsourcing, which consists of two major categories such as offshoring and nearshoring.

Offshoring is the process of reducing production costs by relocating business processes, operational processes or supporting processes of a company, from one country to another foreign country.

Recently, offshoring has been primarily allied with the sourcing of administrative or technical services that support both local operations and global operations from outside the home country, through internal or external delivery models.

The main reasons why companies would offshore their IT projects are as follows:

·         Increase in productivity

·         Availability of  manpower pool

·         Rapid turnaround time

·         Low staff-related costs

·         Significant cost advantage

·         Focus on essential business operations

·         Operational flexibility

·         Enter in new market areas

Even though the preliminary stage savings could be made through offshoring are conspicuous, what is less palpable are the hidden costs, problems that occur in management, variation in employment practices and laws, time lag, instability and miscommunication among clients and suppliers, that can result due to a misalignment of expectations when delivering services.

In contrast to offshoring, nearshoring is the process of transferring IP processes or business to other companies in a nearby country, habitually sharing a border with your country, where both the companies expect to benefit from different dimensions of proximity such as cultural, economic, political, linguistic, geographic, time zone, etc.

Most companies prefer the nearshore approach for their business or IT processes because of the following reasons:

·         Similar time zone: As the nearshore destinations have similar time zone, both the parties will get some key advantages such as work done at same time, get well-coordinated projects, which leads to more satisfied and steady workforces.

·     Similar language: As both the parties are in the same region, the nearshore provides experts in their client’s language. Therefore, the nearshore providers can able to easily and effectively communicate with their clients via. Telephone or E-mail.

·        Geographic proximity: The Geographical closeness of both the parties allows them meet in person whenever they require. This helps them to easily solve some difficult issues face to face.

·  Cultural affinity: The cultural affinity of the parties helps them to have better communication as well as coordination. As there is a huge gap between offshoring partners, a lot of problems arise, which will be definitely avoided in nearshoring.

·         High-standards of education: Although the education standards are not identical, they are more likely to be related in nearby countries. The well-trained nearshore providers will be having an education similar to their clients.

·         Cost-effectiveness: Nearshoring provides organizations the ability to manage a high-level of control on their production costs by enduring the cost of doing business at low-cost.

Nearshoring conquers several constraints of offshoring such as time lags, variation in local employment practices and laws and other oversights to tackle risks, which include intellectual property thievery and fraud. It offers great constancy and security along with cost-effectiveness. The benefits of nearshoring reflect both the country’s trade practices, standards, legislation and institutions.

For many companies, nearshoring represents the perfect combination between operational efficacy and cost-savings, merging the advantages of both outsourcing and on-site activities.

In the sourcing industry, nearshoring is continue to grow and also becoming a feasible and attractive alternative when compared to offshoring, by focusing on proficient service areas as well as encouraging cultural, geographical and long-term cost savings.

In recent days, nearshoring has become a great marketing differentiator for the nations and providers who want to make themselves apart from other sourcing centers in Asia, particularly the dominant, India.

Even, already established offshore providers are now setting up nearshore centers to remain competitive to the UK market. Still, India is doing great job in the offshore stakes. Indian companies are also looking forward to extend the offshore opportunity that helps them to increase nearshore strategies and also they are building up websites in several European countries.

Both offshoring and nearshoring entail export of production or functions, however both are basically different. A business may choose offshoring or nearhoring to utilize the services of outsourcing provider or to carry out the process itself.

Depends on the goal, business activities and risk management strategy, an organization will choose the type of outsourcing approach, either nearshoring or offshoring. However, the organization should also be aware that offshoring may cause more risks when compared to nearshoring.

Why Web Design Is Essential for Your Business?

Are you a business owner seeking a great success in an online world? If yes, first you need to concentrate on your company’s website before engaging in other business enhancement activities.  Because, a plethora of studies show that a well-build website generates better customer traffic and also an improved user interface that engenders new business at an exponential rate.

Today, any service or product required by a mass of people is generally being searched using Internet. Therefore, most companies have expanded their businesses worldwide by launching their own business websites. This helps them to compete with their competitors in the global market. 

Despite using websites for global advertising and marketing, a good website can also be used to promote businesses locally. The website helps the people, who are staying in your city, to view the details of your company and the services and products that you provide.

K2B Solutions Web Design Company

Your website speaks great about your business if you have your website built with client testimonials, company portfolio, visual samples and examples of your work and everything in the website must be clean, easy to find, friendly, inviting, etc.

Suppose, if you are having an unorganized and outdated website, then the visitor of your website will get the doubt about the quality of your work. A well-designed website gives them an impression that your business is more trustworthy.

Web Design is one of the superlative options for online business to grow. It makes your services and products available to the intended audience at the right time. A good web design enables your business to look its best everyday. If you have a well-built quality website, your business looks more established and professional.

Quality web design enables you to build your website with the latest technologies. Thus, it helps you to build the website more optimized for web and more responsive. The website will also be intuitive, easy to use and well-organized due to the implementation of quality web designs.

A website built with quality web design principles will also impede the power of Search Engine Optimization techniques. When your website is properly optimized for search engines, then your target customers will be able to find your company or business much easier. This increases the inflow of potential customers, results in the growth of your business.

Website Design and Development Solutions - K2B Solutions

To impress all the currently available search engines for higher ranking, you need to pursue some standard components in your website. You need to have your website well-groomed and also with proper navigation, limited flash animation and correct color combination. Your website should be user-friendly and aesthetically designed with quality content.

Also, your website should have a good logo design, which is very important for every business. Logo design helps you to make the people recognize your business, products and services easily and swiftly.

A well-designed website not only helps you to make your business advertised but also to get a huge amount of profit. It allows your business to interact with your customers without any visible connection.

For user-friendly and visually appealing website, you need the web developments services of an experienced and efficient Web Design Company who can able to design a business website based on your business requirements.

K2B Solutions is a leading Web Design and Development Company offering comprehensive web development solutions to our clients to deliver tangible results for their businesses. We create robust and elegant websites that attracts your customers towards your business and thus helps you to increase your business growth.

We use latest web technologies to create exclusive websites for our clients, to make their business endeavor a grand success.

Website Security – Why it is so Freaking Important?

It is undeniably known that the Internet has become the greatest place of opportunity, providing individuals and businesses a platform to communicate with the world. Because of this, websites and web applications are rapidly growing and they have been widely used by both individuals and business owners for their various activities such as publishing, sales and marketing.

Moreover, the websites that are used by consumers are considered to be the weakest point of security, since most websites are prone to security risks. Suppose, you are a web hosting provider with more than thousands of hosted websites, then it is necessary for you to eradicate the possibility of attacks that would gain access to user accounts or your network.

The various types of attacks against websites and web applications are as follows:

• Cross-Site Scripting (XSS): XSS is one of the major problems on websites. Around 80% of websites being vulnerable because of XSS. This attack occurs when an application takes user supplied input strings, typed in forms or search boxes, without validating or encoding. It allows attackers to run a script on server or client, which can usurp user session, mutilate websites, introduce worms, etc.

• Malicious File Execution: This attack is susceptible to RFI or Remote File Inclusion. It allows attackers to execute ghastly attacks by including hostile code and data. RFI attacks affect any framework that accepts files or filenames from users and also affects XML and PHP.

Website Security - K2B Solutions Web Design Company

• Failure to Restrict URL Access: Web applications generally protect web pages by preventing the display of URLs or links to unauthorized users. Sometimes, the applications may fail to do this process. In this situation, attackers access web pages directly and perform unauthorized operations.

•  Insecure Direct Object Reference: Attackers can manipulate the references to access internal implementation objects, such as files, directories and database records in forms or URLs, which are usually exposed by application developers.

•   Information Leakage and Improper Error Handling: Sometimes applications unexpectedly leak information about their internal workings, configuration or infringe privacy through different types of application problems. Attackers make use of this and steal secure data and demeanor serious attacks.

• Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF): This attack forces an authenticated user to send pre-authenticated request to a web application that led the user to initiate hostile action that benefits the attacker.

• Injection Flaws: This attack is very common in web applications. It occurs when the input given by a user is interpreted as a part of query or command and sent to an interpreter. The attacker inserts data that is interpreted as a command that may expose or change data.

• Broken Authentication and Session Management: Due to unsecured login and logout processes, attackers compromise keys, passwords and authentication tokens, to presume other user’s identity information.

• Insecure Communications: Web applications may sometimes fail to encrypt network traffic when it is obligatory to secure sensitive communications. This led attackers to conduct attacks such as interception of text HTTP requests and SSL certificate spoofing.

• Insecure Cryptographic Storage: Web applications infrequently use cryptographic functions that protect credentials and data. Thus, attackers make use of the weakly protected information and conduct other user’s identity theft and other criminal activities such as credit card fraud.

Website security is one of the greatest concerns of most website owners. It is really intricate to completely protect your website. Nevertheless, there are many steps that you can take to make your website as secure as possible and also help you take necessary actions suppose your website has been hacked.

Fundamentally, it is important to have a secure website for your online success as your visitors, readers and customers feel safe to use your website.

Before hackers attack your website, you just need to find out the security threads and take necessary actions:

•           Always keep your website safe from malware, hackers and other threads.

•          Use strong passwords and keep the passwords secret.

Website Security - Why it so Freaking Important

•          Do not let your website get expelled by the leading search engines – Google, Yahoo, etc.

•         Increase the confidence level of visitors with website seal.

•    Use daily scans to check for web-based vulnerabilities.

•    Exploit online dashboard that displays the detailed report of issues that occur.

• Regularly backup your website.

• Constantly keep your virus-software updated.

• Do not download anything or open email attachments if you are not confident in.

Nowadays, several techniques have been used by hackers to compromise a website. However, they use the techniques successfully because of the vulnerabilities in the software that run on your hosting account or your local computer.

Hence, a lot of things are there to keep in mind when you think for a website security:

•  Security: Simply blocking malware and malicious software is not enough to have a secured website. Also, you need to be careful in protecting your website from attacks such as Injection Flaws and Cross-Site Scripting, which can easily attack your website.

•  Performance: The performance features give you the guarantee that your website doesn’t take long loading time.

•  Management: If you have a surge or a dip in your website visitor, then you need to check out whether anything has pretentious your website to cause this.

•  Help: Some companies are there to provide community help, which gives you the support structure that you need to keep your website running fast.

How to prevent the security risks of your website?

To prevent your website from security risks, you need to use automated scanning and detection tools. Also, make sure that the detection software that you use for this purpose is infallible. Some automated detectors will not find out all the injection vulnerabilities. So, it is necessary for you to perform a complete review on code.

Similarly, manual penetration testing and manual code review have to be done even though you use automated detection. Because, the automated detection tools infrequently fail to detect some XSS vulnerabilities and also some insecure direct object references.

Eventually, there are a number of safeguard practices that you need to be followed to prevent the security risks of your website. Lack of awareness and alertness of software users and website owners is the main reason for the continuing success of hackers. If you commit yourselves to protect your own data and website, then the website attackers would definitely have a much harder time.

Using website security helps you to keep your website as safe as possible and hence make your customers feel comfortable using your website.