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Shrinking the Cost of College

Bestselling College Author to Provide Teens, College Students and Parents with Tips on How to Cut the Price of a Bachelor’s Degree on First Twitter #CollegeChat

lynnsheadshotLos Angeles, CA, May 19, 2010— Bestselling author and higher-education journalist Lynn O’Shaughnessy will share tips from her new book Shrinking the Cost of College: 152 Ways to Cut the Price of a Bachelor’s Degree during the first edition of  #CollegeChat on Twitter on June 1, 2010 at 6 pm Pacific, Theresa Smith, principal of Pathway Communications and moderator of #CollegeChat announced today.

During the live Twitter chat, Lynn will discuss how to become a smart consumer in cutting the cost of college and will describe how the college financial aid process works and where to find the money. Among Lynn’s 152 tips to shrink college costs are:

  • Learn which 60 colleges offer the best financial aid packages
  • Discover where you’ll find the biggest source of scholarship cash
  • Find out why 82% of students at private colleges receive merit scholarships and how your child can
  • Discover how teens can win academic scholarships despite mediocre SAT/ACT scores
  • Find out how students can capture scholarships by leveraging their gender
  • Learn how to use a free federal database to investigate any school in the country
  • Find out how you can make $200,000 and still qualify for significant need-based aid at pricey colleges

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Lynn is also the author of The College Solution, an Amazon bestseller. She regularly writes about college for CBSMoneyWatch and at her own higher-ed blog – TheCollegeSolutionBlog. She has shared her college advice in such media outlets as Business Week, Los Angeles Times, CNN, Associated Press, The New York Times and Money Magazine. The higher-ed journalist gives presentation about college strategies at schools, financial firms and corporations. Lynn also provides private consulting services for families who desire help in navigating the college process.

New to Twitter?

In order to participate in the chat, attendees will need to have a Twitter account.  To sign up for a Twitter account, go to http:// twitter.com. The easiest way to follow the chat is to use TweetChat (http://tweetchat.com). Simply log in to TweetChat with your Twitter information (email or username followed by password) and then enter in CollegeChat without the “#” and you will be placed into the chat room with only those participating in #CollegeChat. More detailed information about signing up for Twitter and using TweetChat can be found at http://pathwaypr.com/how-to-participate-in-a-twitter-chat

About #CollegeChat

#CollegeChat is a live monthly conversation intended for teens, college students, parents, and higher education experts on Twitter. Questions for each #CollegeChat edition should be sent to Theresa Smith, the moderator of #CollegeChat either via http://Twitter.com/collegechat or by entering questions online at http:// pathwaypr.com/shrinking-the-cost-of-college . CollegeChat can also be found on Twitter at http://Twitter.com/collegechat .

About Pathway Communications

Pathway Communications is a Los Angeles based public relations and social media consultancy that has helped put both emerging small and medium sized companies targeting a number of industries — including higher education, financial services, bio-technology, manufacturing, technology and e-commerce –on the map and at the forefront of the conversation. Pathway Communications’ clients have stretched from the Silicon Valley to the East Coast. More information can be found at http:// pathwaypr.com, by phone at 818-704-8481, or by email. Pathway is on Twitter at http://twitter.com/pathwaypr.

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Editors Note: All trade or brand names mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.

How to Participate in a Twitter Chat

If you are new to Twitter, you might not have participated in a Twitter Chat but you have probably come across a chat taking place. Twitter chats are scheduled conversations between Twitter users about whatever topic that interests them and are kept on track with a #hashtag, a topic with a hash symbol (“#”) at the start to identify it. One of my favorite Twitter chats to participate in is #journchat. It occurs on Monday evenings and is a weekly conversation between journalists, bloggers and public relations folks that was started by Sarah Evans.

Participating in a Twitter chat is a great way to learn from and connect with other individuals who might also share your passion for a specific subject area. According to the Twitter Chat Schedule , maintained by Robert Swanwick,  there are already over 132 chats on Twitter and they cover almost every subject area imaginable including blogging, design, small business advice,  and gardening. On June 1, 2010 at 6 PM Pacific #CollegeChat will make its debut on Twitter and will be moderated by me through my @collegechat Twitter account. #CollegeChat will start out as a monthly conversation intended for teens, college students, parents, and higher education experts on Twitter.

Getting Started

In order to participate in a Twitter chat, attendees will need to have a Twitter account.  To sign up for a Twitter account, go to http:// twitter.com. Once you have your Twitter account, you are ready to go.

There are a number of formats to use to follow a Twitter chat but the easiest way I have found to follow the chat is to use TweetChat (http://tweetchat.com). Assuming you will be joining me on #CollegeChat, simply log in to TweetChat with your Twitter information (email or username followed by password) and then enter in CollegeChat without the “#” and you will be placed into the chat room with only those participating in #CollegeChat.

You can also participate in the chat from the main Twitter screen. Just enter the #hashtag for the chat with the “#” sign into the ‘search” box and you will be able to see everyone who is participating. If you want to join in, you will need to remember to add the #hashtag after every entry. You don’t need to do this step if you use TweetChat.

I hope you can join me on June 1, 2010 at 6 PM Pacific for the first #CollegeChat. Our first guest will be Amazon bestselling author and higher education  journalist Lynn O’Shaughnessy who will share tips from her new book Shrinking the Cost of College: 152 Ways to Cut the Price of a Bachelor’s Degree

How to quickly check your Facebook privacy settings

If you are at all concerned about your privacy on Facebook–and you should be– then you might be interested in a nifty bookmark  tool by ReclaimPrivacy.org I came across today via Mike Melanson of ReadWriteWeb . According to Mike:

The bookmarklet (essentially a snippet of Javascript that executes from your browser bar) assesses your Facebook settings in a number of different areas. It looks at personal information, contact information, friends, tags and connections, known applications that leak personal information and whether or not your friends can accidentally share your information. It also checks whether or not you’re currently sharing information via the controversial “Instant Personalization” that was unveiled last month at f8.

The bookmarklet is easy to install and this is what it looked like after it ran a scan on my own Facebook privacy settings.

Yikes!

To see if your Facebook account privacy settings pass, all you need to do is follow these directions from Mike’s article:

To run the bookmarklet and see how private you may or may not be on Facebook, simply follow these directions:

  1. Drag this link to your web browser bookmarks bar: Scan for Privacy
  2. Log in to facebook.com and then click that bookmarklet
  3. You will see a series of privacy scans that inspect your privacy settings and warn you about settings that might be unexpectedly public.

How to select Facebook privacy settings

Jason Chen, APPLE, and the iPhone caper. Blogger versus Journalist? Shield Laws? Who decides? #Journchat

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Since the Apple stolen iPhone caper story broke a little over a week ago headlining Jason Chen, an editor at Gizmodo, there have been more questions raised over a multitude of issues than answers. Did Apple really send employees to search the home of the college kid who found the phone? Did Gizmodo’s Chen break any laws or just commit good journalism as asked by Warren Olney during his conversation last week with Kim Zetter a reporter with Wired magazine and Peter Scheer, the executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition? Was the search of Chen’s home legal? Was the seizure of his ‘work” including computer, phones, electronic records , correspondence and possible records of sources legal? Will sources now have serious misgivings when talking with reporters in the future? Is Chen a blogger or is he a reporter? Does he have different rights depending on whether he is reporter or blogger? Who gets to decide who is a journalist? And finally has Apple turned to the dark side as asked by Jon Stewart? Those are just a few of my questions. What are yours?