Ever since teaching 6th graders about blogging, I’ve paid more attention to how social media sites can enhance learning. Blogging certainly can improve writing skills and at the same time introduce children to ideas that will make them more marketable when they hit the job force (assuming they do).

I haven’t heard of elementary school teachers using Twitter, but David Parry, an assistant professor of Emerging Media and Communications at the University of Texas at Dallas says Twitter really enhances learning in his classes.

He calls Twitter a “classroom-communication tool.” His class titled, “Introduction to Computer-Mediated Communication” was the trial run. Students were required to sign up for Twitter and to send a few messages with the service each week. They had to subscribe to his Twitter feed. He updated students a few times a day on useful web sites, or the rhythm of his day.

As I write this, I’m conscious of the claims some SEOs make that Google "needs" them in order to make the results relevant. Google would hardly collapse without optimizers’ interest, but can the same be said about Digg?

Digg’s Kevin Rose has officially announced what we’ve all seen over the past week or so: it’s now a lot harder to push your content onto the front page of Digg. In fact, Digg’s adjusting its algorithm so that you’ll need well north of 100 Diggs to have any chance.

As we point out in our FAQ, occasionally you will see stories in the upcoming section with 100+ Diggs – this is evidence of our promotion algorithm hard at work. One of the keys to getting a story promoted is diversity in Digging activity. When the algorithm gets the diversity it needs, it will promote a story from the Upcoming section to the home page. This way, the system knows a large variety of people will be into the story.

Digg fans have always had the option of creating their own version of the site, thanks to Pligg. Now Reddit fans are going to get the opportunity to create their own personal version of the popular social voting site.

According to the Reddit blog, the company is in closed beta testing this week as it figures out how exactly to let users create their own version of Reddit.

You will be able to make three kinds of reddits: public, restricted, and private. A public reddit is just like the current reddits: anyone can view and submit to them. A restricted reddit allows anyone to view the content, but only invited members may submit, comment, or vote. A private reddit is like a restricted reddit, but with the additional restriction that only members can view the content as well. Moderators of a reddit will be able to remove posts and ban users from their reddits.

I know that Pownce doesn’t care much for the comparisons to Twitter, but now that it’s come out of beta–and opened-up to all–the comparisons will surely follow.

I joined Pownce (my profile) back when it launched, but haven’t touched it since, mostly because it wasn’t as well used as Twitter–understandable considering you had to have an invite in order to use it.

So, will you switch to Pownce, stick with Twitter, or use both/neither?

Here’s a peek at it: