Shel Israel, author and consultant on social media and public relations conducts an online anecdotal survey through his blog. The survey is part of research he is conducting for SAP, a business software company. The responses to the survey from a wide variety of professionals, authors, and leaders in business, technology, public relations, education, and other fields provide insight on the state of the web and how its emerging social aspects are impacting society. Below are excerpts from an educator, and from a student:

Scotland's Ewan McIntosh is a research practitioner for Scotland’s national education agency, Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS).

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Throughout Scotland educators are realizing what is to be gained from having a wider pool of expertise on which to draw, and social media is the glue binding them together.

The impact on education of children is profound, even if the children themselves are still getting limited use of social media, especially when they hit secondary school (yes, there are more kids in Primary schools doing exciting things with social media than those aged 11+). As teachers refine their practice quicker and with better expertise to choose from, in the form of reflections and ideas and action research, the education of our children improves in tandem."
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    The blog continues to be a place which people value for constructive reflection, for self-promotion or the promotino of their ideas. Presence tools (Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku et al) are for a different, more fun purpose, and some are using them in clever ways in tandem with their more thoughtful blog profile.

    In decline? Television. I know everyone's saying that TV and IPTV are the big things this year but they've obviously never met a teen. Teens don't watch the telly. They want much more interactivity than that offers. You can put the telly on the web, but it's what's around a program rather than the program itself that is going up. TV itself, in education, in business, in pleasure, is heading down.

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I think that gaming and games, as distinct from virtual reality per se, offer the best opportunities for sims and improvement of employee skills - the employee, after all, remains the most important asset of a business.

    There are some great examples of medics, with problems in numeracy, using Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training on the DS Lite, to help prepare for passing their exams. We use it in primary schools, too, to great effect and relatively large attainment gains.

    It doesn't even matter if the game content is not related to the sector. The complex skills required to get through a game, whether it's Sim City or World of Warcraft, are the kind of skills a consultant cannot teach.

Ethan Bodnar is a 17 year-old high school senior.

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I read blogs, use social networks, take part in specific interest community websites, and share videos/photos/bookmarks through web applications.It's hard to say how much time I spend on social media each week. Probably around 21 hours a week which breaks down to 3 hours a day. Still that can vary a lot.

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    I would say that blogs and all those people who write them have some influence on what I buy.  I buy a lot of creative items such as t-shirts from and I have my eye on some stuff from Etsy and Coudal Partners Swap Meat project. Those websites offer products that are based a lot on the community behind them.

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    Education will move away from just the teaching of facts to a model where students start to be more creative and develop their own ideas and concepts. We will see students using social media to share these ideas of their own with others. Along with having a conversation about old ideas and their new ones.

    Social media in the classroom allows students to see more examples of how what they are learning is used in the real world.

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    I use these social media tools because of the great communities that are behind them, the people I know that use them, and how they are designed.

    For photos…Flickr rules them all.
    For blogging…Wordpress.
    For videos…Vimeo is way better than YouTube.
    For status and life-streaming…Twitter.
    For social networks….Facebook is where my school's at. Virb pretty cool to.

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I think we will start to see social media creating more real world interactions. Through mobile devices that can tell you the location of your friends. And linking those mobile devices to the networks you have already formed in applications and communities online. For example, the social cameras that Dave Winer has suggested. His ideas can also be applied to MP3 players, video cameras and other devices. The link between online social interactions and real life interactions will form.