Social Media

Social media: to embrace or not embrace. That's the dilemma faced by high school teachers as they try to keep abreast of an ever-changing world spurred on, in part, by technological advances. Two English teachers at Constitution High School in Center City are taking different approaches on using social media in the classroom. Kathleen Melville, who also teaches Spanish, is using social media in her journalism classes to show how the phenomenon has impacted the reporting and dissemination of news.

Q: What is the best question you ever got while you have been giving out advice? - Gerry from Macungie, Pa. A: Well, I can assure you that it's not yours. You can be more creative than that, bro. Seriously, there is no best question and not one that sticks out in my mind for any reason. I've been asked a million questions since I played at Auburn, and all were about a million different topics, ranging from serious to outrageous. Sometimes a simple answer to even a complex question is the best response.

LOWER TOWNSHIP, N.J. - Authorities are examining cellphones and social-media postings in the investigation of the alleged sexual assault of a girl at a teen party in the woods in South Jersey. Seven juveniles and one adult have been charged, Cape May County prosecutors said. A juvenile victim was sexually assaulted and "physically abused" March 15 near a Lower Township neighborhood, prosecutors said. One juvenile is charged with sexual assault, the Atlantic City Press reported. Charges against the others include aggravated assault, endangering an injured victim, and alcohol consumption.

A day after introducing Southwest Philly Floater into the basketball lexicon, La Salle guard Tyrone Garland was as stunned by the attention as sports fans have been by La Salle's NCAA tournament success. The Explorers earned a trip to the Sweet 16 Sunday with a 76-74 victory over Mississippi in a third-round game at the Sprint Center in Kansas City, Mo. Garland scored the winning basket with three seconds left on a shot he has performed endlessly over the years on a variety of courts.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - La Salle is one win away from an improbable berth in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament, and standing in the way could be a person who certainly knows how to draw attention, even from the greatest basketball player on the planet. When No. 13-seeded La Salle (23-9) meets No. 12-seeded Mississippi (27-8) in Sunday's 7:40 p.m. West Regional third-round game at the Sprint Center, the Explorers will have to stop the Rebels' potent inside game. But junior guard Marshall Henderson will occupy a prominent part of the scouting report.

MOST PEOPLE post what they ate for lunch, brag about their kids or lament a slow workday on their Facebook status. Omar Woods of Kensington confessed a crime: "I'm on da run for 3 attemed [sic] murders. " That status update, along with photos that Woods later posted of himself with a handgun jammed in his waistband, now could help convict him in a July shooting in Kensington that injured three people. As social-media use grows, more scofflaws, like Woods, are posting incriminating information or photos online.

DEAR ABBY: My boyfriend and I are in our 20s and have been dating for five years. We're renovating a home that we will live in once it's completed. We have never lived together before. During the renovation, I have come to the house to find that he has opened packages that were addressed to me. The first time, I didn't say anything because I thought he might have thought it was his. After the second and third times, I mentioned - nicely - that they weren't his to open. He claims he "knew" they were things for the house, which is why he opened them.

The Gloucester County Board of Freeholders is scheduled to vote Wednesday on revising its social media policy for county employees in an effort to comply with a recent federal labor ruling. The policy, passed in a 5-2 vote last March, holds that employees must be "respectful" to the county and coworkers on sites such as Facebook and that "the use of social media to harass, threaten, libel, malign, or discriminate against" anyone associated with the county "will not be tolerated. " Violations can result in termination of employment.

Danielle McMonagle's semester as a communications intern at the Vatican was supposed to be a quiet one. Then her new boss, Pope Benedict XVI, announced his retirement on the day she was to start, and all heaven broke loose. "It's been pretty crazy ever since," the Villanova University junior said Tuesday. Earlier in the day, she had watched as 115 cardinals from around the world filed into the Sistine Chapel to begin choosing Benedict's successor. But McMonagle, of Moorestown, was no mere face in the crowd at St. Peter's Square.