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""You are a mashup of what you let into your life," artist Austin Kleon recently proclaimed. This encapsulates the founding philosophy behind Brain Pickings - a filtration mechanism that lets into your life things that are interesting, meaningful, creatively and intellectually stimulating, memorable. Naturally, I was thrilled for the release of Clay Johnson's The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption - an intelligent manifesto for optimizing the 11 hours we spend consuming information on any given day (a number that, for some of us, might be frighteningly higher) in a way that serves our intellectual, creative, and psychological well-being."

"Here I am at 365 days, my last post in a year of daily blogging about the science in my life. True to my usual form, it's been a jam-packed day and I've spent it doing a multitude of activities, all the while turning over in my head what I might write. I started the morning with a long run through the Adelaide's inner western suburbs and along the River Torrens."

"Oxford Owl is a FREE website built to support you with your child's learning. To help you along the way, you'll find age-specific reading and maths tips and activities, FREE eBooks, and lots of fun ideas to really bring your child's learning to life. You will also find support and advice on a range of questions you may have - including helping your child with their phonics, motivating boys to read and ensuring your child is doing their best in maths."

"Vannevar Bush foreshadowed the impact that such technology would have on our contemporary lives. By doing so, Bush inspired critical aspects of current online tools, including the hyperlink and the World Wide Web. Bush's vision directly influenced researchers to create digital technology we nowadays consider commonplace. Today's equivalent of Bush's breakthrough is just as radical, except it's far beyond the conceptual stage and is already in extensive development. This technology is termed "Augmented Reality" (AR). AR has the potential to act as a harbinger of future hi-tech transformations whilst irrevocably altering the basic nature of everyday life."

"This year at my school we've begun to dip our toes into the waters of online communication (some staff are already swimming while others are still sitting on the edge thinking they'll drown without support). We've introduced both Edmodo and blogging to varying degrees this year. In a nutshell, I see Edmodo as an all encompassing classroom management/teaching and learning/collaboration system. Blogging, on the other hand, while it can be used for all the purposes just mentioned, is a tool for writing, publishing and sharing your body of work, be it major writing tasks or quick reflections on life or school work. While it aims to share and craves feedback, blogging is a personal tool. Edmodo, however, it more group oriented. Because of the differentiation between the two, I think they should both be part of classroom practice."

"This Contemporary Literacy Practices of Preps e-book has been developed to showcase the range of learning opportunities possible when digital technologies become an integral part of children's' learning and development. The e-book is also a testament to the amazing capabilities of young learners to acquire the necessary digital literacy skills necessary for participation in life. The e-book highlights how technologies can help support sharing, collaboration and communication in and beyond the classroom."

"Twitter may have started off as a fun social media site for keeping up with friends and sharing updates about daily life, but it's become much more than that for many users over the past few years as the site has evolved and grown. These days, Twitter is a powerhouse for marketing, communication, business, and even education, letting people from around the world work together, share ideas, and gain exposure."

Education today thus faces several critical gaps: * Between the world that young people experience outside the classroom and the world within * Between the skills that students learn in school and those they will need later in life * Between those who have access to high-quality education and tools and those who do not It is increasingly an accepted truth that education systems must evolve to meet the needs of the students and societies they serve, changing their mission from knowledge transmission to preparation for future learning

"The internet is awash with exciting and innovative tools, and your students have grown up immersed in this world - get in on the act. The digital revolution has given us instant communication and easy global connectedness, with mobile technology in particular growing at warp speed: in 2013, there are almost as many mobile phone contracts as there are people in the world. This digital transformation has produced some extraordinary online tools for flexible education, which enhance students' learning and promise innovative pedagogy for teachers. However, they can also be daunting and challenging for educators. It is clear that teachers cannot ignore these tools, which go far beyond just Facebook and Twitter. Educators are now dealing with Generation Z - students born after 1995 who have hardly known a world without social media and have always lived a life measured in bits and bytes. Most have access to iPads and smartphones as well as textbooks and, therefore, the massive resource of the internet."

"We might not worry concerning identity theft the maximum amount as property theft as a result of it isn't as shivery and face to face as an actual theft, however it's a digital theft, fraud may be life damaging. I even have an exponent whose family had been saving up for years to travel to film producer World. This perceived to have all of the correct precautions required to avoid fraud or hackers. However somehow a hole was found and $6,000 was taken out of their savings. No film producer World for his or her family. However perhaps the hacker had a pleasant trip instead? We will solely hope. Read Where You'll Get Hacked Infographic "

"The day when your hat can extrapolate your mood from your brain activity and make a spa appointment on your behalf may not be far away. The next big thing in the digital world won't be a better way for you to find something. If a confluence of capabilities now on the horizon bears fruit, the next big thing is that information will find you. Welcome to contextual search, a world where devices from your phone to your appliances will join forces in the background to make your life easier automatically."

"I began blogging because I needed a way to document what I was doing, thinking and studying. My professional life is pretty hectic much of the time, and I needed a space to write down my ideas and record my thoughts before I forgot them. I could have simply used a paper based diary, but I decided when I first heard of blogging that it might fulfil the role of an e-diary for me. But this was a limited view. I quickly began to understand that writing down my ideas in blog format could also help me to organise them, hyperlink to other ideas, and encourage me to think more deeply about those ideas. In essence, blogging crystallised my thinking, and extended the scope of my knowledge. But the best was yet to come. I was quite aware that blogging is a public writing format. Once you click the Publish button, your work is online for the entire world to read. Although this took a little time for me to get my head around, I eventually came to understand that blogging is ultimately a conversation."

"The biggest risk, then, may be that the sockpuppet affair gets too much attention - and that the focus on internal police work ends up distracting from the deeper problems of quality, vibrancy and diversity that the MIT Tech Review story explored. Wikipedia may not be in decline, but it will be hard-pressed to significantly improve until it can figure out how to attract more talented and dedicated editors with different interests and backgrounds from around the world. In the end, it's conceivable that will require more paid editing, not less. The question is, who will do the paying, and how can Wikipedia make sure they put the site's interests - and those of the public at large - above their own?"

"Cyber-bullying, update-addiction, sexting - from the perspective of a parent raising a ''digital native'' child, social media seems fraught with dangers. But new research suggests the risks inherent in social media use by younger generations might be overblown. danah boyd, assistant research professor at Harvard and principal researcher for Microsoft Research - like k.d.lang, she prefers the lower case - has completed a large-scale study on how US teenagers use the internet in general, and social media in particular. Her book is called It's Complicated, and is the result of in-depth interviews with scores of teens over an eight-year period."

"Below are some great web tools that you can use to create interactive lessons and presentations. These tools  allow you to breathe life into your teachable content through the use of images, videos, links to web pages and many more. Some of them even enable you to gather instant feedback from students through synchronous polls or text messaging."

Muvizu is an animation tool for hobbyists that's so easy to use its creators, Digimania, are increasingly targeting the classroom. The app can be used to create characters, sets and bring the whole performance to life with its character animation system. The software includes the following features: Create and customise 3D characters. Virtual lights, cameras and special effects. Automatic lip-synching for any language. Lightning fast rendering for quick results. Muvizu has recently added some powerful new tools with the launch of two new versions. Muvizu Play and Muvizu Play+ both feature customisable characters and sets and automatic lip-synching, while lighting quick rendering and full HD output is one of many enhanced Play+ features. A special educational version of Muvizu will be launched in September designed for K12 students and above.

"Two quotes about schooling particularly resonate with me. The first is from John Dewey's Experience and Education (1938): "What avail is it to win prescribed amounts of information about geography and history, to win the ability to read and write, if in the process the individual loses his own soul?" (p. 49). If the experience of "doing school" destroys children's spirit to learn, their sense of wonder, their curiosity about the world, and their willingness to care for the human condition, have we succeeded as educators, no matter how well our students do on standardized tests? The second quote comes from John Goodlad's A Place Called School (1984). After finding an "extraordinary sameness" in our schools, Goodlad wrote, "Boredom is a disease of epidemic proportions. … Why are our schools not places of joy?" (p. 242). Now, a generation later, if you were to ask students for a list of adjectives that describe school, I doubt that joyful would make the list. The hearts and minds of children and young adults are wide open to the wonders of learning and the fascinating complexities of life. But school still manages to turn that into a joyless experience."

"I normally blog on business issues, but something happened at my house yesterday that compelled me to write this post. Please share it with the people in your life who use social media. Everyone needs some social smarts."

clever! :)

I have long held the belief that education and technology are the two great equalizers in life. This next phase of the Internet-Web 2.0 and collaboration-provide a vision of what is possible. As we see this vision taking shape in the present-enabling collaboration, breaking down barriers across the globe and providing access to information anywhere, anytime-this belief continues to grow. Education and technology go hand in hand, with the network serving as the platform for what we call the Learning Society, which we outline in detail in the pages that follow.