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"According to a recent MSNBC article, 69% of high school currently ban cell phones. But you'd be hard-pressed to find a school anywhere that has enacted a blanket ban on pens and pencils. Here are 10 reasons to reconsider the widespread acceptance of these distracting and potentially dangerous implements."

"Wasn't it just the other day that teachers confiscated cellphones and principals warned about oversharing on MySpace? Now, Erin Olson, an English teacher in Sioux Rapids, Iowa, is among a small but growing cadre of educators trying to exploit Twitter-like technology to enhance classroom discussion. Last Friday, as some of her 11th graders read aloud from a poem called "To the Lady," which ponders why bystanders do not intervene to stop injustice, others kept up a running commentary on their laptops. "

Filament Games is a game production studio that exclusively creates learning games. Our core competency is producing games that combine best practices in commercial game development with key concepts from the learning sciences. Accordingly, our senior staff is comprised of individuals who are equal parts game and instructional designers; a "dual literacy" that allows us to engineer authentic gameplay mechanics (rules and interactions that directly correlate with specific learning objectives). Filament Games was founded in 2005 by education technology expert Dan White, game designer Dan Norton, and software engineer Alex Stone. In the time since, Filament has developed over 30 educational games for clients ranging from National Geographic's JASON Science to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's iCivics Inc.

"When I was 10 years old I was hitting a digital puck across the screen with a digital paddle playing Pong. My son at age 10 was learning metallurgy and materials management in an online multiplayer game called Runescape! I knew nothing of the game at the time, and he soon showed me how he learned to collect items in the world in order to make new things that he needed to complete quests and gain experience. In particular, he showed me how he needed to collect certain metal ores, take them to a smelter to extract metals, and then take those to a forge to create tools or to a craftsman to make other things. This is one of the reasons that I am still excited about Minecraft."

"Connect.ed is an innovative, self-paced cybersafety education program offered by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) as part of Cybersmart. Connect.ed provides teachers with the flexibility of a self paced environment to learn about current online behaviours of students, potential risks involved in these activities, a teacher's and school's duty of care and the appropriate tools, resources and strategies to help students to have safe and positive experiences online."

A neat set of videos from the ABC looking at the Digital World, Mobile and portable devices, New ways to watch TV, Podcasting and Social Media.

"On Monday Steve Wheeler wrote a blog post on mobile and student owned devices which I thought I'd respond to here. Please read the post and comments and then come back. In answer to your question "Should students' personal devices become a part of the delivery strategy..." without a doubt we should be considering mobile. It would be foolish not to consider mobile. However this is not to say that mobile must dominant the agenda."

"An interesting question was raised today during the Effective Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age event at the University of Birmingham. Organised by the Higher Education Academy, the one day conference attracted around 40-50 people from a number of universities across the UK. One of the invited speakers was Professor John Traxler (University of Wolverhampton) who spoke on how mobile technologies are extending and enhancing learning. In a 'hot off the press' publication from the HEA, which he also edited, John writes about mobile technologies, (of which he includes smart-phones, media players, games consoles, netbooks and handheld computers):"

"Working in technology administration, I have always bowed down to uniformity. I can't help it…it's the way we were all taught in the technology industry. It was routine and comfortable. Everyone got the exact same computer with the same image. Everyone had to login to active directory. Security groups were applied with abandon. I wax nostalgic just thinking about it.Fear of BYOD But those days are coming to an end. This is due to a huge number of factors including ridiculously tight school district budgets, much lower computer prices and cloud computing. I believe more and more schools will soon adopt bring your own device (BYOD) as a matter of economic necessity and recognition of educational potential."

"This must seem like a contradictory title and an odd one especially coming from me, as I am an educational technology consultant and writer, but to be honest I stand by this statement and I'd like to tell you why."

The Hexagon Challenge is an educational Alternate Reality Game (ARG) in which students will attempt to solve a mystery by infiltrating a secret society, answering initiation questions regarding history, science, mathematics, world languages, and the arts. They will contact and be contacted by various fictitious characters via email, telephone, and instant messenger who will provide clues that enable them to continue their quest to discover the truth about a mysterious artifact known only as the Hexagon. Up to six extra credit points will be awarded along the way, which can be applied to your course if you so choose.

"Slideshow Maker, Free Online Slideshows, Edit Photos Easily Create personalized Slideshows Add Music and Text to your slideshows Choose from thousands of Special Effects Burn slideshows to DVD Share by Email or post to Facebook Post slideshows on Websites and Blogs Store and Organize photos online Edit and Crop photos"

"This video highlights the growth and development of a Google Doc as an Elementary School student in Edmonton Public Schools takes us on a journey of how she collaborates with classmates and her teacher to create a finished piece of writing."

"The reality is the power of social media is enormous. It's what students are using to make a difference, our president used to get elected, and what Egypt used to start a revolution. Educators must get over their fears lest they make themselves irrelevant and leave their students unprepared. As I shared in my post Being Safe Online Is Being Safe In Life, the lesson is this. It's not primarily having a social networking profile, or giving out personal information that puts kids at risk. What puts kids in danger is being willing to talk about sex online with strangers or having a pattern of multiple risky activities on the web like going to sex sites and chat rooms, meeting lots of people there, kind of behaving in what we call like an internet daredevil. As the post is titled, the rules for being safe online are really just the rules for being safe in life. "

"This might appear as tools that are not for games. That's because you're not thinking hard enough about games based learning. All of these things can be used in GBL - it's all a matter of perspective and design."

"In the TPACK Game, you consider how Technology (T), Pedagogy (P), and Content (C) work together by randomly choosing two of the three (C,P, and T), and thinking deeply to find the third that makes them all work together in a pedagogically sound way to teach the content."

"Collaborative schooling is a model where the school collaborates with, and provides direction and support for its homes and community. It recognizes the profound impact the home has upon education and that in most of the students' homes and communities there is a vast, largely untapped 'teaching' capacity. It therefore seeks to integrate the efforts of the home and the school. The school has already recognized the opportunities the network and digital technologies provide for the school to network and work collaboratively with their homes and desired parts of their school community. This is seen in the following:"

"We invite students, teachers, designers, parents, careres, architects, industrial designers, interactive designers, interior designers, gardeners to join in and ideate, design, prototype new possibilities and reinvent the school experience in Australia. This is another ideas@play project."

"We invite students, teachers, designers, parents, careres, architects, industrial designers, interactive designers, interior designers, gardeners to join in and ideate, design, prototype new possibilities and reinvent the school experience in Australia. This is another ideas@play project."

"Below is a series of frequently asked questions regarding the capabilities of the iPad and the reasons for our decision to use iPads from Years 5-9, with a strong recommendation they also be used in Years 10-12. Please take the time to browse through as it might cover some of the questions you have been asking yourself."