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"Humans have theorized for a long time about the purpose of music and the scientific community has conducted research to understand the effects on us. Different types of music can affect us in a variety of ways. Time and time again researchers have shown that personal experience with music benefits our lives."

What purposes does education serve? What needs of humanity does education serve? What might the product of our labours be like and how might our efforts contribute to the greater good? These are questions we have long struggled with but with but it seems that in the current times we might need to rethink how we answer these questions.

"As defined by Jeannette Wing, computational thinking is "a way of solving problems, designing systems, and understanding human behavior by drawing on the concepts of computer science." To the students at my school, it's an approach to tackling challenging questions and ambiguous puzzles. We explicitly integrate computational thinking into all of our classes, allowing students to draw parallels between what they're learning and how they're approaching problems across all disciplines. Our students rely on four computational thinking skills, as well as a set of essential attitudes"

"A new survey commissioned by Microsoft (MSFT, Tech30) found that young girls in Europe become interested in so-called STEM subjects around the age of 11 and then quickly lose interest when they're 15. "Conformity to social expectations, gender stereotypes, gender roles and lack of role models continue to channel girls' career choices away from STEM fields," said psychology professor Martin Bauer of the London School of Economics, who helped coordinate the survey of 11,500 girls across 12 European countries. The survey also found that girls' interest in humanities subjects drops around the same age but then rebound sharply. Interest in STEM subjects does not recover. "This means that governments, teachers and parents only have four or five years to nurture girls' passion before they turn their backs on these areas, potentially for good," Microsoft said."

"FreeSpeech is a communication tool based upon research in augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) and human-computer interaction, as well clinical insight and expertise in speech and communication disorders."

"Science apps are becoming more popular because we can use them to illustrate volatile chemical reactions, to look at molecular structures or even find constellations not visible to the human eye. These are the science apps that I have on my iPad that I use all the time - sometimes just to show off what the iPad is capable of. Have a looks to see if any of these apps fit in with what you are doing in your science classes. "

"Some of these apps illustrate the power of the iPad. These Shakespeare in Bits are the perfect combination of cool graphics and slick infotainment that many teachers are looking for to get their students excited about their subject. The comic feel of these apps doesn't take away from the power of the message or the human tragedy of the Shakespeare texts but what it does do, is to provide an entry point for students that are not familiar with the language or the concepts."

"The following infographic from the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota offers 7 tips for the parents of struggling readers, conveniently structured around the apt acronym READING. Makes for useful source material that, combined with a few tips of your own, could be sent him a couple of times per year to support those parents looking for strategies and advice."

"To be clear-learning can happen in the absence of technology. Integrated poorly, technology can subdue, distract, stifle, and obscure the kind of personal interactions between learner, content, peer, and performance that lead to learning results. But increasingly we live in a world where technology is deeply embedded into everything we do. Thinking about it simply in terms of "digital literacy" puts you about 5 years behind the curve. It's really much more than that-less about being connected, and more about being mobile. There will be growing pains, and I'm sure educators that have brought in BYOD programs into their school can come up with 50 reasons it won't work. But most of those 50 are a product of the continued poor fit that exists between schools and communities-the system and the humans it serves."

"Tomorrow is Valentine's Day so this is a good time to take a look at the science of kissing. The following video from It's Okay To Be Smart (produced by PBS Digital Studios) explains why humans kiss, the history of symbols associated with kissing, and some cultural views of kissing."

"Compared with how academic research was carried out in the pre-internet era, It seems like technology is really a godsend gift to researchers. From easy and unlimited access to journal articles to web tools that do the referencing and auto-syncing, everything has been digitized making it way easier for todays researchers to add to the body of the human knowledge than any time in history. As a web 2.0 researcher and a graduate student in the faculty of education in Mount Saint Vincent University, I have had the chance to experiment with a wide variety of web tools that can make your academic life much more easier. Below are some of the web tools I have been recommending to undergraduate, graduate, postgraduate and PHD students, and professors. Check them out below and make sure you share them with your colleagues, they could be in dire need for them. Enjoy"

"The Interactive Ear is a neat website through which students can learn about how the human ear works. The site has three sections; the outer ear, middle ear, and inner ear. In each section students can click on little pinmarks on the drawings to learn about the parts of the ear and their functions. Students can also click the "journey" button to see how sound travels through the ear."

"Proponents of the sociolinguistic perspective to the study of literacy ( e.g.Paul Gee, Collin Lanksheare, Michelle Knobel, Brian Street, to mention but a few ) view the developments of literacy and with it education as a direct result to the sophistication of the social and cultural aspect of human life. Some of them like Collin and Michelle associate the evolution of education to that of the web and hence the nomenclature education 1.0 (related web 1.0), education 2.0 ( related to web 2.0), and education (3.0 related to web 3.0). This association, however is not haphazard for there are many commonalities between each pair."

"The popular left/right story has no solid basis in science"