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"So you want to pop your filter bubble - to see the neutral, un-filtered, un-personalized web. How do you go about it? Unfortunately, there are no magic bullets: The ad companies and personal data vendors that power and profit from personalization are far more technologically advanced than most of the tools for controlling your personal data. That's why The Filter Bubble calls on companies and governments to change the rules they operate by - without those changes, it's simply not possible to escape targeting and personalization entirely. But that doesn't mean all is lost. Here are 10 simple steps you can take to de-personalize your web experience. They won't work forever, but for now they'll take you out of your own personal echo chamber."

Some very good advice here to try out. Check out the links.

Howard Rheingold 03 Feb 12 10:09:30 Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck conducted the groundbreaking research showing that praise intended to raise young people's self-esteem can seriously backfire. When we tell children, "You're so smart," we communicate the message that they'd better not take risks or make mistakes, lest they reveal that they're not so smart after all. Dweck calls this cautious attitude the "fixed mindset," and she's found that it's associated with greater anxiety and reduced achievement. Students with a "growth mindset," on the other hand, believe that intelligence can be expanded with hard work and persistence, and they view challenges as invigorating and even fun. They're more resilient in the face of setbacks, and they do better academically. Now Dweck has designed a program, called Brainology, which aims to help students develop a growth mindset. Its website explains: "Brainology makes this happen by teaching students how the brain functions, learns, and remembers, and how it changes in a physical way when we exercise it. Brainology shows students that they are in control of their brain and its development." That's a crucial message to pass on to children, and it's not just empty words of encouragement-it's supported by cutting-edge research on neuroplasticity, which shows that the brain changes and grows when we learn new things. You, and your child, can learn to be smarter.

Collaboration Our primary goal at this point is to prove or disprove the effectiveness of puzzles as a learning strategy. If you are a teacher who would like to experiment with these ideas in your classroom please contact us. We'd love to work with you. In fact, regardless of who you are, if these ideas seem promising and you'd like to help or try them out, please contact us. We're very open with our work and are interested in collaborating with anyone we can, within the constraints of our very limited resources. You can reach us at info@puzzleschool.com Our Mission The Puzzle School was started with the mission of creating educational environments that will inspire a greater love of learning. We strongly believe that learning is something people truly love to do when it is presented in a way that gives the learner a sense of progress toward their learning goals. We focus on puzzles as they provide one of the most effective ways of creating a learning environment that is interactive, giving students an immediate sense of progress as they try to "figure out" the material they are learning. The methods we use at The Puzzle School mimic the learning environments that children thrive in while learning how to walk and talk. This model can best be summed up as hypothesis and error driven learning, where students develop a hypothesis toward solving a problem and are able to test that hypothesis using feedback loops, learning from a success or failure as they move closer to a solution. This model has been used successfully in thousands of schools around the world, most notably Montessori Schools. We simply want to highlight this method and make it so that all students have access to environments where they can learn in this way. We believe this will encourage a love of learning in all students.

"This site aims to inspire teachers to increase the communication and collaboration in their classrooms using web based tools such as blogs, wikis and social bookmarking tools. The examples given on this site focus on using these web tools in Design and Communication Graphics classrooms but many of the activities outlined can be easily modified to be used in different subjects and to cater for many different ability levels. The site explains what the web based tools are, what they can contribute to teaching and learning, how they can be integrated into the classroom using simple and clear examples, and how to enable pupils to use them saf"

"We hear about it all the time: Universal access to research, education and culture-all good things, without a doubt-made possible by things like open source software, open educational resources and the like. But what are these various communities and what do they mean? How can we all learn more and get involved? School of Open has rolled the conversation back to square one so that understanding the basics is easy. Through a list of new courses created by users and experts, people can learn more about what "openness" means and how to apply it. There are stand-alone courses on copyright, writing for Wikipedia, the collaborative environment of open science, and the process behind making open video. These free courses start March 18 (sign up by clicking the "start course" button by Sunday, March 17): Copyright 4 Educators (US) Copyright 4 Educators (AUS) Creative Commons for K-12 Educators Writing Wikipedia Articles: The Basics and Beyond These free courses are open for you to take at any time: Get a CC license. Put it on your website Open Science: An Introduction Open data for GLAMs Intro to Openness in Education A Look at Open Video Contributing to Wikimedia Commons Open Detective "

"This site is a resource for educators everywhere to learn how to use YouTube as an educational tool. There are lesson plan suggestions, highlights of great educational content on YouTube, and training on how to film your own educational videos. This site was written by teachers for teachers, and we want to continue that spirit of community-involvement. We're creating a new YouTube newsletter for teachers (sign up above!) and are asking teachers to submit their favorite YouTube playlists for us to highlight on YouTube EDU. "

We should start submitting any tutorial stuff we do that is worth uploading to this channel.

It is no secret that mass media is an important part of today's cultural landscape. But while people are consuming media, they are also creating it. More and more, people are creating their own messages, sharing the work of others, and excerpting from other people's work as part of their own creativity, learning and development. Therefore, there is a need for a strong understanding of the concepts of copyright and fair use and how to apply it in an educational setting. While copyright and fair use can be confusing to navigate you CAN use copyrighted material in your creative work! The panel goal is to explain fair use as a reasoning process in order to reduce copyright confusion. We will model the process by sharing scenarios for the audience to deconstruct and will go through our own reasoning and analysis of "sticky copyright situations" and share helpful ideas regarding how to teach students and staff about copyright and fair use.

"Brainology® raises students' achievement by helping them develop a growth mindset. When students have a fixed mindset, they believe their intelligence is just fixed-they have a certain amount and that's that. This mindset makes them afraid to look dumb and curtails their learning. But when students have a growth mindset, they understand that their intelligence can be developed. Instead of worrying about how smart they are, they work hard to learn more and get smarter. Brainology makes this happen by teaching students how the brain functions, learns, and remembers, and how it changes in a physical way when we exercise it. "

But this is expensive - about $4,500 for KS3 students to go through the programme.

"At Google, we support the education of families on how to stay safe online. That's why we've teamed up with online safety organization iKeepSafe to develop curriculum that educators can use in the classroom to teach what it means to be a responsible online citizen. The curriculum is designed to be interactive, discussion filled and allow students to learn through hands-on and scenario activities. On this site you'll find a resource booklet for both educators and students that can be downloaded in PDF form, presentations to accompany the lesson and animated videos to help frame the conversation. "

"How close are we to this? The post was written in December 2009, and Blake-Plock says he's seeing some of these already beginning to come to fruition."

"The Challenge My challenge to teachers is to create assignments, projects and techniques to capture your students' attention. Projects should be technology-rich, highly engaging, and fun learning experiences that reflect real-world skills. How will you know if the exercise reached your students? One indicator of success will be how your students respond to their parents' typical daily question: "What did you do in school today?" Will they get the usual response ("Nothing")? Or will they hear something new, maybe something along the lines of, "OMG, I can't believe what we got to do today?""

"When you see as many apps as we do at RWW, you begin to feel like it's all been done. So many of the everyday jobs for apps to do can already be done by at least one app (if not dozens). How many ways can you share photos with your friends? How many social networks and check-ins and restaurant-discovery services do we need? Lately, we've started to see a new class of app emerge just for managing these tasks across their various apps. The idea of apps for our apps sounds ridiculous, but some of them are neat, and some are downright lifesavers. Here's a round-up of apps you should use if you want to bring your many social networks into one dedicated place."

" Thanks to the folks at HackCollege, a number of my "secrets" are out. The infographic below offers a helpful primer for how to best structure searches using advanced operators to more quickly and accurately drill down to the information you want. This is by no means an exhaustive list of search operators and advanced techniques, but it's a good start that will help set you on the path to becoming a Google master."

Here's how you can add the ability to have your iPad speak selected words and phrases. Go to Settings > General > AccessibilityTap Speak Selection from the list at the top of the screenAdjust the Speaking Rate (Choose a setting near the (s)lower end) You'll now get the option to have selected text spoken aloud in most any app that allows text editing.

We're chomping at the bit to get our grimy little hands on the new Google Drive. We wrote about it in our March issue of the Edudemic Magazine, featured it a couple weeks ago, and now want to start figuring out how the basically-real tool will help teachers around the planet. After all, that's what Edudemic is all about! We throw caution to the wind and just start trying to figure out fun and useful ways to use technology in the classroom. Who cares if that technology isn't available yet?

"Welcome to the Google SketchUp for Educators Community, a site to share, connect & learn This site is brought to you by Google and made especially for Google SketchUp educators and students. Come join and help us build it! Google SketchUp is an easy-to-use program that lets you and your students create, modify and share 3D models. From history to calculus, you'll be surprised at how easy it is to see your ideas in 3D. And when you're done, you can export an image, make a movie or print out a view of what you made."

"Wufoo is a web application that helps anybody build amazing online forms. When you design a form with Wufoo, it automatically builds the database, backend and scripts needed to make collecting and understanding your data easy, fast and fun. Because we host everything, all you need is your web browser and a few short minutes to build a form and start using it right away. While we've collected a few of our favorite features here, the best way to experience Wufoo is first hand. So be sure to sign up today for free or try out the demo see how form building was meant to be done."

might be worth playing with

Practical tips and tutorials about using web2.0 tools and mobile apps in education .The best free web, adnroid, smartphone,iPhone, and samsung applications to help you better enhance your mobile learning.

"How to Get the Free Edition of Google Apps Alternatively, here's a quick and simple workaround that will still let you sign-up for the free edition of Google Apps even though Google has officially retired the free edition - all you need is a free Gmail or Google account."

How to Add Favicons on Google Sites