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"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 "

A great free site containing good basic tutorials. Plenty of basic google stuff that could be used to support beginners in apps. Staff training-inset

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?

Australian outfit Bridge 8, who have the admirable mission of devising "creative strategies for science and society," and animator James Hutson have created six fantastic two-minute animations on various aspects of critical thinking, aimed at kids ages 8 to 10 but also designed to resonate with grown-ups. Inspired by the animation style of the 1950s, most recognizably Saul Bass, the films are designed to promote a set of educational resources on critical thinking by TechNYou, an emerging technologies public information project funded by the Australian government. The animations - which are part Minute Physics, part The Dot and the Line, part 60-Second Adventures in Thought - are released under a Creative Commons license and cover the basics of logic and the scientific method, as well as specific psychological pitfalls like confirmation bias and Gambler's Fallacy.

Khan Academy is videos of lectures. This is nothing new. They are boring and do not allow the student to interact with the lecturer. They also focus on solving a math or science problem through basic steps, but do not focus on the actual theory behind the problem. The student may be able to solve that problem, but can they apply the concept to other problems and situations?

One of the common concerns we hear from K-12 users of Google Docs is the lack of clip art. This is understandable as most people are used to the large amount of clip art available in Microsoft Office programs. Well, that may be changing a little bit now. Today I was working in Google Documents (updating a Chrome help guide), when I noticed a new option for inserting something called "Stock photos". Basically if you go to insert an image as usual, you now have five options: Upload URL Google Image Search Picasa Web Albums Stock photos

This unit was created to cover the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence, Experience & Outcome pertaining to Game Production. I use the unit with students ranging from Primary 7 to S2. Students are taught to create a basic game in the programming language Scratch (available free from http://scrat More…

This video is basically a free webinar presented by Google certified trainers Kevin Brookhouser and Tim Lee where they unveiled some of Google forms secrets and provided simple directions on how to create self-grading quiz forms within Google Docs. The transcript of this video is available HERE.

"Pinterest's members are solely responsible for what they pin and repin. They must have explicit permission from the owner to post everything." What's more, Pinterest places all blame and potential legal fees on its users. It writes: "You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold Cold Brew Labs, its officers, directors, employees and agents, harmless from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses, including, without limitation, reasonable legal and accounting fees, arising out of or in any way connected with (i) your access to or use of the Site, Application, Services or Site Content, (ii) your Member Content, or (iii) your violation of these Terms." Basically, if a photographer sues you for pinning an image illegally on Pinterest, the user must not only pay for his or her lawyer, they must also pay for Pinterest's lawyer. In addition, the defendant must pay all charges against him or herself, along with all of Pinterest's charges. Kirsten likens Pinterest to Napster as an enabler of illegal activity. It wasn't just Napster that went down -- 12 year old girls who downloaded music were sued too. Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/pinterest-copyright-issues-lawyer-2012-2#ixzz1nsmeSGHc

So Facebook was basically used to facilitate a discussion group, which can certainly be done with an LMS like Blackboard or Moodle or with various other tools, but the nice thing about Facebook is that many students are already familiar and comfortable with it - it's a "known entity" to them. Another positive thing, which addressed a concern of mine in this environment, was that there was a 'wall' between this academic use and the personal uses students have for the tool - by being in the group you didn't have to friend anyone or expose your personal information.

"The ability to create and share a screencast with others about a topic is a basic skill for 21st century teachers. In this lesson we'll learn how to create and share high quality screencasts."