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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.

"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.

"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.

"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"

"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."

"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 "

"Some of the most urgent and contentious debates taking hold in states and school districts around the country revolve around the question of how to accurately measure a teacher's effectiveness. A new RAND Education website provides objective, nonpartisan insights that can help inform the discussion."

a look at how one school has streamlined their workflow by creating an ipad podcasting studio.

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.

So with our dependency on our smartphones and other mobile devices like the iPad how are they affecting how we pack for and travel on vacations today?

"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."

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.

"How Technology Wires the Learning Brain"- is google making us smarter? The notion of text breaks is intriguing...are we simply feeding in to an addiction or are we making time for connecting and conversing ?

How to Add Favicons on Google Sites

"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.

Educational Origami is a blog , and a wiki, about 21st Century Learning and 21st Century Teaching. This is not just about the integration of technology into the classroom, though this is certainly a critical area. It is about shifting the entire paradigm of education. The world is not as simple as saying teachers are digital immigrants and students digital natives. We have to change how we teach, how we assess, what we teach, when we teach it, where we are teaching it, who we are teaching and with what. Its a tall order, but these are exciting times."

"How Students Use Technology to Cheat"

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 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."