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There was a hyperlink to an article about whether we should still teach cursive. Apparently high schools are not doing it any more. My son stopped cursive in about the 5th grade and didn't have to use it and now he is struggling at the university because he can't read when the professor uses cursive in anything, like comments on his papers. I have to print when I leave him a note. Wow, technology is wiping out one of the long-standing activities that took humans decades to develop.

I like the balanced way this piece presents some of the pros and cons of technology in education. Just this week I had a conversation with another educator who has encountered recent studies suggesting a link between handwriting (of any kind) and certain cognitive development. Some schools are now emphasizing handwriting instruction because it helps boost students' academic achievement.

My daughter is 8 years old and she started learning cursive this year. So it must be back! I'm not sure if will help boost her achievement or not, but I'm glad she is learning it. I think the article made a good point about how students today have a short attention span and easily get off track. If they are typing a paper on the computer, for example, they can open a browser and start surfing the web. They don't necessarily stay focused on the task at hand. It is even hard for me sometimes. If I don't ignore email (just put it off until later, I mean), I would never get anything done!

I thought this was pretty interesting.  How do we teach students to judge the quality of information they are getting?

Amy, I like the graph. There are so much details to think about when it comes to look for "the tool" for our students. Thank you for sharing!

Twitter, the popular microblogging site that allows users to post 140-character "tweets," both intrigues and irritates faculty, according to a Faculty Focus survey. Some embrace it as a clever way to teach concision and get students writing, thinking, and connecting with the course material and one another.

Great for those that are using iPads in elementary.

Here are some audio editing tools if you need any.  I have used Audacity.  I didn't know there were so many others!

Amy, I knew about Nero, and just "met" audacity :) The same as you and Krista, never imagined how many more are there.

Thanks Amy, I also have used Audacity, but just to have students record their answers to an oral test. Now I've learned about other uses and other tools. Great!

This is a quick tutorial for embedding audio into QR codes. it provides a couple examples of how this might be used in an educational setting.

Adrianne, I like your link a lot. QR is a great helper. I have used it last year and make easy to my students to get faster to pages I wanted them to go.

A small study - but shows that interactive e-books aren't necessarily the best way to read.

Digest of articles related to technology and education

I like this because it is concise. I've been getting it as an email, but now I can add it here.

Discussion on how technology is being used and why we're still struggling to give more control of learning to students. A good read!

"A 2014 paper by researchers at Michigan State University, in East Lansing, provides a tangible example: Teachers and students in the small-scale study were found to be making extensive use of the online word-processing tool Google Docs. The application's power to support collaborative writing and in-depth feedback, however, was not being realized. Teachers were not encouraging group-writing assignments and their feedback focused overwhelmingly on issues such as spelling and grammar, rather than content and organization." This really gets to the heart of the idea of combining education and technology: the technology has to serve the goal and it doesn't sound like the teachers' goals were the same as the stated goals of the assignment. So obviously Google Docs is a fantastic tool, but it has to be utilized appropriately for it to be effective.

I must say I have sat through many workshops in my tenure at my university that included the modification of some practices and even included, to my frustration, the basic structure of a lesson from stating outcomes to assessment. The problem with our particular situation is that usually it is directed to a "one-size-fits-all" use of a given technology that may not apply to many disciplines. I have found them somewhat useful for upper-level courses at times, but the language classes often pose the need for a kind of collaboration and interpersonal technology that isn't presented. Hence my desire to take this course. Another difficulty is the overwhelming number of technological applications presented--I can't tell you how many--and the students really become overwhelmed, since they often have to learn new technologies in almost many courses. Some work and some don't, and since they are the guinea pigs and there are no guarantees that everything will work as planned, and given the astounding changes in tech, the newness never seems to end, neither for the student nor the teacher. So focusing on just 1 or 2 to begin with seems like the only way to deal with it. Finally, I think that, at least in our university, the huge courses found often in the sciences reflect the slowness to adopt meaningful change. Many in these disciplines have simply used the tech to deliver more lectures on topics students must memorize, perhaps adding clickers for comprehension checks. There seems to be a great disconnect between what happens in the classroom and the amazing advances in tech they have made for their hands-on work--labs, collaborative work, etc.

Ok - so this article isn't on the interpretive mode...but it makes some good points - pro and con. The author is an entertaining self-described rabble-rouser!

An alphabetical list of suggestions for the novices in the group (myself included).

includes ideas for using Diigo in the classroom

Google Search tips - lesson plans for teachers

move fast! they are - or will be - offering ad-free Vokis to educators to start the new school year. Sign-up here if you're interested - they'll notify you when it's ready. Ooohhhh, just found out that "ad-free" means you have to pay a "small" fee - don't know how much it is yet. I'll report back.