Google Fusion Tables in documents listWith this week’s update, we’re also integrating Google Fusion Tables into your documents list. Google Fusion Tables is a data management web application that makes it easy to gather, visualize and collaborate on data online. Now you’ll be able to store and share your Fusion Tables with the rest of the files in your documents list.Recently, people have used Google Fusion Tables to:Visualize evacuation zones for New York City during Hurricane IreneHost data sets made public by the State of CaliforniaGather data from local flu shot clinics for Google Flu Vaccine FinderMap shelters and road status during the tsunami crisis in JapanGo to Create new > Table from your documents list menu to get started visualizing or sharing tables of data in .csv, .xls or .kml files.

Taking notes during class? Topic-focused study? A consistent learning environment? All are exactly opposite of the best strategies for learning.

“When we were doing research for our messaging product, we actually looked at what subject lines people used. And like 80 percent of subject lines are “hey,” “hi,” or left blank. The subject line is outdated. The truth is, e-mail is outdated.” Though he’s IBM’s poster boy for dropping out of e-mail, even Suarez admits that the inbox and carbon-copy will probably never completely go away. But four years into his experiment, he feels more productive, and almost all of his work is done in the open. For Suarez, it’s not just more efficient. It’s a nicer way to communicate. There’s a “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” kind of passive-aggressiveness to the way many people use corporate e-mail, with the strategic bcc and the cover-your-ass e-mail message. “If you have been using e-mail in a corporate environment, you know that plenty of people use e-mail as a weapon against their own colleagues,” he says. “This was also creating a new way of working where you wouldn’t need to justify the work you did. You earned trust from your colleagues by being a lot more public, a lot more open and a lot more transparent in what you do.”

Yes, at long last, 42 years years after he envisioned it, Alan Kay’s Dynabook has finally arrived. Welcome to the New World.

Splashtop Whiteboard allows teachers and students to turn their iPad into an interactive whiteboard. By connecting to their classroom computer over Wi-Fi, they can watch Flash media with fully synchronized video and audio, control their favorite applications then annotate lesson content all from an iPad. Teachers can now interact with students at their desks or from all four corners of the classroom.

MITx will be coupled with an MIT-wide research initiative into online learning that will study ways in which students, whether on campus or part of a virtual community, learn most effectively. To the degree that MITx demonstrates highly effective online learning tools from which campus-based students might benefit, such as self-paced online exercises, those tools will become part of the experience of MIT students. These tools will enable campus faculty to automate some of the more repetitive and less creative tasks, such as grading, thereby liberating more time to devote to innovative ways of teaching the material and to additional contact time with resident students.