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Guardian on how higher ed will have to adapt. Not sure the revolution is here quite yet.

"Cyberstudent" is a hideous term.

Great accessibility tool

"ReadTheWords.com is a free, web based service that assists people with written material. We do this by using TTS Technology, or Text To Speech Technology. Users of our service can generate a clear sounding audio file from almost any written material. We generate a voice that reads the words out loud, that you request us to read."

A great resource, particularly for kids who struggle with literacy. Thankyou for posting.

This tool is fantastic when I want to have the class read a paper version of an internet article, OR when the ads are so distracting that I can't concentrate on what I'm reading.

A well made site for teaching young learners phonics through interactive video presentations. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/English

Reading Bear, a project of WatchKnowLearn.org, is the first free program online to teach beginning readers vocabulary and concepts while systematically introducing all the main phonetic patterns of written English, all using innovative rich media. We spent an enormous amount of time developing 50 presentations, covering even more phonics principles and illustrating over 1,200 vocabulary items. There is nothing else like it, free or otherwise.

Add a URL at The Readability Test Tool site to determine the reading level of the page.

This site can be useful for determining the level of reading on a given Web page.

Technology and teaching - two words that seem to fit together perfectly today for most teachers and learners. So much so that a slew of new blogs have come on board to talk about education technology - or, edTech. This list of the 50 best education technology blogs are not inclusive, as there are so many new blogs available; however, if you look at links provided by many of these blogs to other edTech blogs, you may learn about even more blog that you aren't reading yet.

Analysis of multiple authors describing how web culture and mass participation are killing "long reading" and the thought processes that accompany it. Nicholas Carr and others. Interesting counterpoint to the digital collaboration utopia in the echo chamber.

Read, write, vote, read, write, vote again. Students compete with their writing.

Share your thoughts and opinions on books you and your students are reading.

Keep in mind that this experiment was focused on "classroom use" of Kindles, not necessarily "library use." Libraries have never supplied the resources used directly in the classroom for literature study (students don't markup library books!). At Cushing Academy, we are using Kindles to support recreational and personal interest reading rather than directly supporting the curriculum. In that role, they have worked very well.

Well, maybe not just like plain old books. Ebooks have many nice advantages for libraries, such as 24/7 access, always pristine and readable copies for the user, built-in dictionary (which our students tell us they really like) and, for the library itself, very efficient use of space and staff time.

"Last fall, Princeton launched a small experiment, replacing traditional textbooks with the Kindle DX, Amazon's large e-book reader. Almost from the beginning, the 50 students participating in the pilot program expressed dissatisfaction with the devices. Yesterday, a university report offered some more definitive findings. On the upside, students using the Kindle DX ended up using far less paper. (Paper consumption was generally reduced by 54%.) On the downside, students complained that the Kindle was fundamentally "ill-suited for class readings.""

A story has a beginning, a middle, and a cleanly wrapped-up ending. Whether told around a campfire, read from a book, or played on a DVD, a story goes from point A to B and then C. It follows a trajectory, a Freytag Pyramid-perhaps the line of a human life or the stages of the hero's journey. A story is told by one person or by a creative team to an audience that is usually quiet, even receptive. Or at least that's what a story used to be, and that's how a story used to be told. Today, with digital networks and social media, this pattern is changing. Stories now are open-ended, branching, hyperlinked, cross-media, participatory, exploratory, and unpredictable. And they are told in new ways: Web 2.0 storytelling picks up these new types of stories and runs with them, accelerating the pace of creation and participation while revealing new directions for narratives to flow.

ipads vs. tablets, interesting read.

Free online business articles and news at Harvard Business Review. Read a preview of Which Kind of Collaboration Is Right for You?, by Gary P. Pisano, Roberto Verganti.

Yochai Benkler's wealth of nations book online Next Chapter: Part I: The Networked Information Economy » read paragraph Chapter 1: Introduction: A Moment of Opportunity and Challenge 1 Information, knowledge, and culture are central to human freedom and human development. How they are produced and exchanged in our society critically affects the way we see the state of the world as it is and might be; who decides these questions; and how we, as societies and polities, come to understand what can and ought to be done. For more than 150 years, modern complex democracies have depended in large measure on an industrial information economy for these basic functions. In the past decade and a half, we have begun to see a radical change in the organization of information production. Enabled by technological change, we are beginning to see a series of economic, social, and cultural adaptations that make possible a radical transformation of how we make the information environment we occupy as autonomous individuals, citizens, and members of cultural and social groups. It seems passé today to speak of "the Internet revolution." In some academic circles, it is positively naïve. But it should not be. The change brought about by the networked information environment is deep. It is structural. It goes to the very foundations of how liberal markets and liberal democracies have coevolved for almost two centuries.

Creates audio files from any text, document, rss or website. You can dowload or embed the audio file.

Students use microblogging and social networking sites to trace the development of characters and examine writing style while reading a novel of manners such as Jane Austen's Emma.

Everybody knows enough about some topic - be it English, science, yoga or bourbon - to teach other people about it. And every topic is covered by content scattered around the Web. The idea behind a new site called Learnist is to give everybody a spot to teach through curation. The site, which is also available as an app for iPhone and iPad, features user-created lessons that bring together Web pages, videos, Google Books e-books and other items on a specific topic. At the moment, only a relatively small group of people approved by the site - including some teachers - can create these "learnings," but anyone can check them out. Read more: http://techland.time.com/2012/09/18/50-best-websites-2012/#ixzz2KnPnZqks

Everybody knows enough about some topic to teach other people about it. And every topic is covered by content scattered around the Web. The idea behind a new site called Learnist is to give everybody a spot to teach through curation. The site, which is also available as an app for iPhone and iPad, features user-created lessons that bring together Web pages, videos, Google Books e-books and other items on a specific topic. At the moment, only a relatively small group of people approved by the site - including some teachers - can create these "learnings," but anyone can check them out.

Curation

An excellent post with resources on developing and building a personal learning network.