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Graph of the day: Canadians pee between periods, by Chris Blattman: Edmonton’s water utility published this graph of water consumption during last Sunday’s gold medal Olympic hockey game. Roughly 80% of Canadians were watching. I believe the beer consumption picture looks exactly the same, but upside down. ...

                There are many reasons behind deforestation. The main reason that governments and companies destroy trees is to make more usable land. After the trees have been cut down, the area can be utilized for many ways. One of the major uses is to create farm land in order to feed more people. Another way that governments use this land is to make more houses. Usually deforestation occurs because of the growing population in developing countries and new homes need to be built on this land so that people can live comfortably.

as there are many creative ways to cut costs, as well as to free resources that can be used with existing infrastructures.  Schools can utilize cost-effective lease purchase programs for computers, investigate the implementation of a Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT) program, or promote the use of a plethora of free Web 2.0 tools.

Schools and classrooms do not, and will not, spiral out of control when we allow teachers the flexibility to take calculated risks to innovate with technology or permit students to learn using social media or their own devices.

One of the most powerful means of professional development is through the use of social media where educators can create their own Personal Learning Network (PLN) based entirely on their unique needs and passions.

how savvy

If they’re naive at Googling, it’s because the ability to judge information is almost never taught in school.

intelligent search a key to everyday problem-solving

Is there a model out there, or an institution/student mix that could effectively utilize MOOCs in such a way as to get around this flaw? It’s hard to tell. Recent articles on Inside Higher Ed have suggested that distance education providers (like the University of Maryland’s University College – UMUC) may opt to certify the MOOCs that come out of these elite schools and bake them into their own online programs. Others suggest that MOOCs could be certified by other schools and embedded in prior learning portfolios.

The fatal flaw that I referred to earlier is pretty apparent:  the very notions of "mass, open" and selectivity just don’t lend themselves to a workable model that benefits both institutions and students. Our higher education system needs MOOCs to provide credentials in order for students to find it worthwhile to invest the effort, yet colleges can’t afford to provide MOOC credentials without sacrificing prestige, giving up control of the quality of the students who take their courses and running the risk of eventually diluting the value of their education brand in the eyes of the labor market.

In other words, as economists tell us, students themselves are an important input to education. The fact that no school uses a lottery system to determine who gets in means that determining who gets in matters a great deal to these schools, because it helps them control quality and head off the adverse effects of unqualified students either dropping out or performing poorly in career positions. For individual institutions, obtaining high quality inputs works to optimize the school’s objective function, which is maximizing prestige.

I utilized the stack feature so that I have two main stacks in Evernote, private notebooks and work related notebooks. In the work stack I have two notebooks, one for school related notes (to do lists, things to share in future meetings, substitute plans, etc.) and another that I have named lessons. In the lessons notebook, I have one note per week of the school year. Inside that I have a list of all of the classes I teach in age order. Underneath each class I write my lesson in. This is constantly updated, usually straight after a class so I know what to teach the follow week. So when I show up to a class, I can open up my computer or get out my iPhone, go to the lessons notebook, click the week we are in and I have my lesson plan outlined. I’ve been doing this for fifteen weeks now and I find this an excellent way to stay organized. I have a searchable list of all of the lessons that I have taught. I can copy and paste if a class is cancelled or if it carries on for longer than expected. I can adapt my lesson plan straight away to add what was actually taught in the lesson as opposed to what I planned to teach. I can plan weeks in advance without worrying about having to cross something out. It is the ultimate organization tool.

Udutu, a Canadian company, has a set of rich media interactive course development tools for creating courses on iPads and iPhones. Courses built with the Udutu authoring tool will play on iPads and iPhones because the interactions utilize DHTML or HTML5 as an option instead of Flash, and all the navigation and templates are HTML.

Articulate has several tools for publishing learning content to mobile devices, including Presenter ’09 and Screenr.

We all want to be special, to stand out; there's nothing wrong with this. The irony is that every human being is special to start with, because we're unique to start with.

n the military I could exercise the power of being automatically respected because of the medals on my chest, not because I had done anything right at the moment to earn that respect.

I knew many Marines had done brave deeds that no one saw and for which they got no medals at all.

Making Oil from Plastic

Tons of plastic from Japan and US is left afloat in the Pacific Ocean, which is endangering marine life significantly.

Blest, a Japanese company has invented a safe and user friendly machine

excessive use of the internet and other forms of technology diminishes our capacity for deep, meditative thinking, "the brighter the software, the dimmer the user", a counter-revolution may be required.

curricula must be developed not only with the potential benefits of technology linked to every learning outcome in mind, but also the costs.

available where there is clear utility, to remove it when there is not