"It's no secret that Google Docs has made teachers more effective at teaching writing. After making a full Google Docs integration this year in my history classroom, I will never go back. My students are required to write every paper in Google Docs. This way, I can help with the process and not just the finished product. In this post, I will talk about using Google Docs and the need for a chrome browser extension called WatchDoc that allows for the most efficient, effective teaching with Google Docs."
"From the Washington Post to 60 Minutes, Sal Khan has been hailed a pioneer, while everyone from gleeful journalists to investors have anointed Khan Academy a "revolution in education." It's not. Instead, Khan Academy may be one of the most dangerous phenomenon in education today. Not because of the site itself, but because of what it - or more appropriately, our obsession with it - says about how we as a nation view education, and what we've come to expect."
"Its well known that giving easy digital content creation tools into the hands of more teachers and students is a great way to encourage focus on higher order thinking skills in the curriculum. For schools with Macs and iPads, the release of Apple's iBooks Author software in January made this even more possible.
Attached to this post is 1.0 draft of a 'know-why' guide to using iBooks Author to make digital content thats localised and personalised just for your students. Download and enjoy, plus leave comments if you have questions or feedback. To load, just download directly onto an iPad with iBooks 2 installed, and tap 'open in iBooks', or download to your PC and sync via iTunes."
"On Wednesday, February 8th, Wolfram Alpha will be adding a new, "Pro" option to its already existing services. Priced at a very reasonable $4.99 a month ($2.99 for students), the new services includes the ability to use images, files, and even your own data as inputs instead of simple text entry. The "reports" that Wolfram Alpha kicks out as a result of these (or any) query are also beefed up for Pro users, some will actually become interactive charts and all of them can be more easily exported in a variety of formats. We sat down with Stephen Wolfram himself to get a tour of the new features and to discuss what they mean for his goal of "making the world's knowledge computable.""
"Weather Underground's WunderMap now allows the user to view historical weather records on a Google Map. A calendar control above the map allows the user to select a date and view the historical weather records for that day. The records include radar, storm reports and even weather related photographs and webcam images taken on that day."
"There is one iOS "tip" that I keep hearing and it is wrong. Worse, I keep hearing it from supposedly authoritative sources. I have even heard it from the lips of Apple "Geniuses" in stores. Here is the advice - and remember it is wrong:
All those apps in the multitasking bar on your iOS device are currently active and slowing it down, filling the device's memory or using up your battery. To maximise performance and battery life, you should kill them all manually.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. There are caveats to this but anyone dispensing the advice above is clearly uninformed enough that they will certainly not be aware of these subtleties."