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Thoughtful piece on Android, Schools and stuff from Fraser Spiers. Spoiler: He is an Apple Distinguished Educator. But it does raise some interesting issues.

Saba Ghole is an architect/urban designer turned education entrepreneur. As the Co- Founder and Chief Creative Officer of NuVu Studio, Saba leads the innovation center for middle and high school students, whose pedagogy is based on the studio model and geared around multi-disciplinary collaborative projects. Her experience in the urban design world exposed her to a myriad of innovative educational projects, including planning the Princess Nora Bint Abdulrahman University in Riyadh (the world's largest center of higher learning for women). Saba's design quirks and lure for adventure constantly fuel her efforts to re-design NuVu's curriculum and bring inspiring experts to coach students on how to innovate.

While there will never be a replacement for a paper book with dog-eared pages, hand written notes in the margins, a broken spine and a proudly worn cover with a hint of dirt and stains, there is an exciting new option to transform the practice of reading to make it more social and collaborative.  Subtext is an intriguing iPad application that allows users to read books collaboratively.  While reading, participants can insert text, emotions, questions, links and thoughts into the margins of the book.  When other readers jump into the text they can see the notations and reply to the existing thoughts in a discussion thread that is neatly tucked away into the margins of the text.

There are roughly 792 mobile apps downloaded each second. As a result, more and more services are taking to mobile in an effort to capitalize on this trend. That also means location-based capabilities and features are being integrated into many apps, whether users know it or not. You may be someone who takes personal and digital privacy matters very seriously, or you might be more relaxed about your digital information. Either way, there are four types of settings users can check to determine how much information they make available to the world.

"...more and more faculty are turning toward banning laptops in the classroom citing, at minimum, that classroom discussion is completely stymied, or worse, students are failing to learn."

Blog post summarising a research project which explored the factors at play when students are 'distracted' by their mobile device in teaching situations.

I'm still excited after the first meeting with the students at Melbourne City School back in April. Since I approached the school with an idea for using Augmented Reality (AR) and Games-based Learning they have been warm and welcoming and things have progressed ever so fast.  We had some initial discussions about how Curiosity Lab (ELN) and the students could work on something and they embraced the possibilities, so we just got straight into it. Using ARIS,  the novelty of AR and opportunities to attach rich media in the AR browser, we set produce something powerful that is learner driven, which attracts media attention and captures the hearts and imagination of the public. The fact that Layar is an app designed for mobile devices make it well suited to promoting the idea of recycling mobile phones to help protect and preserve the habitat of the Western Lowlands Gorilla.

Google has released a completely visual programming language that lets you build software without typing a single character. Now available on Google Code - the company's site for hosting open source software - the new language is called Google Blockly, and it's reminiscent of Scratch, a platform developed at MIT that seeks to turn even young children into programmers. Like Scratch, Blockly lets you build applications by piecing together small graphical objects in much the same way you'd piece together Legos. Each visual object is also a code object - a variable or a counter or an "if-then" statement or the like - and as you piece them to together, you create simple functions. And as you piece the functions together, you create entire applications - say, a game where you guide a tiny figurine through a maze.

Google Maps has been available on the iPhone since the device's launch, but on Monday Apple announced its own version of Maps for iOS 6 - one that will be replace the Google service on its smartphones. Google recently announced an update to its mapping service as well. While both services certainly have a lot in common, there are also quite a few distinctive differences between the two.

Is pitching just a new "sexier" way to make decisions - does it actually achieve educated decision making? What skills are developed in those being pitched too - sounds like the Educational Dragon's Den!

In the world of  tablet technology the warring dividing lines very quickly became the choice between Apple and Android mobile devices. The research began. The comparisons between apps and general capacity for varied uses were central (see my earlier blog posts), but also crucial was the cost. The question, 'why pay for the premium Apple iPad product in a time of fiscal austerity in education?' is obvious. Is the capacity so much better to justify paying extra, or is the iPad a triumph of advertising hype?

Blog Post from Tom Whitby who is concerned about the apparent lack of learning by many in the teaching profession. Provocative, but much to challenge us.

The two congressional representatives have unveiled a draft bill of rights for the Internet. Reps Darryl Issa and Ron Wyden unveiled their proposal at Personal Democracy Forum, and invite the Internet to edit and refine the list on Keep the Web Open.

This week, Microsoft rolled out its new tablet, simply called Surface, which gives you another way to enjoy our courses, movies, ebooks, audio books and the rest. In many ways, Surface resembles the iPad in its look and feel. And when it came to unveiling the tablet, Microsoft's execs couldn't think outside the box created by Steve Jobs. A video made by ReadWriteWeb makes that rather painfully yet amusingly clear….

Great discussion starter around student priorities for environments

Excellent overview of the model of exploratory learning.  Tinkering.