Group items tagged

Hapara optimizes Google Apps for schools by structuring Google Apps around classes and students. With Hapara's tools, Google Apps becomes both easier to use and more effective. Teachers get the visibility they need to improve student outcomes in the moment, students get the full benefits of a safe, collaborative, digital learning environment, and schools save money. With customers in over 30 countries, Hapara is the management platform of choice for Google Apps for Education.

"Wikipedia can be a nightmare for a teacher, or it can be their best friend. For those teachers that have papers handed to them by students that are clearly copied from another source, Wikipedia tends to turn up early in the search and show that the students have indeed, been checking out what Wikipedia has to say. It's no wonder that teachers often have questions about what is good about the tool and how it might benefit their students. Today, we're taking a look at some more general facts and figures about one of the world's largest free, collaboratively written encyclopedia. Which is a pretty awesome concept, if you ask us. The handy infographic below will let you in on some interesting facts that you probably weren't privy to - and some of the numbers are pretty staggering! Keep reading to learn more!"

"Our information environment is constantly changing. How will we access, use and benefit from information in an increasingly hyper-connected world? The IFLA Trend Report identifies five top level trends which will play a key role in shaping our future information ecosystem:"

Another interesting discussion in regards to why students should learn to code. A good comparison with learning a spoken language and some of the benefits, such as problem solving and understanding the world around us. Ends with the suggestion that, like playing a sport, coding is good for you.

Dot Diva's mission is to create an exciting and positive image of computing for high school girls. Our nationwide survey revealed that not only do the majority of girls think of computing as "boring" and "hard," but they believe it fails to deliver two crucial benefits: "working with others" and "making a difference in other people's lives." Our ultimate goal is to transform this negative perception.

Interesting commentary on the benefits of teachmeets and Twitter chats from Chris Betcher.

"The move toward a self-evident user experience is going to have several natural consequences for the technology professionals who work with these products on a daily basis. In many ways, these IT pros have benefited from the overly complex and sometimes convoluted technology products because they were the ones who helped sort everything out for the users. That won't be the case for much longer."

Interesting to read about the shift to better and more intuitive interfaces for users.

Commercial companies focused on open source and open source communities at large can benefit from lots of efficiencies that arise from paying the public to debug software. In the latest example of the fact that "the public" in this context means absolutely anyone, 12-year old tech whiz Alex Miller, who hails from San Jose, right in the middle of Silicon Valley, has just received a $3,000 check from Mozilla for finding a major bug in the Firefox browser.

"I would just like to know how 'it' works, what the benefits are, how complicated it is and what costs are involved? I wish there was someone who could give us a quick overview, a birds-eye view tour... " Using Skype you are taken on 45 minute tours of a range of software portals. Interesting

SearchTeam is a collaborative search engine. You start your research by creating a SearchSpace on a topic of interest. From within a SearchSpace, you can search the Web, videos, images, books and more. You can find and save only what you want while you are searching and throw away what you don't want or find irrelevant. You can automatically organize what you save, into folders of your choosing. Everything is automatically saved into your personal account, and you can return to your searches any time and continue from where you left before. What makes SearchTeam unique and valuable is that you can do your searches collaboratively with others you trust, such as friends, colleagues and family members. You can invite any set of people you trust to search with you from within a SearchSpace. An invitation is sent via email to those people you invite to join your search. When they enter your SearchSpace, they see exactly what you've found and saved so far. They can comment on or like your findings. They can chat with you from within the SearchSpace, and do further searches relevant to that topic and save more results into the SearchSpace. All changes made by any collaborator are relayed to all other collaborators in real-time, so everyone is instantly in synch with what others are doing. In addition to finding and saving search results, SearchTeam goes further to enable you to enrich your SearchSpace with knowledge that may come from other sources. You can upload documents to a SearchSpace to share your relevant reports / presentations etc. You can also add links to Web resources that you may have received from others via email or social networks. You can even create new posts to share your knowledge on the topic directly inside the SearchSpace. Together, as a team, you can leverage the collective effort to find good quality information, and benefit from the collective knowledge on any topic efficiently. In effect, SearchTeam is traditional Web searching + Wiki-like editi

"Emerging Practice in a Digital Age explores how colleges and universities are embracing innovation and using emerging technologies to enhance learning in a climate of economic pressure, changing social circumstances and rapid technological change. Aimed at those in further and higher education who design and support learning, the guide draws on recent JISC reports and case studies to investigate how the emergence of new and more powerful technologies together with an increase in personal ownership of these technologies are changing the way we connect, communicate and collaborate, and how these changes can benefit learning. The focus of this guide is on emerging practice rather than emerging technology."

"The highly anticipated Google Wave is coming next week and we all know what benefits this new communication and collaboration tool can bring. But if you're using Internet Explorer 6, 7, or 8, you will need to install a Google Chrome Frame. It is a plug-in exclusively for Internet Explorer users to experience Google Wave fully, by bringing HTML5 and other open web technologies to Internet Explorer."

An excellent mashup that makes us more aware of the benefits of integrating some of the vast databases accessible on the Internet.

"I remixed this awesome scavenger hunt originally created by Joyce Valenza and added a QR Code Twist! I re-worked some of the questions for a lesson with my adorable ESOL kids (we have 35 right now in our ESOL program & one cute be-freckled girl just came yesterday & speaks no English at all but she LOVED scanning the codes when I handed her my Droid Fascinate!) The rest of the kids have varying degrees of English proficiency but still will benefit from a few visual clues. So the scavenger hunt questions are intentionally simply & clearly worded combined with pics I created as QR Code Hints. You can also use this lesson for special needs classes, Library Media orientation, or even re-mix the questions, QR Codes, & hints for just about ANY subject area! To create the hints I used a combination of Photoshop, Flickr, bit.ly and my favourite QR Code generator, Kaywa."

An interesting reflection on some of the benefits of maker spaces and what the maker movement brings to education.

A great infographic via Rhonda Powling on benefits of coding

"Although most homes have video games there's been a lot of resistance to them entering the classroom, but that's changing as teachers recognise their educational benefits."

Alan Levine reflecting on the benefits and negatives associated with the internet and the world wide web. There are many bias at play, the challenge is simply being aware of them.