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"Siri is still in relative infancy as a program, but as the technology develops, it will be interesting to see how it's applied in other situations outside of finding basic information, locating a Starbucks, or updating a calendar. One area where Siri's capabilities could be extraordinarily useful is in education, and many are already theorizing about the myriad different ways that Siri could be used to change how we teach, learn, and view it. Here we've collected a few of these ideas about how Siri could make the leap from a simple search tool to a powerful learning and education assistant. While they may not all come to pass, it's certainly fun to think about a world where interaction with technology for education could be so seamless, accessible, and maybe even fun."

One of the perplexing things that teachers and educators encounter when trying to understand educational technology and leverage it to their classrooms is the abundance of those baffling techy terms. Blended Learning is different from Differentiated Learning, Educational Technology might not be necessarily Instructional Technology, a Virtual Classroom is different from an Electronic Classroom or Flipped Classroom; There is also asynchronous, synchronous, and personalized learning, these and many more are but some examples of the growing terminology in this field.

Schools are needing increasing amounts of expensive educational technology at a time when budgets are shrinking. Many have started to explore BYOD policies - Bring Your Own Device - as a practical solution to integrate cost effective technology into their educational programs. With the convergence of widespread broadband and the growth of powerful, platform independent web based tools BYOD has finally arrived as an effective educational alternative to other plans that require expensive purchasing and maintenance. Viewed within a realistic perspective of both its benefits and limitations BYOD can provide a workable solution for the many schools seeking to upgrade their educational technology.

"Welcome to educators, parents and carers everywhere. This is the first and best UK directory to locate quality podcasts from over 250 carefully selected podcast channels for educational use - ideal for teaching and learning activities with children, young people and educational professionals."

"Advancing Education is the main Naace journal and is an eclectic mix of academic and action research papers, reports from sponsoring partners, indeed anything to do with advancing the use of ICT across education and reports covering all phases of education. As such it reflects the wide ranging interests of members and sponsors. The journal is published online three times a year. "

"On August 23, 2007 Chris Messina started something so small, he would never know how it might change the world." Both George Couros and Steven Anderson have great posts on hashtags in education. How they function, why we should use them, and some ways to get started immediately with hashtags. As I looked at the "big list" of educational hashtags I wondered if any other field had as many hashtags as education…

An interview with Dylan Wiliam, Emeritus Professor of Educational Assessment at the Institute of Education, University of London, on his paper entitled Optimizing Talent: Closing Educational and Social Mobility Gap Worldwide, published last year at the Salzburg Global Seminar in Austria.

eLearning Programs is a Department of Education  curriculum service which offers schools a variety of online K-10 courses and programs which can complement, augment or extend local provision and provide students with access to educational experiences and opportunities that would otherwise be unavailable.  It includes options for students identified as highly able or gifted (CELO Online), and some online VET courses for students in years 11-12.  The courses students undertake are usually delivered by  an online delivery teacher with the support and supervision of the students' own school. eLearning programs vary in length and nature; for example some are full year subjects while others are term by term opportunities.

Plenty of research and opinion articles about education to explore on this site. I enjoyed reading about neuroscience research impact on education in the Learning and Development.

An updated publication designed to help training teachers on ways to optimize the use of information and communication technologies in the classroom has been launched early November 2011 by UNESCO in cooperation with the Commonwealth of Learning, Intel and Microsoft. The ICT Competency Framework for Teachers aims at helping countries to develop comprehensive national teacher ICT competency policies and standards, and should be seen as an important component of an overall ICT in Education Master Plan.

Looking at the New Directions for school leadership and the teaching profession discussion paper, the only evidence presented to support the assertion that Victoria's education outcomes are not improving is the report "Challenges in Australian Education: results from PISA 2009: the PISA 2009 assessment of students' reading, mathematical and scientific literacy" Specifically the New Directions paper focuses on reading literacy, where in 2009, 14,251 students were given a two-hour pen and paper comprehension test. To get an idea of what types of competencies the reading test is assessing we can look at the sample test , with questions range from comprehension about a letter in a newspaper, the ability to interpret a receipt, comprehension around a short story, an informational text, and interpreting a table. While it doesn't seem unreasonable to want our students to be able to accurately perform these kind of tasks, these tests are not a true or accurate representation of the skills and competencies our students need in today's technology driven world.

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!

Some reflections from Vivienne Ming and Norma Ming in regards to designing educational technology.

"... a series of profiles of 100 famous educators (including philosophers, statesmen, politicians, journalists, psychologists, poets, men of religion) from around of the world who have left their mark on educational thought."

PISA, the OECD's triennial international assessment of 15 year olds in math, reading, and science, has become one of the most destructive forces in education today. It creates illusory models of excellence, romanticizes misery, glorifies educational authoritarianism, and most serious, directs the world's attention to the past instead of pointing to the future. In the coming weeks, I will publish five blog posts detailing each of my "charges," adapted from parts of my book Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon: Why China has the Best (and Worst) Education.

"Educating our students is a collective responsibility. As educators and leaders in schools we often wonder if we are providing the best possible education for our students. This series of Professional Learning sessions will explore the complexities that we are faced with when working through these three main areas - * Learning Culture * Learning Paradigms * Learning Spaces"

Helen has organised an interesting series of online workshops this year.

Training course for educators about facilitating online learning or mixed mode courses. Created by the Center for Educational Technology.

Training course for educators about facilitating online learning or mixed mode courses. Created by the Center for Educational Technology.

"Twitter seems to be here to stay. As one of the most popular ways for teachers, students, and the general public to communicate, it's becoming a must-have tool in almost every teacher's toolbox. However, numerous recent studies have shown that education in general has been slow to adopt social media. In an effort to speed up this adoption process, below you'll find a boatload of resources on the past, present, and future of Twitter in education as well as some helpful guides to using the tool in the classroom. This guide is by no means exhaustive and is meant to be added to on a regular basis. To do that, Edudemic needs your help. Just share your favorite resource(s) on the Edudemic Facebook page and it'll get added to this Ultimate Guide."

Blog entry with a list of some great educational game sites. Found on @edu_tweets.

" It's with much regret that we're announcing the end of the "Ad Free for Education Sites" program here at Wetpaint. While the program has been a tremendous success and has been used by educators around the world, it comes at a high cost to Wetpaint. With the company's resources stretched thin, we can no longer effectively support the program going forward."