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Based on US situation but still applicable to Australian situation. "Despite the increasing emphasis on technology as a learning tool in the classroom, many school districts still aggressively filter the Internet that teachers and students can access. While the federal Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) requires that schools filter for pornographic images, many districts are over-filtering, blocking sites that can be used positively for education. There are a lot of myths about how tight these required filters must be."

An article about coding in the Australian curriculum. Bec Spink lists here yhe content descriptions taken directly from the Australian 'Digital Technologies' curriculum that demonstrate the progression of SOME of the process and production skills students are expected to learn from their first year of school until Year 10.

After consideration by district technology coordinator John Haubner and other administrators, and @MessnerEnglish became our class Twitter account. It's essential that the teacher emphasize responsible use by students. Probably the most important piece is close monitoring of students by the teacher.

Good case for securing permission to access Twitter in the classroom with some notes how it should be used.

The Horizon Report series is the most visible outcome of the New Media Consortium's Horizon Project, an ongoing research effort established in 2002 that identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, research, or creative expression within education around the globe.

Horizon report is out for 2010 :-)

10 years after laptops come to Maine schools, educators say technology levels playing field for students

The issue of cyber bullying of school children goes to the zeitgeist of our age. It is a collision point between three competing forces: educating our children to be responsible, autonomous individuals; the intervention of the state; and the seemingly unfathomable reach of technology. This week the new Commonwealth Director of Cyber Safety Policy and Programs. begins sifting through the many submissions responding to the government's cyber safety discussion paper. Twenty years ago who would have even imagined such a position would need to exist?

The issue of cyber bullying of school children goes to the zeitgeist of our age. It is a collision point between three competing forces: educating our children to be responsible, autonomous individuals; the intervention of the state; and the seemingly unfathomable reach of technology. This week the new Commonwealth Director of Cyber Safety Policy and Programs. begins sifting through the many submissions responding to the government's cyber safety discussion paper. Twenty years ago who would have even imagined such a position would need to exist?

Based on the principles found in the Gartner Hype Cycle

"a collection of some very good  tools you can use in class with students to create beautiful presentations and slideshows. All of these tools are web-based and do not require any software download. They are also very simple and easy to use so students won't have any major problems working on them."

Links to some excellent resources that teachers could use to improve their use of educational technology. Topics include Twitter, un-conference material, tech tools and developing your own PLN.

"The idea of students sitting in front of PCs learning how to use Word is as dead as the proverbial dead parrot. It is already an antiquated model of learning - like chalk or fountain pens with ink-wells; it has a whiff of the twentieth century about it, rather than preparing our students for the future. Whilst the DfE dithers about what they should do with technology (Mr Gove clearly wants to reboot the chalk and talk bygone age), schools are left with a rapidly changing world, where budgets are at a premium and ICT often stretches what budgets now allow. All the while, students are learning on their iPads, Android tablets and smart phones, writing more in texts and tweets daily than in their collective writing experience during the school week. We aren't harnessing this expertise, never mind guiding it to a place of higher learning!"

"The Technology Enhanced Learning Research group, led by Kevin Burden (Principal Investigator) based in the Faculty of Education, have recently completed the first national evaluation to investigate the use and impact of tablet technologies (in this case the iPad), across schools and homes in Scotland."

Filmmaking technologies have completely overhauled the cinematic landscape and have lead film in a different direction, revolutionising every aspect of cinema.

"With budgets tight, many schools are hoping to bring technology into the classroom without having to shell out for a device for each student. A solution for many has been to make classes BYOD (short for "bring your own device"), which allows students to bring laptops, tablets, and smartphones from home and to use them in the classroom and share them with other students. It's a promising idea, especially for schools that don't have big tech budgets, but it has met with some criticism from those who don't think that it's a viable long-term or truly budget-conscious decision. Whether that's the case is yet to be seen, but these stories of schools that have tried out BYOD programs seem to be largely positive, allowing educators and students to embrace technology in learning regardless of the limited resources they may have at hand."

The Victorian Information Technology Teachers Association Inc is a non-profit organisation supporting information and communication technology teachers at primary schools, secondary colleges and universities and other tertiary education institutions in Victoria, Australia.

"The online environment is an integral part of modern economic and social activities, and a vast resource of education, information, communication and entertainment. Further, the evolution of new technologies is diversifying the ways in which Australians connect with each other and the world. As part of the Government's comprehensive commitment to cyber-safety, the Australian Parliament established this Committee in March 2010. This report focuses on how young people can be empowered and connect to the Internet, and use new technologies with confidence, knowing that they can use them safely, ethically and with full awareness of risks and benefits. The facilitation of safer online environments requires government, industry and the broader community to work together to realise the benefits of the online environment while also protecting Australians from dangers and enabling them to use existing and emerging tools to mitigate risks.  

Ten great apps are listed and their use demonstrated with 3 Minute Tutorials for each. These videos show you how to get started and the rest is up to you

"The participatory research methods used in the project can provide rich contextual understanding of the everyday, everywhere presence of mobile technologies in young lives needed to devise effective strategies for dealing with mobile or smart phone use in and out of the classroom and supports efforts to give young people a greater voice in the decisions affecting their engagements mobile technologies."

As the post-PC era moves from interesting theory to cold, hard reality, one of the most pressing questions is: How can we use tablets, and especially the iPad, to help people learn? Most of the focus has been on ebooks replacing textbooks, a trend fueled by Apple's recent updates to iBooks. Specifically, the company released iBooks Author, a tool for creating immersive ebooks on the desktop. Plus, the new iPad is now the first tablet with a retina screen, making reading and watching multimedia on the device even more enjoyable. But technology is only as good as the system it's applied to. Much like a fresh coat of paint will not improve the fuel efficiency of a '69 Mustang, the application of technology to a broken system masks deeper problems with short-term gains.

Santos is not an enigma, but he is misunderstood. Santos sends approximately 125 texts per day. He sneaks his phone into his classes either in his book bag or his jacket and is online just about all day. He posts messages to Facebook during class. He looks up answers to definitions of words online. He checks sports scores, plays games, posts his location so his friends can find him easily, and streams music through an app on his phone. His teachers use technology as an event. Outside of school, he doesn't separate technology from other activities. For him, it is air or water, something that he doesn't really think about because it's always available.