Group items tagged

"Around the world, students from elementary school to the Ph.D. level are increasingly getting acquainted with the basics of coding, as computer programming is also known. From Singapore to Tallinn, governments, educators and advocates from the tech industry argue that it has become crucial to hold at least a basic understanding of how the devices that play such a large role in modern life actually work."

"Earlier this month, the UN's International Telecommunication Union (ITU) released new figures on the state of the Internet. They revealed that by the end of this year, there will be 3 billion Internet users, a substantial fraction of which hail from developing nations. That's not to say the number of connected people in the U.S. isn't also growing. In fact the UN says the number of online citizens in developed nations is reaching saturation. The Connectivist presents some of the ITU report's findings."

"The idea behind FireChat is simple. It's a chatting app. After registering with a name - no email address or other personal identifiers required - you're dropped into a fast-moving chatroom of "Everyone" using it in your country. The interesting aspect, however, is the "Nearby" option. Here, the app uses Apple's Multipeer Connectivity framework, essentially a peer-to-peer feature that lets you share messages (and soon photos) with other app users nearby, regardless of whether you have an actual Wi-Fi or cellular connection."

"apple apps peer to peer security FOLLOW WIRED Twitter Facebook RSS This Little-Known iOS Feature Will Change the Way We Connect"

"in this post, I'll explain in detail (yes, it's another tl;dr post from yours truly) just how I am using Inoreader and why it is unexpectedly an essential new tool for my online classes. But first, some context:"

Productivity and simplicity, these are two things the modern knowledge worker craves. Google Reader is my "secret weapon" of productivity and I'd like to show you how I get the most out of this program.

"Google Reader doesn't bring in the eyeballs on adverts, so it's got to go. It really IS that simple. So, what are the alternatives? There are surprisingly a fair number of them, but it depends on the platform that you use."

"The first thing that stands out upon arrival at Hellerup School, where 640 students between the ages of 6 and 16 study on the former site of the Tuborg brewery in Denmark, is the absence of a fence separating the school from the street. Inside, there is no office to greet visitors. Instead, small shoes litter the floor and children of all ages sprawl on couches doing homework, play foosball or run about the open space that substitutes for classrooms. "

Hojoki's basic idea is very simple: they offer one newsfeed for productivity apps. It connects to apps like Google Documents, Evernote, Dropbox, Mendeley and Google Calendar, building you a newsfeed and a collaborative space for your work.

A decidedly low tech device, the humble pencil, is providing some tongue-in-cheek insight into current education debates via Twitter. In the past 24 hours, educators have tweeted the hashtag #pencilchat thousands of times. The tweets are undeniably witty, but they also reflect the frustration teachers feel over everything from schools' technophobia to budget cuts, which may make #pencilchat the best-and most clever-education allegory ever.

"In a sixth-grade classroom in Greensboro, N.C., a dozen middle-school social-studies teachers were getting their second of three days of training on tablets that had been presented to them as a transformative educational tool. Every student and teacher in 18 of Guilford County's 24 middle schools would receive one, 15,450 in all, to be used for class work, homework, educational games - just about everything, eventually." This article from the New York TImes looks at the Amplify Tablet

Edutopia provides this neat article on Hour of Code and a brief history of coding which contains lots of embedded links to "things code".

We've all heard that the pen is mightier than the sword, but Livescribe aims to make the pen mightier than the stylus with its recently released Smartpen 3.

Reeder is a Google Reader client, which means you need a Google Reader account to use the app. Don't have one? No problem, you can get one here: http://google.com/reader When using Reeder, all changes will be synced with Google Reader. This means if (for example) you read an article in Reeder it will also be marked as read in Google Reader. The same is true if you read in Google Reader. When syncing the next time, Reeder will just pick up the changes.

From Diigo - Readict is for those who take reading seriously. It is an iPad reading app that integrates highlighter and "read later" functionalities to provide efficient and effective reading experience.  $5.49 in Australia