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Love LEGO bricks? Your favourite coloured bricks are now in Chrome. Check out Build, the world's biggest LEGO set available on your browser. Over the last few months, we've been working with our friends at LEGO Australia on a new project to bring your favourite LEGO bricks to Chrome.  Created downunder and exclusive to Australia and New Zealand, Build is our latest Chrome Experiment and uses the latest in browser technology in Chrome

Looking for something to jazz up your literacy lesson? Check out Domo by goannimate. A free animation tool that allows you to create funky looking animations. A great tool for any literacy lesson especially if wanting to emphasise dialog, setting and characterisation for creative writing. 

"After a spectacular launch and a long cruise through the black reaches of space, the Mars Science Laboratory-better known as the Curiosity rover-is set for the most dangerous part of its mission: the landing in Gale Crater. ... Use this page as a quick guide to the event."

"After a spectacular launch and a long cruise through the black reaches of space, the Mars Science Laboratory-better known as the Curiosity rover-is set for the most dangerous part of its mission: the landing in Gale Crater. Curiosity is the biggest rover ever sent to Mars, and carries the most advanced suite of instruments, in order to discover the story of the planet's habitability. Use this page as a quick guide to the event."

This video outlines how the Edmodo app can be used to collect student created IMAGES and VIDEOS from a classroom set of iPads.

StudyEgg is a new tool that can be used to augment already existing educational content on the Internet by adding new learning features. With StudyEgg teachers can create quizzes based on YouTube videos like Khan Academy or any other freely available lesson/material. GradeCam enables teachers to grade assignments instantly with any document camera or webcam, no special tools needed. The data is then displayed, showing the teacher if all students understood the concepts. Tests can be created on the go to check what students have learned instead of testing them days or weeks later. GradeCam then lets users import the data easily into the gradebook service,  Always Prepped combines different educational resources and services like Khan Academy, Edmodo or Study Island and puts all the learning related data of the students into one unified dashboard. Also able to add non-educational data such as social data to the dashboard. For example, if the teacher knows that the parents of a particular student are getting divorced or that a grandparent has died, the teacher is able to add this information to the data set and can see immediately whether the performance in class might somewhat be related to the happenings in the student's personal life.

The Australian version of Google TV isn't a television, it's a set-top box. This little box doesn't even include TV tuners for watching live broadcasts. Instead, Google TV aims to bring the best of the internet to your television.

UNESCO is developing a set of policy guidelines for mobile learning, for which it is inviting public review and input

"All eyes are on education right now. Whether it's in the political theater or the venture capitalists, everyone has set their sights on the future leaders of tomorrow. Some companies, like Apple, have long realized the potential of this demographic and have specifically targeted them with iPads, iPod Touches, and other devices. In an effort to share exactly how Apple is targeting students, MDG Advertising whipped up a thought-provoking infographic. "

In 2012 Musgrave Hill SS is entering a new phase in learning as we begin an Apple trial to investigate the effectiveness of iPads for all students, in particular special needs students in mainstream classrooms. We have three target classrooms working with iPads 1:2 with students and two sets of six iPads available for all classes to borrow for use inteaching and learning. The classes in the 1:2 project have several special needs students and a teams of teachers and aides who will support the students, their learning and the project. We will document the iPad Project and provide data that we hope will substantiate our belief that iPads and many other digital technologies are essential to support teaching and learning at our school in the 21st Century.

" A recent study at Illinois Wesleyan University found that fewer than 25% of students could perform a "reasonably well-executed search." Wrote researchers, "The majority of students - of all levels - exhibited significant difficulties that ranged across nearly every aspect of the search process." That search process also included determining when to rely on Google and when to utilize scholarly databases, but on a fundamental level, it appears that many people just don't understand how to best find the information they seek using Google. Thanks to the folks at HackCollege, a number of my "secrets" are out. The infographic below offers a helpful primer for how to best structure searches using advanced operators to more quickly and accurately drill down to the information you want. This is by no means an exhaustive list of search operators and advanced techniques, but it's a good start that will help set you on the path to becoming a Google master."

"The 'Easy Guide to Socialising Online'* provides information about the cybersafety features of different sites, including social networking sites, search engines and online games. By clicking on the logos for each site, you can learn how to adjust your privacy settings, report inappropriate content and find out more about other safety features.

In the future, business people will not need to carry a laptop around with them to get their work done, Microsoft believes. Instead, smart devices in connected rooms will change their settings according to the person using them, it has predicted.

"APPitic is a directory of apps for education by Apple Distinguished Educators (ADEs) to help you transform teaching and learning. These apps have been tested in a variety of different grade levels, instructional strategies and classroom settings."

Million Short is an experimental web search engine (really, more of a discovery engine) that allows you to REMOVE the top million (or top 100k, 10k, 1k, 100) sites from the results set. We thought it might be somewhat interesting to see what we'd find if we just removed an entire slice of the web.

"The YouTube Upload Widget lets your website's visitors perform both webcam and file uploads to YouTube. The support for webcam uploads sets the upload widget apart from the other uploading options that the YouTube API supports. The widget uses HTML5's postMessage support to send messages back to your website regarding videos uploaded via the widget."

"Gamification is simply the application of "game" mechanics to non-game entities. The big idea here is to encourage a desired behavior. In this way, "gamification" amounts to installing mechanics or systems that recognize and reward behavior. Through increased visibility of nuance, documentation of progress, and rewarding of seemingly minor (but critical) behaviors, a specific outcome can be achieved. Since it encourages internal motivation through an outwardly-created set of circumstances, gamification sits at the awkward intersection of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation."

Loving the speed records for geeks.

APPitic is a directory of apps for education by Apple Distinguished Educators (ADEs) to help you transform teaching and learning. These apps have been tested in a variety of different grade levels, instructional strategies and classroom settings.

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.