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"An assistive technology: a technology used by an individual with a disability to perform a function that might otherwise be difficult or impossible." Samantha Thomas, a student, future librarian, and educator at Kutztown University, created this handy collection of assistive technologies that you may find helpful. Some are commonly used with special needs individuals, such as augmentative & alternative communication apps and others are general consumer apps. Listed alongside each app is her assessment of its value as an assistive technology."

"The iPad Project at York St John University aims to provide opportunities for staff to be innovative and to increase student engagement in the classroom. It will focus on exploring the benefits of using iPads in group work and collaborative learning activities."

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.

A sardonic look at the future of universities and MOOCS

"What works in education? The Best Evidence Encyclopedia (BEE) presents reliable, unbiased reviews of research-proven educational programs" (John Hopkins University)

"Ever wondered why Karl Marx thought religion was like opium - or whether religion is possible without a god? Voiced by David Mitchell, this series of four 60 second animations examines different ways that religion has been viewed by non-religious thinkers." From the Open University in the UK

"Mastering Physics by Solving Problems: from School to University!"

"Game Changers: Education and Information Technologies is a collection of chapters and case studies contributed by college and university presidents, provosts, faculty, and other stakeholders. Institutions are finding new ways of achieving higher education's mission without being crippled by constraints or overpowered by greater expectations."

Mobile learning is a relatively new phenomenon and the theoretical basis is currently under development. The paper presents a pedagogical perspective of mobile learning which highlights three central features of mobile learning: authenticity, collaboration and personalisation, embedded in the unique time-space contexts of mobile learning. A pedagogical framework was developed and tested through activities in two mobile learning projects located in teacher education communities: Mobagogy, a project in which faculty staff in an Australian university developed understanding of mobile learning; and The Bird in the Hand Project, which explored the use of smartphones by student teachers and their mentors in the United Kingdom. The framework is used to critique the pedagogy in a selection of reported mobile learning scenarios, enabling an assessment of mobile activities and pedagogical approaches, and consideration of their contributions to learning from a socio-cultural perspective.

Children given iPads to use at school are more focused on learning and less likely to misbehave, research has found. University of WA education researchers have been investigating the use of iPads and other mobile devices in 12 independent schools during the past 10 months. UWA's Grace Oakley said teachers found that students were more likely to finish their homework and do a better job.

Today saw the launch of Microsoft's Office 365 cloud collaboration and communication suite that is specifically aimed at schools and universities, replacing Live@edu, which will remain available for 18 more months to give its customers time to migrate into the newer software, writes Juan Carlos Perez for IDG News.

The Buck Institute for Education (BIE) received a generous grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to help promote and provide deeper learning opportunities for teachers and students.  Recognizing that 11,000 teachers will participate in BIE's 3-day PBL 101 workshop in 2012, the Hewlett Foundation helped BIE expand its professional development resources and expertise online.  Now BIE can work with every school and every teacher through PBL University (PBLU).

"Google launched an open source course building web application for the growing list of K-12 and big-name universities developing online classes. The barebones website is a lightweight way to bring course material online, track student engagement (with web traffic and surveys), and evaluate performance. "We want to use this launch to show that Google believes it can contribute to technology in education," says Google's Director of Research, Peter Norvig."

Paul Kim at Stanford University School of Education is leading an open course that anyone can enroll.

"Course Builder is our experimental first step in the world of online education. It packages the software and technology we used to build our Power Searching with Google online course. We hope you will use it to create your own online courses, whether they're for 10 students or 100,000 students. You might want to create anything from an entire high school or university offering to a short how-to course on your favorite topic."

This is Google's contest to introduce pre-university students to the many kinds of contributions that make open source software development possible. It runs from November 21, 2011 to January 16, 2012. We invite students worldwide to produce a variety of open source code, documentation, training materials and user experience research for the organizations participating this year. These tasks include:

" 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 current programme of information and communications technology (ICT) study in England's schools will be scrapped from September, the education secretary has announced. It will be replaced by an "open source" curriculum in computer science and programming designed with the help of universities and industry.

"Datawind, a relatively small Canadian company based in Montreal, has won an Indian government contract to produce a 7 inch touchscreen tablet named Aakash that costs $52 to manufacture and will sell, with Indian government subsidy, for $35 for universities, colleges and high schools in India. The tablet runs on Google's Android software."

This plugin is built for people keen to reuse flickr images in their blogs. Searching for just CC-BY material the plugin helps to make using flickr co. This plugin was developed for the Politics InSpires (http://politicsinspires.org) project at the University of Oxford.