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The Boys' Reading Commission has found that boys' underachievement in reading is associated with the interplay of three factors: -  The home and family environment, where girls are more  likely to be bought books and taken to the library, and where  mothers are more likely to support and role model reading; -  The school environment, where teachers may have a limited  knowledge of contemporary and attractive texts for boys  and where boys may not be given the opportunity to develop  their identity as a reader through experiencing reading for  enjoyment; -  Male gender identities which do not value learning and  reading as a mark of success.

"I've been getting a lot of questions from high school kids asking whether or not they should go to college. The answer is yes. College is where you find out about yourself. It's where you learn how to learn. It's where you get exposure to new ideas. For those of us who are into business you learn the languages of business, accounting, finance, marketing and sales in college. The question is not whether or not you should go to school; the question for the class of 2014 is what is your college plan and what is the likelihood that your college or university you attend will still be in business by the time you want to graduate? Still in business? Yep. When I look at the university and college systems around the country I see the newspaper industry."

Is there a place beyond the physical world where we may go as avatars? Where do we get together with our friends and family, go to concerts together, pursue hobbies, work, shop...? Many are looking forward to such a "metaverse". We simply explain.

Is there a place beyond the physical world where we may go as avatars? Where do we get together with our friends and family, go to concerts together, pursue hobbies, work, shop...? Many are looking forward to such a "metaverse". We simply explain.

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.

"Little is known about Wikipedia contributors' information behaviour and from where and how the information in the encyclopaedia originated...... Understanding the information source use of contributors helps us to understand how new Wikipedia articles emerge, how edits are motivated, where the information actually comes from and more generally, what kind of information may be expected to be found in Wikipedia. "

"Glass is the first step past the smartphone era, into a time where it's entirely possible that peripherals such as Glass are going to be used more and more to allow interaction with the computer in consumers' pockets in different ways. Think of it this way: your future children are likely to consider your Nexus 4 or iPhone 5 to be their Commodore 64 when they're older. It's hard to imagine a world where we see a user interface in our eyes but it's also not that far off."

Do you work in design, or any field where you need to download fonts for use on your project? If so, you know that finding top quality fonts is often easier said than done. Plenty of websites offer free fonts, but many of them are filled with ads, and a lot of the fonts are just not of the best quality. That's where the website FontPro comes into play. It offers a clean interface, and all the free fonts you could ever want to download

"Dual-screen apps are a new phenomena, enabled by the advent of wireless technologies that allow for effortless pairing of a PC, tablet or smartphone with a TV. They are changing how people are interacting and "consuming" content within apps. For developers this creates many new opportunities to provide better experiences for their users, but it requires thinking about dual-screen setups from the start as well as new tools. The opportunity for dual-screen apps is huge. And it's more than just watching a video or playing a game: Dual-screen apps have the potential to transform the office meeting room, the classroom, the retail store, the hospital, and really any other context where people are interacting around content and information and where that information would benefit from rendering and display on a large screen such as a TV monitor."

"As textbooks are being replaced by digital readers and traditional education moves online, it's important to understand the evolution of educational technology so that we might better understand where our #edtech tools came from-and where they are going. Find out more in the below infographic."

"Several tech-forward US marketing companies are going where few have gone before: they're ditching the resume and the conventional job interview process for tweets. A simple tweet or two - sometimes called Twitterviews - can lead to a job. In a nation where unemployment stands at 7.9 per cent, how you tweet can now determine how employable you are."

In some ways, the flipped model is an improvement. Research shows that tailored tutoring is more effective than lectures for understanding, mastery, and retention. But the flipped classroom doesn't come close to preparing students for the challenges of today's world and workforce. As progressive educational activist Alfie Kohn notes, great teaching isn't just about content but motivation and empowerment: Real learning gives you the mental habits, practice, and confidence to know that, in a crisis, you can count on yourself to learn something new. That's crucial in a world where, according to the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics, adults change careers (not just jobs) four to six times or where, as an Australian study predicts, 65% of today's teens will end up in careers that haven't even been invented yet. We don't need to flip the classroom. We need to make it do cartwheels.

"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."

"Australia finally has its first digital technology curriculum which is mandatory for all Australian children from Foundation, the name replacing kindergarten, to Year 8. The Technologies area now has two individual but connected compulsory subjects: Design and Technologies, where students use critical thinking to create innovative solutions for authentic problems Digital Technologies, where students using computational thinking and information systems to implement digital solutions."

"The days of internet searches being a matter of typing words into a box on a web page may be numbered. Even the expressions "search it" and "Google it" could soon go out of fashion, just as "going online" is already passe because these days we're always connected. Steven Weitz, senior director of search for Microsoft's search engine Bing wants our physical and virtual worlds to merge to a point where we will be able to stand on a street corner and the answer to "where am I?" will bring up not only the street name but historic and tourist information, places to eat as recommended by our friends and the best public transport option to get to an appointment on time."

During your time at school you will complete many projects and research assignments that require you to find and use information from a variety of sources - many of which will be online. Sometimes, however, searching on the web can feel like you are lost in a jungle of information? You may feel overwhelmed and ask yourself the following questions... Where do I start? Where am I going to get the information I need? How do I know what is 'good' information? Which are the best websites for this assignment? Well, the Research Safari is designed to help you navigate your way through the 'jungle of information' to help you create a dynamic assignment.

"Advocates of the learning style theory argue that instructors can achieve much better results when they take their student's learning style under consideration and create a course that best fits this exact style. The adversaries of the learning style theory say that this concept is misunderstood and not scientifically proven, and they argue that learning styles do make instructors understand what motivates and cerebrally stimulates their students, but they can't guarantee a successful outcome nor predict it. So where is the truth in that and where lies the Learning Styles myth?  "

"Published on Jul 1, 2013 Knowing where we're going often means knowing where we've come from. The history of search engines is a short one, but one of constant change. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Danny Sullivan takes a look at how search has evolved into the complicated engine it's become, and what that means for its neon-lit, rocket-car future.

"Knowing where we're going often means knowing where we've come from. The history of search engines is a short one, but one of constant change. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Danny Sullivan takes a look at how search has evolved into the complicated engine it's become, and what that means for its neon-lit, rocket-car future."

"We might not worry concerning identity theft the maximum amount as property theft as a result of it isn't as shivery and face to face as an actual theft, however it's a digital theft, fraud may be life damaging. I even have an exponent whose family had been saving up for years to travel to film producer World. This perceived to have all of the correct precautions required to avoid fraud or hackers. However somehow a hole was found and $6,000 was taken out of their savings. No film producer World for his or her family. However perhaps the hacker had a pleasant trip instead? We will solely hope. Read Where You'll Get Hacked Infographic "

Having surveyed teenagers in 30 countries, they revealed that the number of teenagers claiming to be active on Facebook (ie. doing more than just "liking" a separate page on the web) had dropped to 56% in the third quarter of 2013, from 76% in the first. The biggest decline in active usage (by 52%) was in the Netherlands; there was a 16% fall for American teens. Where are they going instead? Not surprisingly, it's mobile chat services like WeChat, and photo-sharing apps like Instagram and Snapchat. What's truly startling though, is how quickly global teenagers are taking up the services instead: