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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:

Ombudsman report regarding the Ultranet (p. 93). Some interesting points such as a recommendation to update it every 5 years(!) and it costing $100 million to keep it going for 10 more years.

"TagMyDoc allows you to apply a tag on a document which can be scanned and retrieved as a virtual copy."

"Drag photos, videos, documents, websites, text snippets, and more directly from your desktop or browser. Drop them into your Dropmark collection. They're automatically uploaded to the cloud. Share your collections with anyone, add collaborators, or keep them private and just for yourself."

"Vyew allows you to meet and share content in real-time or anytime. Upload images, files, documents and videos into a room. Users can access and contribute at anytime. "

"Google Docs can now be exported from the Google Takeout menu, thanks to Google's Data Liberation Front. Previously, users could export and import documents in various formats, but they are now available alongside data from all other Google services in Takeout. Google Takeout was unveiled in summer 2011. It allows Google users to export all their Google data to disk or just data from individual services. It's all thanks to the Data Liberation Front team, which builds tools to give Google users control over their data."

"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."

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.

Gooru is a new service (still carrying the Alpha label) that aims to provide teachers and students with an extensive collection of videos, interactive displays, documents, diagrams, and quizzes for learning about topics in math and science. As a Gooru member you have access to hundreds of resources according to subject areas such as chemistry, biology, ecology, algebra, calculus, and more. Within each subject area you can look for resources according to media type such as video, interactive display, slides, text, and lesson plans. When you find resources that you want to use, drag them to the resources folder within your account. Gooru also offers you the option to add resources to your folders even if you did not find them within Gooru.

"Google Docs is a fantastic tool for professional and student collaboration. After using Google Docs for an extended period of time, it becomes evident to most Google Docs users that your inbox can become a cluttered, hectic and confusing mess. Magnify that confusion X 100 when you start to have students share their documents with you for evaluation and grading and you can have a colossal mess on your hands. Based on my experience using Google Docs for the past two years, I have come up with a strategy that I think may help anyone who plans on using Google Docs with students next year. "

"Students at Het 4e Gymnasium Amsterdam have had their history class infused into their digital lives...The students have built Facebook Timelines for four history subjects:..Historical events were represented by uploading a variety of media including audio, video, photos, maps, and historic documents."

"Google Drive is one of the fundamental tools in our digital toolkits as teachers and educators. Whether you want to compose a document, create a presentation,  design a sheet, or share a beautiful drawing you made, Google Drive provides you with the tools to do that on any device and anywhere you are with an internet connection . Given this huge importance of Google Drive for teachers, I have created an entire section here packed full of tips, tricks, ideas, and third party tools to enable you to better tap into the full educational potential of this platform."

"Apple's new Device Enrollment Program (DEP) is a significant new enterprise initiative that removes one of the biggest, if not the biggest, roadblocks to iOS device deployments within businesses or schools: The need to touch each device to ensure that it is fully managed and locked down. The Device Enrollment Program was announced yesterday along with a slew of new IT-focused documentation and tweaks to managing Apple IDs for K-12 students and Apple's app volume purchase/licensing program. It offers the ability to configure iOS devices as supervised without using Apple Configurator, allowing for over-the-air management with these evice management capabilities. As such, this can be considered one of the most groundbreaking iOS management additions since Apple introduced MDM support nearly four years ago."

"The Google Docs collection provides a streamlined, collaborative solution to writing papers, organizing presentations and putting together spreadsheets and reports. But besides the basic features, there are lots of little tricks and hacks you can use to make your Google Docs experience even more productive. Here are 100 great tips for using the documents, presentations and spreadsheets in Google Docs."

"This report is the latest research report in a sustained effort throughout 2014 by the Pew Research Center to mark the 25th anniversary of the creation of the World Wide Web by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. He wrote a paper on March 12, 1989 proposing an "information management" system that became the conceptual and architectural structure for the Web.  He eventually released the code for his system  - for free - to the world on Christmas Day in 1990. It became a milestone in easing the way for ordinary people to access documents and interact over the Internet - a system that linked computers and that had been around for years."

"Yesterday, Google introduced add-ons for Google Docs and Sheets. These add-ons allow you to add all kinds of functionality to your documents, including signing faxes, creating bibliographies, and more. While it's still in its infancy, here are a few of the best add-ons available at launch."

The Learning Record provides an architecture and process for documenting student progress and achievement, based on interviews, observations over time, samples of students' naturally-occurring work, and well-supported interpretations of learning across five dimensions.

A series of articles explains how GitHub could be easily adapted for a class as way to share and update documents; an open model of learning.

Epubbud is another way students can have their work published. It allows you to convert any existing document into an e-book or create the book on the site itself. It converts the book to the epub format which is compatible with various readers and tablets. It is a fairly easy and efficient way to generate an epub format book even if the user interface is not as refined as some of the other publishing tools.

Lulu gives you the opportunity to upload a document and convert to epub format. The site contains photo book tools and you can add images and text to tell a story. Tools are also available for creating poetry books and digital portfolios