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From PBS This is the first program in a series "Program: Digital Media - New Learners Of The 21st Century Episode: Full Show Featuring the foremost thought leaders, innovators and practitioners in the field, Digital Media is a startling preview of a 21st Century education revolution."

"One of the essentials in Reading this year is one-on-one conferencing with students. When I saw that The CAFE suggested using three-ring binders with tons of copies for each student, I went mentally-fetal. It wouldn't just be one three-ring binder I'd need to organize. I have three classes! Knowing that much paperwork would overwhelm me, I set about devising a system. I settled on Evernote with an iPad I've borrowed from my district's IT department. I want to lay out a few screenshots of how it works and why I like it."

This cartoon strip from nerdson blog has been translated and reproduced on the UNESCO elearning blog. It is an interesting way to explain to students about how Creative Commons works.

A great video on Twitter looking in particular at the use of Tweetdeck

"Using games in the classroom - This is a presentation to pre-service teachers about the affordability and importance of game-play. Low-end."

"Last week my wife and I told our 13-year-old daughter she could join Facebook. Within a few hours she had accumulated 171 friends, and I felt a little as if I had passed my child a pipe of crystal meth. I don't mean to be a spoilsport, and I don't think I'm a Luddite. I edit a newspaper that has embraced new media with creative, prizewinning gusto. I get that the Web reaches and engages a vast, global audience, that it invites participation and facilitates - up to a point - newsgathering. But before we succumb to digital idolatry, we should consider that innovation often comes at a price. And sometimes I wonder if the price is a piece of ourselves. "

An excellent read! I've been looking for more stuff on the whole Native/Immigrants nonsense, and there are some very thought provoking ideas contained in here.

"....as you look to the future of personal computing, it may not be about how many terabytes a drive can hold, or how many cores your processor has, but how connected you are to the web."

From ACMA Cybersmart this very catchy video has stats on what students are doing online as well as lots of targetted advice on what to do to prevent problems and what to do when problems arise. It also contains visual links to the support docs that Cybersmart can provided.

"We're excited to announce the Grand Prize of the 2011 What's Your Story? Internet safety video contest!"

A google custom search engine that returns results under a range of tabs including lesson plans, printables, practice, videos and games.

"Have you been gamified yet? Perhaps not a painful as it sounds, gamification is on its way to becoming THE buzzword of 2011. Social media engagement tools such as badges, points, levels, leaderboards, etc are making their way out of hipster apps to every online engagement you can think of. Yes, it all sounds oddly familiar (green stamps, reward cards, etc.) but of course, it's all NEW NEW NEW, with gurus and pundits claiming that gamification will change the way we live and of course, spend money."

"The last four months have been tumultuous ones for our university. With the end of educational discounts for our island in Second Life, we faced a tough decision. Second Life's steep learning curve and our local system of incentives and rewards for faculty had discouraged any use of virtual worlds in our curriculum."

"It doesn't seem to matter what age group or demographic that I talk to, kids (and adults) everywhere are fans of Angry Birds. As I was playing around with Angry Birds (yep I'm a fan too), I started thinking about all of the learning that could be happening. I have watched a two year old tell an older sister that "you have to pull down to go up higher". I have watched as kids master this game through trial and error. Being the teacher that I am, I started dreaming up a transdisciplinary lesson with Angry Birds as the base. I happened to be writing an inquiry lesson that has students look at inventions throughout time and thought: the catapult-that is an invention that has technology and concepts that are used even today. This is one of those inspirational moments that comes when you are drifting off to sleep and has you frantically searching for paper and pen to record as fast as the ideas come. So what did I do? I got myself out of bed and went to work sketching out a super awesome plan. Here is the embedded learning that I came up with"

"I'm firmly of the opinion that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in schools is misplaced and therefore misused. In essence, the way it is conventionally deployed negates much of the potential of ICT, and unless there is a dramatic reappraisal, we won't be witnessing much in the way of learning gains in schools. Here's my argument in two points:"

Filament Games is a game production studio that exclusively creates learning games. Our core competency is producing games that combine best practices in commercial game development with key concepts from the learning sciences. Accordingly, our senior staff is comprised of individuals who are equal parts game and instructional designers; a "dual literacy" that allows us to engineer authentic gameplay mechanics (rules and interactions that directly correlate with specific learning objectives). Filament Games was founded in 2005 by education technology expert Dan White, game designer Dan Norton, and software engineer Alex Stone. In the time since, Filament has developed over 30 educational games for clients ranging from National Geographic's JASON Science to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's iCivics Inc.

"When I was 10 years old I was hitting a digital puck across the screen with a digital paddle playing Pong. My son at age 10 was learning metallurgy and materials management in an online multiplayer game called Runescape! I knew nothing of the game at the time, and he soon showed me how he learned to collect items in the world in order to make new things that he needed to complete quests and gain experience. In particular, he showed me how he needed to collect certain metal ores, take them to a smelter to extract metals, and then take those to a forge to create tools or to a craftsman to make other things. This is one of the reasons that I am still excited about Minecraft."

"Connect.ed is an innovative, self-paced cybersafety education program offered by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) as part of Cybersmart. Connect.ed provides teachers with the flexibility of a self paced environment to learn about current online behaviours of students, potential risks involved in these activities, a teacher's and school's duty of care and the appropriate tools, resources and strategies to help students to have safe and positive experiences online."

A neat set of videos from the ABC looking at the Digital World, Mobile and portable devices, New ways to watch TV, Podcasting and Social Media.

"Working in technology administration, I have always bowed down to uniformity. I can't help it…it's the way we were all taught in the technology industry. It was routine and comfortable. Everyone got the exact same computer with the same image. Everyone had to login to active directory. Security groups were applied with abandon. I wax nostalgic just thinking about it.Fear of BYOD But those days are coming to an end. This is due to a huge number of factors including ridiculously tight school district budgets, much lower computer prices and cloud computing. I believe more and more schools will soon adopt bring your own device (BYOD) as a matter of economic necessity and recognition of educational potential."

"This video highlights the growth and development of a Google Doc as an Elementary School student in Edmonton Public Schools takes us on a journey of how she collaborates with classmates and her teacher to create a finished piece of writing."