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This offers some research-based evidence about how Twitter can be useful to educators. "In order to convince teachers of the possible benefits of using a new technology, such as Twitter, we decided to look for evidence of its qualities. What in particular, does Twitter offer educators? Is it worth getting involved?" 30 leading educators (with an interest in educational technology) were identified. They were the ones who were currently using Twitter. The study analysed samples of their tweets in order to determine their purpose and the possible benefits of the tweets to their followers. Also examined were a sample of tweets from the twitter streams of two popular educational hashtags: #edchat and #edtech, in order to determine what 'followers' may gain."

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

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.

Research paper - "... at present, there is no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning styles assessments into general educational practice." [PDF]

"The move toward a self-evident user experience is going to have several natural consequences for the technology professionals who work with these products on a daily basis. In many ways, these IT pros have benefited from the overly complex and sometimes convoluted technology products because they were the ones who helped sort everything out for the users. That won't be the case for much longer."

Interesting to read about the shift to better and more intuitive interfaces for users.

"One of the most persistent myths about the copyright monopoly has been that it's needed to make money. This assertion turns out to be false for a very large number of observed cases, but the plural of anecdote is never statistics. So let's look at some sound statistical evidence for policymaking on this issue."

Student blogging is not a project, but a process. We are continuously striving to refine, improve and re-evaluate. As I am meeting with teachers individually, I can't stress enough the importance of READING other blogs (professional, student, blogs about your hobby, blogs about other interests you have etc.). I am trying to filter and funnel quality blogs in education, their grade level and  areas of interest to them as I come across them, so they can build a quality RSS Reader. BUT.. we need their help in having a basic understanding of blogs, its pedagogical uses, as a platform of a new writing genre (digital writing) and how our blogfolios fit into your curriculum and the BIG PICTURE of LEARNING. The blogfolios are not a platform to use only for a particular subject, but should give evidence of learning for each student.

"GeoGuesser makes students to use their eyes and become more observant of what is around them. They have to find the indicators (evidence) to guess where they are (virtually).They could discuss their ideas with fellow students. When going through GeoGuesser they learn about geography, how places look different in terms of plants, soils, colours and the architecture of different places of the world. 

"Ever needed to know the age of a Web page only to discover that it lacks a time stamp saying when it was published? If so, then the work of Hany SalahEldeen and Michael Nelson at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, may be of interest. These guys have created a Web application called Carbon Date that works out the creation date of a page by searching for the earliest evidence of its existence."

"Education is a powerful driver of development and one of the strongest instruments for reducing poverty and boosting shared prosperity. Although there has been great progress in recent decades in getting children into school, evidence shows that many children and youth leave school without having learned the basic skills needed for life and work. Check out this handy infographic from the World Bank that addresses what challenges we face in bringing education to everyone."

"By all evidence, 3-D printing has reached its inflection point, when it moves from the sophisticated early adopters to people who just want to print something cool. Soon, probably in the next few years, the market will be ready for a mainstream 3-D printer sold by the millions at Walmart and Costco. At that point, the incredible economies of scale that an HP or Epson can bring to bear will kick in. A 3-D printer will cost $99, and everyone will be able to buy one."

Is it possible to be both a wired and unwired educator at the same time? Sounds like someone trying to explain Schrödinger's cat (the cat is both alive and dead at the same time, Google it).  I'm talking about being "an untethered teacher."  Sometimes, we end up tethered to the technology in our classroom.  To me, this is most evident with the interactive white board at the front of my classroom (I've intentionally omitted any particular brand name devices). Fortunately, I've been using AppleTV to untether myself from the front of the room.

"According to Andreas Schleicher, there is no evidence from the PISA data yet of a consistent relationship between the use of education technology and superior student performance.  That, however, certainly does not mean that no such relationship will exist in the future, just that it hasn't happened yet, at least not at the scale required to show up in the PISA surveys. "

" Quick response (QR) codes -- those two-dimensional barcodes that resemble a checkerboard on LSD -- are appearing more frequently on billboards, magazine ads, business cards, stickers, T-shirts and anything that is used to promote stuff. But evidence suggests many people don't understand what QR codes are or what to do with them."

"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. "

"I worked on the Genius Bar for almost two years, and the most difficult issue to solve was short battery life. It was extremely difficult to pinpoint the exact reason why someone's battery was draining. I made it my mission to discover the specific reasons for iOS battery drainage. This article is a product of my years of research and anecdotal evidence I gathered in the hundreds of Genius Bar appointments I took during my time as a Genius and iOS technician, as well as testing on my personal devices and the devices of my friends."

"The main research aims of the Oxford Internet Surveys are: (1) to track the spread of the Internet in Britain (2) to provide an evidence base for policy-makers"

OFSTED Report February 2010. Based on evidence from a small-scale survey carried out between April and July 2009 in 35 maintained schools in England. It evaluates the extent to which the schools taught pupils to adopt safe and responsible practices in using new technologies, and how they achieved this. It also assesses the extent and quality of the training the schools provided for their staff.

" World's Biggest / Largest / Longest Multi-Touch (and evidently Multi-User) Wall [sensory-minds.com, click Projects then choose 19.07.2009) seems to be installed in Nürburgring, a famous motorsport race track around the village of Nürburg, Germany The two-piece wall consists of a huge LED media facade (at the top), and a multitouch information-wall (at the bottom), and impresses by its physical size, as it totals a surface of about 425 square meters, equaling more than 6000 computer displays."

... " the news that Becta would be shut down was nonetheless further evidence of the coalition government's new broom whooshing into action. Although there seems to be a wide range of views on whether this is a good or bad thing - see this post and its comments for a representative selection - for me Becta was pretty much an unmitigated disaster for free software in this country, and I'm glad to see it go."