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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).

"Designed and produced by the World Wide Web Foundation, the Web Index is the world's first multi-dimensional measure of the Web's growth, utility and impact on people and nations. It covers 61 developed and developing countries, incorporating indicators that assess the political, economic and social impact of the Web, as well as indicators of Web connectivity and infrastructure."

A great "talking heads" movie from the Macarthur Foundation looking at connected learning.

Taking the lead from the 'Marginal Gains' strategy that served TeamGB cyclists so well, MLG blog gives advice on how to "... hone in on just one tiny aspect of our teaching, hence the mantra, "Tiny Changes, Big Difference"" all from the foundation of improving learning.

Great post and great comments from Alan Kay, Brian Harvey and others!!!!! "Because of my recent posts on teaching with Logo and the culture of older programming languages, I've been poking around the Logo sites.  My most enjoyable find has been the Logo Books page of the Logo Foundation. "

"This resource is a national initiative for the improvement of English and literacy education from Foundation to Year 10, produced in partnership with Education Services Australia and the joint associations of the Australian Association for the Teaching of English, the Australian Literacy Educators' Association and the Primary English Teaching Association Australia, representing more than 10,000 teachers of English."

"Some believe the internet is losing its direction as an enabler for a more connected society and falling into the hands of corporations. Isaac Wilder, founder of the Free Network Foundation, is fighting back because he believes companies like Facebook and Twitter are now corporations and far from the original ideology of an open web. "A lot of people put a lot of faith in those platforms and don't realize that the medium is the message," he said. This is how he and his supporters plan to take back the web for the people..."

There is a big difference between having a BYOD policy and a BYOD learning environment. The former lays the foundation for a BYOD learning environment but it by no means guarantees it. In order to shift from a school with a BYOD policy to a school with a BYOD learning environment, mindset shifts need to occur organizationally:

Treasure Explorer is a rich educational website where students and teachers contribute socially and engage with Australian history. Treasure Explorer contributes to the National Library's important role of disseminating Australia's cultural heritage, for all Australians. It is an invaluable and creative networking tool for teachers, families and students to share and celebrate knowledge, passion and ideas about Australia. Treasure Explorer also provides an online resource to find out more about the objects, archives and stories represented in the National Library of Australia's Treasures Gallery in Canberra. Treasure Explorer was launched in October 2011. Development of this website was made possible by the generous funding of the Harold Mitchell Foundation.

Established in late 2004, e-Learning for Kids is a global, nonprofit foundation dedicated to fun and free learning on the Internet for children ages 5 - 12. We offer free, best-in-class courseware in math, science, reading and keyboarding; and we're building a community for parents and educators to share innovations and insights in childhood education.

I've learned from many great teachers before me that the idea of a flipped classroom is nothing new.  While the term 'flipped class' is a trendy new catch phrase, the idea of the flipped classroom model is something teachers have been practicing for years.   Defined: The flipped classroom is an instructional  method used to engage students at home through the use of video in effort to enhance the classroom experience by a more hands-on approach to learning.

"Current thinking (August 2012) around a web literacies framework by Doug Belshaw, Badges & Skills Lead for the Mozilla Foundation."

By almost any measure, the world is better than it has ever been. People are living longer, healthier lives. Many nations that were aid recipients are now self-sufficient. You might think that such striking progress would be widely celebrated, but in fact, Melinda and I are struck by how many people think the world is getting worse. The belief that the world can't solve extreme poverty and disease isn't just mistaken. It is harmful. That's why in this year's letter we take apart some of the myths that slow down the work. The next time you hear these myths, we hope you will do the same. 

"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."

"A Guide to the iPad in Primary Education is breakdown of how the iPad can be used successfully as both a learning tool for pupils and a teaching aid. With so many Primary Schools now equipping their teachers and students with iPads, more and more apps and resources are becoming available. This guide presents apps and techniques that have been used successfully in the Primary classroom. The book is divided into subject areas for quick reference, including Literacy, Numeracy, Science and Early Years Foundation Stage. Includes over 100 apps and techniques that will enhance lessons. "

IPAF (eye-paf) - aka The Intellectual Property Awareness Foundation. IPAF works to raise awareness of the value of film and television content and the impact of online piracy and encourage Australians to access this content via legitimate channels.

"You may know that Flickr is one of the largest repositories of freely usable public domain and Creative Commons photos in the world, hosting collections contributed by libraries, national archives, foundations, museums, galleries, and individual users (I've uploaded more than 10,000 CC-BY-SA images of my own). However, with its latest redesign, Flickr has made is very difficult to copy the images it has been entrusted with, and nearly impossible to correctly attribute them in accord with their license terms. Today, we're fixing that. A little, anyway."

"the Gates Foundation released a report surveying 3,100+ teachers (and 1,250+ students) on what they want from digital instructional tools. The report, entitled "Teachers Know Best: What Educators Want From Digital Instructional Tools," suggests that while many teachers support tech, only 55% of teachers reported available resources sufficient in helping students meet college- and career-ready standards. Educators also spoke to four instructional areas that lack usable digital tools..."

"Social media offers some great opportunities for learning in the classroom, bringing together the ability to collaborate, access worldwide resources, and find new and interesting ways to communicate in one easily accessible place. Teachers around the world have found innovative ways to use Twitter as a teaching tool, and we've shared many of these great ideas here with you. Read on, and we'll explore 60 inspiring ways that teachers and students can put Twitter to work in the classroom."

"What happens when you take a comic book artist, an inventor, and a toy designer? You get Howtoons. Our mission is to provide engaging content that teaches kids how to build things, combining instructions with storytelling. Howtoons has a foundation of science and engineering education, inspiring creativity through art and imagination."