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"If adopting 'best practice' is fraught with difficulties, and 'good practice' often noted but ignored, perhaps it is useful instead to look at 'worst practice'. The good news is that, in the area of ICT use in education, there appears to be a good deal of agreement about what this is! Here's a list of some of what I consider to be the preeminent 'worst practices' related to the large scale use of ICTs in education in developing countries, based on first hand observation over the past dozen or so years"

Reading an interesting World Bank blog post that asks us to consider what is worst practice. A good reality check, it would be good for eLearning and ICT educators to stop and glance at this list every month.

A seller's main goal is to sell his or her goods to his customers and keep them happy so they come back and buy again. This is easy to do if you have good quality products, attractive marketing strategies, a good order fulfillment process in place

"Creating good Essential Questions is difficult but so rewarding when you get the right one. In the age of Google where knowlege is so quickly accessible, I think educators could use Google to see just how good their Essential Question is. Am I asking a question that Google can answer?"

Many campuses have decided to outsource email and other services to "cloud" providers. Berkeley has joined in by migrating student and faculty to bMail, operated by Google. In doing so, it has raised some anxiety about privacy and autonomy in communications. In this post, I outline some advantages of our outsourcing to Google, some disadvantages, and how we might improve upon our IT outsourcing strategy, especially for sensitive or especially valuable materials.

Every once and a while something comes along that causes me to wonder: Why isn't everyone using this (or something like it)? I look around college classrooms and libraries I find people using the usual suspects of programs:  MS Word and Pages.  I use Pages too, but it's only really good for the final composition of a paper, and it's a terrible research and note taking tool (it's a word processor, not a note taking tool). I've come to the point where nearly all my studies are done with Evernote.  I know there are are a ton of other programs out there (like Zotero, Scrivener, OneNote etc...) and this is not to say that those aren't good programs (I use Zotero with Amazon.com to make bibliographies super easy - but Zotero's note taking tool feels tacked on), but I just happen to use Evernote, heavily.  If you're a student and you are not using something like Evernote, you are probably missing out on being more productive and doing better work.

"We all love free apps, but it's hard to track when apps go on sale, and whether they're worth the trouble. Here's a trick for keeping track of on-sale apps, and making those sales last forever. We've shared a few tools that help you track app sales, but they can be a pain. A lot of the apps that go on sale aren't very good, and while you can make a wish list, this doesn't help you discover new apps at all. Of course, we occasionally share cool apps in our Dealhacker posts, but what if you could get automatic email notifications for cheap, good apps whenever they went on sale? Here's a method-inspired by this Reddit post-to make that a reality."

Another interesting discussion in regards to why students should learn to code. A good comparison with learning a spoken language and some of the benefits, such as problem solving and understanding the world around us. Ends with the suggestion that, like playing a sport, coding is good for you.

An extensive list of applications and sites associated with all different facets of curation from Robin Good

A great Slideshare looking at QR Codes from the marketing point of view. The presentation contains a great explanation of the makeup of a QR code as well as examples of good and not so good uses in marketing. It also looks at other types of codes that compete with QR codes.

This looks like a pretty good mindmapping tool.  I am not a huge fan of digital mind mapping but this looks the goods.  

It's been a week since I snagged a Google+ invite, and while it's fun to hit the reset button on my personal social media life, what I'm really interested in is how the service is going to impact teaching and learning. There's a good chance that Google+ is going to become a powerful communication and collaboration tool in the classroom. In fact, it could end up being a serious education game changer.

"In case you hadn't heard, the internet erupted in an explosion of outrage last week after Facebook announced it will acquire the company behind the Oculus Rift headset for approximately $2 billion. For a vision that humbly began as a Kickstarter-funded project, that's good news for Oculus; but is it good news for the rest of the world?"

"September 27, 2014 Projecting your iPad on a large screen is great for demonstrations, simulations, explanations, and showing examples. There are several ways this can be done in the classroom.  VGA or HDMI Adapter Connect directly from your device to a projector's video cable. Click to find out which of the four possible adapters is the one you need. Document Camera Put your device under a camera connected to a projector. Glare may be a problem. Your audience can see your fingers.. Search Amazon for document cameras. Apple TV Connect an Apple TV to your projector and use your device's AirPlay feature to mirror the screen. Apple TV is available from Amazon.com. AirServer Install software on your projector-connected computer and use device's AirPlay feature to mirror the screen. Get AirServer at airserver.com. Annotate.net Install software on your projector-connected computer and use device's AirPlay feature to mirror the screen. Download the Annotate Mirror Client.  Mirroring360 Install software on your projector-connected computer and use device's AirPlay feature to mirror the screen. Download Mirroring360. Reflector Install software on your projector-connected computer and use device's AirPlay feature to mirror the screen. Get Reflector at reflectorapp.com. X-Mirage Install software on your projector-connected computer and use device's AirPlay feature to mirror the screen. Get X-Mirage. iTools Install software on your projector-connected computer and attach device using its USB cable and choose Live Desktop. Macs can wirelessly mirror to iTools. It's beta software with no documentation and can be buggy. English version currently not available. OS X 10.10 Yosemite Update to OS X Yosemite on your projector-connected Mac and attach device using its Lightning cable. Open QuckTime & choose iPad as the camera source.  If you don't mind keeping your iPad in one spot, then a VGA adapter (for 30-pin Dock connector or for the new Lightning

3 good Android apps to use for creating instructional videos. Each has been discussed by Richard Byrne to give you a good idea about their strengths nd how they might be used in education.

As digital transactions become the definitive method of purchasing goods and services, leading eCommerce firms are exploring how AI can enhance brand competitiveness and customer loyalty. Artificial Intelligence is set to be a game-changer to shape the next stage of the e-commerce evolution. Artificial intelligence provides passel of opportunities to the e-commerce industry where retailers compete to provide the maximum customer convenience, by providing the ultimate shopping experience. With continuous advances in digital voice technology, AI tools such as Alexa, Cortana, and Watson, are gracing headlines almost daily, hinting at the wide scope of opportunities it has to revolutionize eCommerce stores. Here we show 6 amazing applications to use Artificial Intelligence in eCommerce. * Create customer-centric search- By implementing Artificial intelligence in Magento creates purchase assistants that target the right users, with the right messages at the right time.AI programs can rely on self-learning algorithms to deconstruct Bigdata of thousands of customers and create targeted user experiences, hence ruling out any human-bias or error. * Context-based search- Product Search functionality is an integral part of a Magento store as the shopping process begins with the search for relevant products. If Magento individualizes some impressive extensions, they might be nothing as compared to the effectiveness of AI-powered searches. Here usual searches rely on the Keywords entered by the user and only when there is a correct match, your searches will dish out the right search results. But AI-powered product searches will look for the context of the search, utilize the capability of Natural Language Process to generate context-based search terms rather than typical keywords. * Facilitate Purchase Decisions- Purchase Assistants are something that is still not fully released. Using the concept of virtual Purchase assistant we can cut down the time spent by shoppers

Good organisation is the key to good study. Developing a study plan that is formatted and structured to meet your study needs will assist your learning and you will also be more likely to be relaxed and feel more prepared for exams The guide is this post is from Study Medicine Europe and gives a useful guide to apps that may enhance studying efforts. Some are free and some are paid versions and they are split up according to different goals.

The infographic looks at digital citizenship tips as well as some of the more common do's and dont's for good manners whilst using the internet

On the surface this is a story that emphasizes the need to check your back up system. But ultimately it's also a story about collaboration! team work and striving for perfection. Also a good read for tech historian geeks ;)