"Australian children are among the youngest and prolific users of the internet in the world, according to a new study that compared the experience of Australian children aged 9-16 to those of their European counterparts."

This is a really interesting annotated list of apps links from Greg O'Connor of Spectronics focused on literacy support. The apps come from the Australian app store.

"A short animated video presenting statistics and future predictions about mobile technology."

Pinky Dinky Doo harnesses the power of television, print, and interactive media to promote reading and imaginative storytelling. To achieve this, Pinky invites children to participate in funny and fantastic stories, games, and songs that support critical early literacy skills.

This series from Mashable has a number of posts looking at the world of search and how it is/will develop.

Mashpedia is an online encyclopedia comprised of "LiveDocs", which are dynamic web documents displaying blocks of content related to the given topic, retrieved from multiple sources across the Internet in real-time. For every queried topic, Mashpedia loads information and rich media from Newspapers, Magazines, Blogs, Books, Wikipedia, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and further online resources.

"In this post, 4 screencasting apps for the iPad are reviewed: ReplayNote, Explain Everything, ScreenChomp, and ShowMe."

"Twitter seems to be here to stay. As one of the most popular ways for teachers, students, and the general public to communicate, it's becoming a must-have tool in almost every teacher's toolbox. However, numerous recent studies have shown that education in general has been slow to adopt social media. In an effort to speed up this adoption process, below you'll find a boatload of resources on the past, present, and future of Twitter in education as well as some helpful guides to using the tool in the classroom. This guide is by no means exhaustive and is meant to be added to on a regular basis. To do that, Edudemic needs your help. Just share your favorite resource(s) on the Edudemic Facebook page and it'll get added to this Ultimate Guide."

"Need to translate a pdf from one language to another? Technology blog Tech Dows advises uploading the pdf to your Google Docs account, then opening the document and click on Tools then Translate document. Google Docs will make a copy of that document in the new language."

"Dropbox, the app we all (at least many of us) know and love, has a plethora of advanced uses to make life so much easier in managing data between multiple computers and online. We've posted several roundups of tips and tricks for Dropbox and now we present our ultimate toolkit and guide. We've pulled all our tips and tricks together and added quite a few more. Additionally, share your Dropbox tips and tricks and we'll update the list to share the fun with everyone."

Wes Fryer's great Scratch resource wiki has tutorials video and an assessment rubric.

"Last month, 16 teachers from across the country got together at Google's Seattle office for the YouTube Teachers Studio - a sort of bootcamp to learn how to best use YouTube in the classroom. Jon Corippo, a Google Certified Teacher and Apple Distinguished Educator, was among the group, and came back with ideas about what YouTube was great for."

"We all love infographics. Why? Well, they help us grasp information in a quick and fun way that appeals to our visual senses. In fact, there's an infographic here explaining that. Below you'll find 10 infographics that discuss learning in many different capacities - online, blended, mobile, etc."

"Emerging Practice in a Digital Age explores how colleges and universities are embracing innovation and using emerging technologies to enhance learning in a climate of economic pressure, changing social circumstances and rapid technological change. Aimed at those in further and higher education who design and support learning, the guide draws on recent JISC reports and case studies to investigate how the emergence of new and more powerful technologies together with an increase in personal ownership of these technologies are changing the way we connect, communicate and collaborate, and how these changes can benefit learning. The focus of this guide is on emerging practice rather than emerging technology."

"I've been reading snippets of Eli Pariser's book, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding From You. He leads off the book with a discussion of the effect of Google's "personalization" feature on the ranking of search results. This feature uses 54 signals (what browser version you're using, your prior searches, geographic location, and so on) to customize search results for each user. Pariser was concerned about this and tested it by asking two friends to run the same search at the same time and comparing the results. He found that the results were disturbingly different, and concluded that search engines are "increasingly biased to share our own views. More and more, your computer monitor is a kind of one-way mirror, reflecting your own interests while algorithmic observers watch what you click.""

After Google+ entered the social networking scene not so long ago, the number of online distractions hasn't really decreased. At the same time, innovations and smarter solutions to handle your actions online have fortunately continued to thrive too. Instead of the usual to-do lists, news readers, or sharing tools, they tackle things in new and more helpful ways. What's most important for me, is that they slot right into my workflow, and allow me to become more efficient without changing my behavior. A few apps recently managed to do so brilliantly. Here are my favorite new tools to help you stay focused and use the Web more innovatively.

"If you do a Google search about how much information Google really controls, there's a little bit of hyperbole (from users) out there. There's a litany of searches like 'Google wants to own your mind', 'Google wants to control you'. There's also a 'Google wants to teach computers regret' which is just creepy, really. Those living in fear of a barcode on their psyche have been prolific with their concerns, no doubt about it. But they're not totally barking up the wrong tree. Just ask Google. Its own mission statement says this: "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Luckily, its motto is 'don't be evil'. Right guys?"

"Over the past few years, Forsyth County Schools in Georgia has been moving toward allowing students to bring their own technology to school. The district updated its acceptable use policies, beefed up its infrastructure and piloted the initiative. But the schools decide what that initiative would look like in their buildings. In all 35 schools, students can bring personal devices. In 25 schools, the initiative has permeated the buildings, and in the other 10, has made its way to some individual classes."

This constantly updating embeddable table from Gary Hayes details statistics related to the development and/or use of social media including the number of tweets, iPhone apps downloaded amongst others. Fascinating.

"Qrafter is the first QR Code app that is designed for iPad instead of just taking the iPhone version and making it bigger! Qrafter is a free two-dimensional barcode scanner for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Its main purpose is to scan and parse the contents of QR Codes. It can also generate QR Codes when you purchase the "Pro Pack"."