"In "Toy Story 3 = Awesome!", The Australian Voices sing a song of Facebook. Composed and conducted by Artistic Director, Gordon Hamilton, this innovative new Facebook Song takes The Australian Voices where no choir has dared to go - the inner space of the Internet and the unexplored and unexpected worlds of new experiences, bizarre human relationships and pop culture adoration. This journey discovers new languages and the addictive memes and viral concepts that are attaching themselves to every facet of human life."

Amazing song about social networking.

I learned that a Google search will now yield results by reading level. We  can check out search results that are designated either basic, intermediate or advanced.

"Translate words and phrases between more than 50 languages using Google Translate for iOS. For most languages, you can speak your phrases and hear the corresponding translations."

Awesome new App from Google for translating languages, almost the Universal Translator used in Star Trek!

A new digital art project with a techie bent has sought to discover the effects of globalisation on identity by taking 100 photographs of people in cities around the world and combining them using a computer to make a single average face for each city. A fascinating open source project.

"DropDAV lets you access Dropbox without the Dropbox app. It stands between the Dropbox API and WebDAV clients, giving your Dropbox a seamless WebDAV interface. It was developed specifically for use with Apple's iWork suite for iPad, and works smoothly with every other WebDAV client. Use DropDAV anywhere a WebDAV server is supported and add more uses to the most useful file service in the world."

Great complimentary online tool to Dropbox, adds a file service that helps you to secure access to files in Dropbox with an iPad.

Huffington Post recently put up a story called You're Out: 20 Things That Became Obsolete This Decade. It's a great retrospective on the technology leaps we've made since the new century began, and it got me thinking about the difference today's technology will make in the lives of tomorrow's

"Unfortunately, an impending disaster is sometimes the impetus for naysayers to see the worth of a service like Twitter. The hashtag being used on Twitter to track the tweets referring to Tropical Cyclone Yasi is #tcyasi. I've been following this hashtag today, and as the cyclone gets closer to the east coast of Far North Queensland, I am receiving more pertinent information there than what I am getting from news organisations like Channel 7 and their very sensationalist Today Tonight program."

"The Dawn: a Journal for Australian Women was conceived and published by Louisa Lawson from 1888 to 1905. In the first edition she wrote "There has hitherto been no trumpet through which the concentrated voices of womankind could publish their grievances and their opinions. Raising funds to digitise Louisa Lawson's Journal for Australian Women."

This is an interesting campaign to raise funds to digitise important Australian historical records (and perhaps an interesting show for the Ed Tech Crew)

"The film features one hundred people, who each present the IBM achievement recorded in the year they were born. The film chronology flows from the oldest person to the youngest, offering a whirlwind history of the company and culminating with its prospects for the future. For more information, please visit www.ibm100.com (http://www.ibm.com/ibm100/us/en/)"

Interesting summary of IBM achievements over the past 100 years.

"The rules and frontiers of our classrooms are changing with the disruptive technologies now being embraced by our society and integrated into our schools. In some ways, we are still playing catch-up with these technological and social changes. I am redefining my role as an educator in his new education landscape."

A short video that I made whilst on holiday about changing borders in our classrooms. Thought that you may be interested.

Printed media used to allow us to read in the places we found most comfortable ... Unfortunately, as news and media moves online, it moves us away from these places and into our desk chairs .. I've found that as devices become more mobile, it's not only changing where we read, but when. Today, I'd like to show you some of the data behind this movement.

"Last week I was in a bit of a bind: My mobile broadband key from 3 wasn't getting reception, while my Optus-powered Samsung Galaxy S had enough reception to get me online, but I needed to use the laptop. Then I remembered that the Galaxy S lets you use the phone's 3G connection as a mobile hotspot and I thought to myself, "All phones should have this feature!"

Consider that many students have phones and that these will soon become mobile hotspots. Only a big deal for schools and depts that spend a fortune to shackle and cripple what students can and probably should be doing.

"The AirPlus G Pocket Router is perfect for the travelling worker. It offers a router and wireless client so you can work virtually anywhere, anytime. .. a portable and convenient wireless solution for the traveling business person delivering 802.11g wireless connectivity with a maximum wireless signal rate of up to 54Mbps*. Use it in conference rooms, hotel rooms, or even at hotspots."

Nice hardware tool for the teacher or tourist with a wireless computer or iPad.

"What would you do if you found a canister of film in the middle of a snowy park? (After wondering to yourself, "Who the hell still uses film?" that is). Well, if you're Todd Bieber, you make a YouTube (YouTube) video in order to find the owners of that film."

I wonder if anybody can help find the owners of this film canister?

"If you are feeling that you've seen many of those ads it means you really know the history of computers and how Apple for example was looking good since then ! Watching those ads make me wanna buy an HC or ZX-Spectrum to play with my friends some damn old games !"

Crikey, I can even remember sighting some of these a few decades ago.

I put together my own list of '21 Things That Will Become Obsolete in Education by 2020

Interesting list. I wonder what else we could add to this?

"In Japan, the word otaku refers to people who have obsessive, minute interests-especially stuff like anime or videogames. It comes from a term for "someone else's house"-otaku live in their own, enclosed worlds. Or, at least, their lives follow patterns that are well outside the norm. Looking back, we were American otakus. "

Interesting to think about how Geek culture has changed over the past three decades.

"The first official NASA App invites you to discover a wealth of NASA information right on your iPhone or iPod Touch. The NASA App collects, customizes and delivers an extensive selection of dynamically updated information, images and videos from various online NASA sources in a convenient mobile package. Come explore with us."

A nice NASA app that you can even use for tracking sightings of the international space station from your current location.

"Here we'll slowly but surely present our small team's effort to preserve, study, and document historic computers .. Have you ever wondered how the chips inside your computer work? How they process information and run programs? Are you maybe a bit let down by the low resolution of chip photographs on the web or by complex diagrams that reveal very little about how circuits work?"

Amazing stuff when you examine how the computations and calculations work from deep inside a computer chip! Nice historical computing project.

"2010 was the year the cloud's impact became clear, permanent and more far-reaching than this slow-thinker had previously realized. Few things we did in my school district have not been in some way cloud-related - and those projects on the horizon look to be as well. My own personal technology use for both work and leisure has changed significantly this year due to ubiquitous cloud access and the devices meant to take advantage of it."

Interesting to consider some of the 2011 trends identified in this blog entry.