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"With the massive uptake of social networking sites, social media has become part and parcel of our digital life.Your daily dose of social media depends on how much time you have to spend on such virtual networks. It also depends on the purpose behind you joining them, if you are using them solely for personal and socializing goals then you might find yourself running the risk of addiction to these platforms."

"We believe that it might actually be possible to build a ring of balloons, flying around the globe on the stratospheric winds, that provides Internet access to the earth below. It's very early days, but we've built a system that uses balloons, carried by the wind at altitudes twice as high as commercial planes, to beam Internet access to the ground at speeds similar to today's 3G networks or faster. As a result, we hope balloons could become an option for connecting rural, remote, and underserved areas, and for helping with communications after natural disasters. The idea may sound a bit crazy-and that's part of the reason we're calling it Project Loon-but there's solid science behind it. "

"We believe that it might actually be possible to build a ring of balloons, flying around the globe on the stratospheric winds, that provides Internet access to the earth below. It's very early days, but we've built a system that uses balloons, carried by the wind at altitudes twice as high as commercial planes, to beam Internet access to the ground at speeds similar to today's 3G networks or faster. As a result, we hope balloons could become an option for connecting rural, remote, and underserved areas, and for helping with communications after natural disasters. The idea may sound a bit crazy-and that's part of the reason we're calling it Project Loon-but there's solid science behind it. "

"George Cole, in part three of his series on 1:1 computing, looks at 'BYOD' "

"15-Year-Old Kelvin Doe is an engineering whiz living in Sierra Leone who scours the trash bins for spare parts, which he uses to build batteries, generators and transmitters. Completely self-taught, Kelvin has created his own radio station where he broadcasts news and plays music under the moniker, DJ Focus. "

We watched this during #motm13 and discussed what is the difference between innovation, creativity etc. An inspiring video.

"Discovering content is the easy part. Managing it all is the challenge. The gallery below by Shirley Williams is a strong collection of tools to better discover, manage, and share digital content. And with the imminent death of Google Reader, several of these apps could help fill that huge hole (though not the one in your heart). Have a browse and let us know if you find anything exceptional."

"Welcome to TeleRead's newest how-to series! We'll be exploring a wonderful tool called Evernote, and its many uses for readers who want to organize and synthesize books, articles, quotes, websites, ideas and other information."

Post contains a nice chart that compares the difference between simply using technology (more as an adjunct to classroom tasks) and integrating technology so that the use is seemless and part of the learning that is going on.

Murally's tagline is: "Google Docs for visual people."  Being highly visual, that description immediately resonates with me!  Murally reminds me a little bit of Wallwisher (now Padlet), it is a way for learners to come together to think, imagine and discuss their ideas.  With Murally, students can create murals and include any content they want in them.  Learners can drag and drop images, video, etc. from any website (or from their computer) onto their mural.   Learners can create presentations from within a mural they have already created.  The best part: this all happens with the ability to collaborate with others.  Murally makes it easy for students to collect, think, imagine, show and discuss learning.  Murals can be made public (shared live with a link) or private (only friends granted permission can access the mural).

"Welcome to this multipurpose website that is a key part of a research project that looks at the impact that the National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is having on school communities. The problem is that no-one has ever really asked what benefit high-stakes testing has for school communities."

When you first start using Twitter, one of the things you have to figure out is how to decode Tweets. What does each part represent? What does it mean when a word starts with a #?

"A conversation between four of the early pioneers describing how they brought the Internet to the UK.  This was filmed on 1st July at Google, as part of an event celebrating the UK's computing heritage. Speakers include Roger Scantlebury and Peter Wilkinson, who worked at the National Physical Laboratory and helped develop the NPL network, the first internet like thing in the UK. They were joined by Peter Kirstein, then from UCL and Vint Cerf, at that time at UCLA/Stanford/DARPA. As well as describing what they did, context is given to the NPL's role and to the political and bureaucratic challenges at the time."

"When was the last time you changed your email password, your Facebook password, or your online banking password? Hopefully, you're not using the same password for all of your accounts. If it has been a while since you changed your passwords, think about doing so as part of digital spring cleaning. The videos below provide some guidance on creating strong passwords."

There is something in games based learning that seems to get missed out of much of the discussion. While it's common to think of using game-like approaches or video-games I find much of what is said revolves about how games work in terms of mechanics. Level ups, XP (experience) and badges seem to dominate the gamification dialogue. I wonder how you can gamify the workplace or the classroom without also exploring the more important aspects of why people play - how it feels to be immersed in a story that you feel a part of. Players are given badges and tokens all the time, except these don't provide that intrinsic motivation that people often associate with gamification. For the love of it. How do you get people to play for that reward?

"Science Friday is a weekly science talk show, broadcast live over public radio stations nationwide from 2-4pm Eastern time as part of NPR's 'Talk of the Nation' programming. Each week, we focus on science topics that are in the news and try to bring an educated, balanced discussion to bear on the scientific issues at hand. Panels of expert guests join Science Friday's host, Ira Flatow, a veteran science journalist, to discuss science - and to take questions from listeners during the call-in portion of the program."

Wide range of resources including pod- and vodcasts (on iTunes & for download & available for mobile devices). The 'Talking Science' section has a section especially for Teachers which includes lesson plans & resources linked with video/audio material.

Ocean Tracks is an Australian website on which students can view the tracks of marine animals in an online 3D environment. The "tracks" part of Ocean Tracks shows you where in the world tagged animals are swimming or have swum. Ocean Tracks uses the Unity browser plug-in to provide animations of the underwater views of tracked animals. You can see what bluefin tuna, swordfish, sharks, and many other fish see in 3D.

Mobile technology. Fifteen years ago, most home computers weren't even linked to the Internet. Today, our computers are both linked and, in many cases, mobile. With more than five billion mobile users worldwide and a massive global network, small mobile devices with significant computing power have become a routine part of day-to-day life for people of all ages. The combination of a smartphone's intuitive interface and thousands of apps for iPhones and Androids aimed at young children has fast made it a child's favorite plaything. And as the smartphone market continues to explode, more parents are passing their phones to their offspring as tools to educate or gadgets to pacify.

It never ceases to amaze me how Google has become such an integral part of our lives. Search has evolved in such colossal proportions and especially with the advent of Google instant my belief that Google can actually read my mind has only been fortified. Search Marketers around the world are always on their Toes and as Google states "Don't try to follow our algorithm but try to think about the direction in which we are heading, build content for the users and not the search engines". I sometimes wonder if Google was actually a person he would be an amazing election candidate. But then again the high and mighty also have their share of secrets, secrets that should never come up, what I am about to reveal can be touted as one of the many chapters of the Da Vinci of Google.

"Yesterday I sat down and built a new guide, Google Documents for Teachers. The 40 page guide (embedded below) is designed to help teachers who have never used Google Documents. This document is part of a larger project that I hope to complete this month. Please leave a comment if you have suggestions about how to improve this document."