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"We trust much of our lives to our mobile devices, whether smartphones or tablets or a traditional notebook computers. But what do you do if one of these devices is lost or stolen?"

"Everyone's now aware of 3D printing - they've read about it in the papers, on blogs or seen it on TV. The mentality now seems to be that, in the future, we'll be able to download our products or make them ourselves with CAD programs, apps and 3D scanners, then just print them out, either at home, or in localised print shops. Which in turn will supposedly decentralize manufacturing, bringing it back to the West. But like the cupcake, Daft Punk's latest album, or goji berries, 3D printing is severely overhyped - and I should know, because it's what I do for a living."

"If Google+ were a social network, you'd have to say that for one with more than 500 million members - that's about half the size of Facebook, which is colossal - it's having next to no wider impact. You don't hear about outrage over hate speech on Google+, or violent videos not getting banned, or men posing as 14-year-old girls in order to befriend real 14-year-old girls. Do people send Google+ links all over the place, in the way that people do from LinkedIn, or Twitter, or Facebook? Not really, no. There's a simple reason for this. Google+ isn't a social network. It's The Matrix."

"The evolution of the web from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 and now to Web 3.0 can be used a metaphor of how education should also be evolving, as a movement based on the evolution from Education 1.0 to Education 3.0.  I discussed this in Schools are doing Education 1.0; talking about doing Education 2.0; when they should be planning and implementing Education 3.0."

Our mission is to make a positive impact in the world by making education more efficient and effective. We strive to enable educators to do what they do best, teach and inspire. edshelf is a directory of websites, mobile apps, and desktop software that are rated & reviewed by educators, for educators. We decrease the friction of using and procuring effective technology into the classroom.

"The battle for supremacy in the K-12 whiteboard market is heating up. Companies are scrambling for new sources of revenue, making strategic moves to reinvent their products in the age of tablet computing, and sizing up their competitors to see what they can do to differentiate themselves from the pack. Who ultimately ends up on top has huge implications for educational technology leaders, who must determine which company is the best fit for their needs, and at a cost their districts can afford in still-difficult budget times. Complicating those decisions are changes in the technological landscape that are raising questions about the long-term educational relevance of interactive whiteboards. Do classrooms really need them in the age of iPads?"

"I was asked by a colleague in another school the other day if I could give her a snapshot into what I actually do, and what the role of an ICT Integrator actually looks like (from my perspective anyway). Apparently she wants to talk to her school leaders about having an integrator on their staff and was trying to get an idea of what the role would entail from someone who does it..." A great read from Chris Betcher continuing on with the theme of what does an ICT and an e-Learning coordinator do.

"Do you own an iPhone? Do you also have toddlers or kids who are about to enter school? Put the iPhone and the kids together with some of the apps listed below to keep the kids busy as they prepare themselves for school."

"Today's students have grown up in the digital age, and are generally accustomed to having questions answered at the click of a button-but that doesn't mean they all know how to conduct meaningful, thorough research. Studies show that while a majority of students turn to search engines when conducting research, most of them are behind the times when it comes to utilizing keywords or smart search methods to retrieve the best possible results. Three in four college students monitored were deemed incapable of conducting a "reasonably well-executed" Google search, and for many educators, the concern is that while students do have a great deal of data at their disposal, most of them don't know the best way to access it. "

"Over the last few days I've featured a couple of free tools for adding interactive elements to your videos. In the last year I've reviewed a few other services and methods for doing the same thing. This is a round-up of the ways that you can add interactive elements to your videos. The first four tools could be used by students to create a series of choose your own adventure videos. These tools could be used by teachers to enhance the short videos that they create for flipped lessons."

"Not that long ago, there was only the television, which theoretically could be kept in the parents' bedroom or locked behind a cabinet. Now there are smartphones and iPads, which wash up in the domestic clutter alongside keys and gum and stray hair ties. "Mom, everyone has technology but me!" my 4-year-old son sometimes wails. And why shouldn't he feel entitled? In the same span of time it took him to learn how to say that sentence, thousands of kids' apps have been developed-the majority aimed at preschoolers like him. To us (his parents, I mean), American childhood has undergone a somewhat alarming transformation in a very short time. But to him, it has always been possible to do so many things with the swipe of a finger, to have hundreds of games packed into a gadget the same size as Goodnight Moon."

As companies debate the merits of allowing employees to bring their own smartphones and computers to work, another sector is forging ahead allowing a younger generation to do just that and more. Some schools are not only allowing students to bring laptops and tablets to class in keeping with the trend known as BYO device or BYOD, they are also outsourcing technical support to the students themselves.

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.

As our students grow dependant on Internet being a primary source for their  information, it becomes of urgent necessity that we, as teachers and educators, should know how to evaluate web content and decipher credible resources from spam and irrelevant ones. Regrettably enough, some of the teachers who are using technology in their instruction still don't come to grips with  the mechanisms used to sift through internet content. There is a crude analogy to this situation . A teacher who does not evaluate the web content he shares with his students is like a person driving a car without having a driver license, he can still drive his car  but he does not know the real dangers he is putting himself to in doing so.

This online tool is like a free Photoshop. it is also less complicated to use and so good for younger users. It has intuitive editing control panels that allow the user to do simple things such as using filters, creating effects, cropping and resizing photos. It is also very easy easy to undo anything that does not turn out as well as expected. If  a project requires a more sophisticated treatment, it also has layers that, like Photoshop, allow a user to create very professional final products. It is also easy to upload projects to Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. 

"Have you read The Paperless Classroom with Google Docs by Eric Curts? If not, you should. It is a great way for Google schools to harness the power of Google for sharing documents, and establishing a workflow for students to turn in work for teachers to grade and return in a paperless environment. I love it. In fact, I liked it so much that I decided to pay homage to it with a version that is dedicated to doing the very same thing on the iPad using just the Google Drive app."

"Earlier this month, Facebook dropped a bombshell by not only acknowledging that Facebook pages' organic reach was declining but also by telling us we shouldn't expect them to recover. Facebook's VP of Product for Facebook Ads, Brian Boland, went on to explain that this is the new world we live in now, that the same thing happened with search engines before and that we'd better get used to it. It's true that many platforms go through a similar cycle: first, they present a great free opportunity, then more and more people grab it - decreasing the return for everyone until finally, the platform focuses on those ready to pay for play. It happened with Google Search; it happened with Apps (yes, Apple doesn't sell ads but others do - such as coincidentally… Facebook). And now that all social media are publicly-traded company with ambitious revenue targets to reach, it will happen to social media as well. So what does the decline of organic reach on Facebook and social platforms exactly mean on a practical basis?"

"Of all the initiatives a school can begin, integrating technology may require the most professional development. This is partly because of the equipment, hardware, and software involved and partly because of the shift that a teacher must make in his or her teaching style, technique, and planning process in order to effectively use technology in the classroom. Here are some basic "dos" and "don'ts" for anyone doing tech integration professional development.