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"August 1, 2011, 5:51 pm By Rachel Wiseman College students with very poor vision have had to struggle to see a blackboard and take notes-basic tasks that can hold some back. Now a team of four students from Arizona State University has designed a system, called Note-Taker, that couples a tablet PC and a video camera, and could be a major advance over the small eyeglass-mounted telescopes that many students have had to rely on. It recently won second place in Microsoft's Imagine Cup technology competition. (...) The result was Note-Taker, which connects a tablet PC (a laptop with a screen you can write on) to a high-resolution video camera. Screen commands get the camera to pan and zoom. The video footage, along with audio, can be played in real time on the tablet and are also saved for later reference. Alongside the video is a space for typed or handwritten notes, which students can jot down using a stylus. That should be helpful in math and science courses, says Mr. Hayden, where students need to copy down graphs, charts, and symbols not readily available on a keyboard. (...) But no tool can replace institutional support, says Chris S. Danielsen, director of public relations for the [NFB]. "The university is always going to have to make sure that whatever technology it uses is accessible to blind and low-vision students," he says. (Arizona State U. has gotten in hot water in the past in just this area.) (...) This entry was posted in Gadgets."

Liz B Davis Sep. 4, 2011 "The front page of today's New York Times boasted an article about the "failure" of technology in the classroom. Titled, In Classroom of the Future, Stagnant Scores , the article describes a school in Arizona where, despite a huge investment in technology, there hasn't been an increase in test scores. The article is based on one school in one town in Arizona, hardly a statistically significant sample. Larry Cuban, an outspoken critic of technology in schools since the early 1990s, is quoted multiple times. Not one of the many experts in the field of educational technology, whom we know and love, was interviewed (or at least quoted) in the article."

Outstanding examples of technology-infused projects at all levels.

Arizona K12 Technology Integration matrix along with classroom videos mapped to certain parts of the matrix.

Matrix of technology integration levels indexed with different skills. Includes example lesson plans, and provides a nice rubric like self assessment tool for where your teaching falls. Might be nice for PD leaders of small groups working with tech integration focus.

Interesting article in Journal of Higher Ed with Many Great Points "The real obstacle in education remains student motivation. Especially in an age of informational abundance, getting access to knowledge isn't the bottleneck, mustering the will to master it is. And there, for good or ill, the main carrot of a college education is the certified degree and transcript, and the main stick is social pressure. Most students are seeking credentials that graduate schools and employers will take seriously and an environment in which they're prodded to do the work. But neither of these things is cheaply available online. Arizona State University's recent partnership with edX to offer MOOCs is an attempt to do this, but if its student assessments fall short (or aren't tied to verified identities), other universities and employers won't accept them. And if the program doesn't establish genuine rapport with students, then it won't have the standing to issue credible nudges. (Automated text-message reminders to study will quickly become so much spam.) For technological amplification to lower the costs of higher education, it has to build on student motivation, and that motivation is tied not to content availability but to credentialing and social encouragement. The Law of Amplification's least appreciated consequence, however, is that technology on its own amplifies underlying socioeconomic inequalities.

There was happy news for people like me Monday, when the National Endowment for the Arts announced the latest results of its annual survey of American reading habits. The percentage of Americans who reported reading a novel, a short story, a poem or a play has gone up, from 46.7 percent in 2002 to 50.2 percent in the last year - the first increase in that percentage since the NEA began investigating national reading habits in the 1980s. The NEA's 2002 report was titled "Reading at Risk;" this year's report is called "Reading on the Rise."

This is a site built by Jackie Gerstein from Arizona. She told me "I began developing a website to showcase different Web 2.0 tools that students can use. I provided some examples but plan to have my upper elementary students add to it as we explore and use other tools." She built this using synthasite and it is a great thing to show elementary teachers to showcase some of the best tools out there. Great job, Jackie!

Site built to showcase elementary tools from Jackie Gerstein from Arizona.

A showcase of the Web 2.0 projects created by the upper elementary and middle school students - a interactive sight for this same age group.

Mesquite Elementary School, in Tucson, Arizona became a top-performing school with a homegrown, easy-to-implement differentiated instruction program.

You may want to take a look at this research study for the horizon project research. This study looked at authority in social classification systems by studying delicious.

This research study on authority in social classification systems is one that I'd like to take a look into.

Part of a wider effort to use technology to extend learning beyond classroom walls and the six-hour school day. Internet buses may soon be hauling children to school in many other districts, particularly those with long bus routes. The company marketing the router, Autonet Mobile, says it has sold them to schools or districts in Florida, Missouri and Washington, D.C.

The Havasupai people, who live in the Grand Canyon, had claimed that university researchers misused their DNA.

Great tips getting Educators started using Twitter.

A great place to start!