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Article featuring a Swedish Free School that has been redesigned for a digital generation

So, you want to know how to edit Wikipedia? There's a course for you. We are delighted to announce a new round of our free online course, "Writing Wikipedia Articles: The Basics & Beyond" (#WIKISOO). The course runs from 25 February - 8 April 2014, and is now open for enrollment. As many of you know already, WIKISOO teaches the nuts and bolts of Wikipedia. We focus on building and improving articles related to Open Education. Enrollment is open to all. We'd especially like to invite past students to re-register: your knowledge and experience will be valuable to your fellow students, and it's also a great opportunity to deepen your learning about Wikipedia and OER. WIKISOO students learn about the values and culture that have driven hundreds of thousands of volunteers to build Wikipedia. Through your work in the course, you will join an effort that has generated millions of free articles in hundreds of languages since 2001. The course covers the technical skills needed to edit articles, and also offers practical insights into the site's collaborative norms and social dynamics. You will graduate with a sophisticated understanding of how to use Wikipedia both as a reader and as an active participant. Sign up is free.

More and more people are throwing away their USB memory sticks (but probably just losing them down the back of the sofa) in favour of cloud storage. This is a wonderful storage site, download and multi-platform app which is very similar to Dropbox. A synced folder sits on you devices and can be updated and accessed from any device. You can generating a url to share folders or files with other people. It works just fine on a computer with Dropbox already installed and the free account gives you 15GB of storage. That's enough storage where 'tidy' filing schools might begin to migrate their school network storage to the cloud for free - and that's exciting. Additional storage is available for a price. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

While not everyone community is as forward thinking as Kalamazoo, Michigan (which gives every child in that community a free college education at a public university of their choice in Michigan), helping children from low income families apply for college is imperative. I love this article because it gives practical advice and discusses the issues as well as some creative approaches. I think that the least communities could do is fund college application fees for low income students... helping kids go to college is a start, but a very important one. From this AP Article from NBC Latino... "Yet, nationally, about half of high school graduates from families making below $18,300 enrolled in college in 2012 compared to about 80 percent of those whose families earned above $90,500, according to the College Board. In Washington, where Duarte lives, only 30 percent of high school graduates go to college - a lower percentage than the number who drop out of high school, despite the city having the highest level of college attainment in the nation, according to the College Board. Nearly all the students at Roosevelt qualify for free or reduced lunches. To help create a college-going culture, a bulletin board near the school's front doors features the names of seniors and the colleges they were accepted to. College acceptances are announced over the intercom."

This is an awesome sliderocket about how to use Google Docs to facilitate a Writing Workshop created by Susan Oxnevad. Look for links to examples within the presentation so you can use everything she shares. This slide show shares not only best practices in running a writing workshop but also is a best practice itself in creating a stand alone presentation that instructions in a powerful way. Writing teachers everywhere should take 10 minutes to work through this slide show this week.

If you want students to draft work in Google Docs, you have to teach them about the Research pane. It lets you search for the appropriate license (click the down arrow) and set the citation method. You can insert photos, search Google Scholar and a dictionary, your own files, and even the web. When you mouse over the item, you have the option to cite the source or insert a link. Very cool and handy for writers. This is an older feature that hasn't gotten the press it deserves in classrooms. If you have Google Apps for education this is a BIG DEAL because it simplifies finding pictures and does many other things that online citation generators do all within Google Docs.

If you'd really like to get into the Luminosity program, here is the application form to get into it. Here's info from the press release. This is a cool app that is supposed to improve many parts of cognition. I have it on my list to try and it is very interesting to me. Here's the link and some info: "Preliminary results from the Spring 2012 semester found that students who trained with Lumosity improved more on a battery of online cognitive assessments than students who did not train. Additionally, effects were dose-dependent; engaging in more Lumosity training led to greater improvements on the assessments. Insights from the 2012-13 LEAP academic year on the effects of cognitive training on students' real-world academic outcomes are forthcoming. Educators are increasingly interested in enhancing their students' cognitive and behavioral factors. More than 75 percent of all teachers who applied for the Fall 2013 LEAP semester believe training with Lumosity will promote: cognitive enhancement, increased ability to pay attention, improved self-confidence, and improved general attitude toward learning."

Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Sciences are open. Anyone - principals, teachers, parents, students or members of the general public - may nominate exceptional mathematics or science teachers who are currently teaching grades K-6 for the 2014 award year.

More and more people are throwing away their USB memory sticks (but probably just losing them down the back of the sofa) in favour of cloud storage. This is a wonderful storage site, download and multi-platform app which is very similar to Dropbox. A synced folder sits on you devices and can be updated and accessed from any device. You can generating a url to share folders or files with other people. It works just fine on a computer with Dropbox already installed and the free account gives you 15GB of storage. That's enough storage where 'tidy' filing schools might begin to migrate their school network storage to the cloud for free - and that's exciting. Additional storage is available for a price.

JUst in my inbox - a new bookmarking site for academics. My name is Andrew Cullison. I'm an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at SUNY Fredonia. I just launched a social bookmarking site for academics, and you seem like someone who might be interested in playing around with it. You can check out the site here - http://www.sympoze.com I love social bookmarking sites like Digg, but I was always disappointed with the academic content that was promoted. I thought it would be great if there were a site like Digg that only allowed academic philosophers to vote up links. That way, I would know that the philosophy content that was voted up would definitely be up my alley. So two years ago, I started that site. Just two days ago, I expanded the site to all areas of academia. We are in beta testing now, but the idea is to eventually set everything up so that grad students and professors only vote up links in their area or a variety of general interest categories. It should be a quick and easy way for academics to find out what is popular in their area with their professional peers.

Do you want a 2.0 tool in your classroom, but the sticker price is exorbitant? Create a wish list for a generous donor to help fund, or write a grant.

Generally adults help young people learn to drive safely before giving them car keys and turning them loose on the streets of the world. Young people also need guidance and adult assistance to learn how to safely navigate the virtual environments of the 21st Century. Schools must be proactive, rather than merely defensive, in helping students acquire the skills of digital citizenship needed today and in the future. Simply banning read/write web tools on school networks is an inadequate response: Educators must strive to learn alongside students and parents how these technologies can be safely and powerfully used to communicate and collaborate.

Make your own comic, online educational comic generator.

create comics, multi-lingual option.

LO QUE EL CORAZON QUIERE, LA MENTE SE LO MUESTRA Esta es una entrevista que La Vanguardia Digital le realizó al Dr. Mario Alonso Puig quien es Médico Especialista en Cirugía General y del Aparato Digestivo, Fellow de la Harvard University Medical School y miembro de la New York Academy of Sciences y de la Asociación Americana para el Avance de la Ciencia.

RUHT COHN, MFT, CST Articles Below are a selection of articles I have written over the last few years on topics related to intimacy and relationship, trauma and neglect, sexuality, and general couple's issues. Although some of them were written for a professional readership, I have shared them with many clients who have often found them helpful. I hope they will speak to you as well.

Move as millions, survive as one. That is the subtitle to the new seven-part television series from National Geographic called "Great Migrations". Animals great and small are on the move around the world, chasing resources in dangerous journeys that might take mere hours or span generations.

How much does this owe to the culture of learning developing in a classroom that has been evolving as a continuous 9 / 10 split since 2005? How much does it owe to the evolution of my own pedagogy in relation to technology and student learning networks? And how much of this is the observation of the tidal shift in how the emerging generation, who views technology as an underlying fact of life, rather than ornamental, or merely entertainment, can use technology to empower individualized learning?

Great reflection of a student on education!

This student has done a marvelous speech on Education and giving choices to student. My favorite quote from Andrew ( a student from New Zealand) -- "A closed book test is simply not a realistic situation in the modern world." I'm not putting this on my blog as an embedded video because I would love for you to respond on NetGen where all educators are welcome to join in with students to discuss how education should evolve. This is an excellent video, and as you can see with my comments, there are a few points I take up with Andrew -- it is one of those -- you've gotta listen to this student kinda videos. He makes some great points speaking out for his generation. He says that when he asks his parents to help him and they say "I don't know how to do this" it tells him that it is not something that will be used and thus is unimportant! Hmmm.

NetGenEd Sounding boards. Kim Cofino is an expert at this model and is running this: "The Sounding Board process is a very easy, fun and eye-opening way for younger students (upper elementary, middle, and lower high school) to participate in one of these amazing, global projects. Basically Sounding Boards act as peer reviewers for the students participating in the project. Small groups of students in the Sounding Board classrooms will review one NetGenEd student group's work and offer very simple peer feedback. This time around, I have to admit, the project is even more exciting because it's part of a larger project organized by Don Tapscott, author of Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World. Here's his intro to the wider project:" Please put a call out and join in! Thanks!