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Management students too seem to have shrugged off their recession-rooted aversion to the IT-based jobs. They are all ready to harvest their effort and thankfully the salary packages offered by the IT majors are of mind-blowing proportions. It has been reported that IBM has doubled the salary offered to IIT graduates who get selected under its 'Blue Scholar' programme from Rs 7-8 lakh a year to Rs 14-15 lakh.

"Ahmed ElAmin Published Jul 20, 2011 at 9:18 am (Updated Jul 20, 2011 at 8:01 am) Belgians have invented Smurfs, make some of the best beer in the world, and know how to fry a potato chip. However, one must say the country's leading newspapers scored an own goal when they took Google to court last year for listing their content in the search engine's news section and won on copyright. I guess they didn't look at how people arrive at a typical online newspaper site, which derives up to 50 percent or more of their visitors from Google. In addition to taking the group of papers out of its news section, Google also stopped indexing them in its search engine. Now the newspapers are complaining that they are being discriminated against unfairly! (...) Google has big power and the danger is how the company wields it in pursuit of profit. It brings traffic to websites, but the company that claims to "do no evil" can also taketh away ostracising those for good and bad reasons. The company is also stepping up its aggregation news service by trying to attract more volume through the "gamification" of Google News. Google is following a trend among news sites to bring readers in. With their consent, readers will be rewarded with "news badges" based on their reading habits. Badges of varying levels will be given out depending on the amount and types of articles you read. About 500 badges are available to suit a wide range of topics. Google News indexes about 50,000 sources. Keep reading and get those badges! Maybe."

While this article starts out about a lawfirm in Birmingham UK that is going to "track down people who make anonymous comments about companies online" it becomes an amazingly poignant article on the very nature of the Internet today and the push pull between anonymous commenting and accountability of the commenter. Push pull between free speech and online identity and brand protection. One person in this article claims that this sort of thing is the sign that the "wild west" of the INternet is coming to an end. Oh dear, I hope someone invents a new one if somehow anonymous commenters are now going to risk such! Also love the article's discussion of the Streisand effect wherein Barbara protested the sharing of some photos of her eroding beachfront which caused a stir and more people looking at the photos than if she had left it alone. This article is going to be a must read for Flat Classroom students and would be great for college-level discussions as well.

Testing students over material that is NOT in the curriculum is not fair. I think that states should have a way to mark things not covered and just take the hits across the board for not having it in their curriculum instead of causing children to suffer through feeling ignorant. Common Core may be great, however, if it isn't in the curriculum it is unfair and shouldn't be done. What can we do? Do we cause children to stress out unfairly because adults can't get their act together or it takes time to change the curriculum? I don't know the answers, but the thought of a child looking at a test and knowing that some things didn't happen in the classroom and the impact of "feeling dumb" that will happen just turns my stomach, literally.  From the NEw York Times. " And they are likely to cover at least some material that has yet to make its way into the curriculum. The new tests, given to third through eighth graders, are intended to align with Common Core standards, a set of unified academic guidelines adopted by almost every state and goaded by grant money offered by the Obama administration. They set more rigorous classroom goals for American students, with a focus on critical thinking skills, abstract reasoning in math and reading comprehension."

Google alerts is how we monitor our school brand. We use "Westwood Schools" +Camilla - this way it shows us everything for our school name and in our city. You can deliver to a feed or to email (many like email.) This way it will search and find things and email you when it finds it on the web. Lifehacker has an article on the creative uses for Google Alerts that you should read if it is your job to protect your brand for your business, school, or your own personal brand.

Yes, taking pictures and recording videos are two of the biggest uses of Google glass. I think disclosure is going to be the issue, while you do have to speak to it, does it have a light to show others around you that you are, indeed, filming.  "Once you wake up Google Glass, you see the time (in rather large type) and "Okay Glass" right underneath it. That's your control command. I found that I could yell or whisper this and Google Glass sprang into action. It did have trouble in some noisy areas, but most of the time, I could get Glass' attention and then get something done. The two most obvious options, and the ones you'll likely use the most, are "Take a picture" and "Record a video." The former captures a relatively sharp 5-megapixel image. The second grabs just 10 second of 720 p video (that's the default; you can change it in settings). You can see some of the video I captured with Google Glass below."

I'm recording another episode of "Every Classroom matters" interviewing some of the teachers and organizers in the Chicago Early STEM college movement. As I researched for this show, I found this report out of North Carolina reporting an increase in test scores. A county here in Georgia is also implementing Early college stem as well. STEM is something every school needs (listen to the earlier show I recorded w/ Kevin Jarrett) but this is an interesting approach. "Just two years after it opened, a North Carolina high school has found that teaching students the principles of STEM can boost test scores and keep learners engaged. That's prompting the school to ask, "If we can do it, why can't other schools do it, too?" The school has a mouthful of a name: the Wake NC State University STEM Early College High School. It has attracted many students to its Raleigh campus - first generation-college students, minorities, and students from poor backgrounds - who are underrepresented in STEM fields. But in 2012, students did far better than average on the state's standardized exams, with more than 95 percent passing."

I agree. Students who got to read the passages ahead of time had an advantage - of course, is anyone looking to see if there was a "hit" on other textbook passages - is this luck or is it corruption. Either way - it smells like corruption. There is a conflict of interest if you're testing and selling textbooks to help kids do better on testing.  "students who read the Pearson test before seeing it on the state test had the opportunity to fill the gaps in their own knowledge-whether through class discussion or simply by reading and answering the questions provided in the curriculum-before they took the test. And that means that the validity of a test that aims to differentiate between "good" and "poor" readers is necessarily called into question. Unfortunately, it seems that New York education officials don't realize how significant this problem is. Or even that it is a problem. (Meryl Tisch, New York Board of Regents chancellor, actually defended the quality of the assessments, boasting that, thanks to a rigorous new quality-control review, the Department of Education had avoided the kinds of problems that lead to last year's now-famous pineapple scandal. And that failure to recognize what may be a far more serious and consequential challenge may be the biggest red flag that Common Core assessment decisions are in trouble in the Empire State."

BlogBooker is a free site that turns your blog into a PDF book from all the blog's entries and comments. It works with WordPress, LiveJournal and Blogger blogs. It is very simple. You export your blog (slightly different process for each blog service - BlogBooker has instructions for you) and then upload it to BlogBooker. It then assembles everything into a high-quality PDF file. This can take a few minutes or longer depending on the size of your blog. This is a great way to print your BlogBook or make an archive/backup of the blog. It could also be useful for students and educators as a way to save a blog as a portfolio item.

Sad to see that the first major fail of a MOOC would happen at my alma mater, Georgia Tech, but I do applaud their transparency and moving forward with it. I hope they do it soon. With 41,000 students in the #foemooc - they had 40,000 students in a google doc which has a limit of 50 simultaneous editors - and with no backup - they weren't ready for the problems that would happen. This was a Coursera course and it just couldn't handle the load. Interestingly this was a Fundamentals of Online Education MOOC which makes it even more ironic. Read this article for more about what happened. "Maybe it was inevitable that one of the new massive open online courses would crash. After all, MOOCs are being launched with considerable speed, not to mention hype. But MOOC advocates might have preferred the collapse of a course other than the one that was suspended this weekend, one week into instruction: "Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application.""

Geofencing is a new concept in safety notifications. Schools can literally notify anyone entering an area (i.e. notify vendors and parents they must check in with the office when entering a certain area), leaving an area, or within an area of issues. This could be used to notify and protect students, teachers, and anyone on campus in the case of an emergency of any kind.  This article is one of the best I've seen about geofencing and how it works, although it is promoting an app (Ping4alerts) it is very useful for safety leaders and it directors to read and understand the potential of this very useful technology. "Hyperlocal alerts are a new capability made possible by the rise of smart devices and "geofencing" technology. A geofence is a virtually "fenced-off" area or geographic location. When this concept is applied to mobile devices, it refers to the ability of users to receive automatic alerts or notifications when entering, leaving or moving within a geographic area specifically defined by a virtual geofence. That area could be as small as a single building or as large as a state or region of the country. System administrators draw a square on a map through their portal interface to designate the location and size of the geofenced in area."

There continues to be a problem that not all books in the Amazon kindle store have real page numbers. If students are expected to cite sources and not allowed to use location numbers, then Amazon can expect the pushback seen on this forum post. Meanwhile, a helpful person on the forum has noted how you can know what to read on the Kindle if your professor or teacher says "read page 80-92" - you can dive into the table of contents on the website and save a copy. This is the only solution. It is time for Amazon to get their act together and have all Kindle ebooks display page numbers if there is a printed copy of the book. If there is not a printed copy of the book, there needs to be a consistent reference point or "page" that all can use for sourcing and citing content. "1. Look up the book in the in the Amazon Kindle store (where you purchased it). 2. Click on the book where it says "Look Inside." You want to look at the table of contents, which will have the pages numbers for each chapter. 3. It defaults to the "kindle edition," which does not have the page numbers in the table of contents. However, there is a tab above that says "Print Book." Click on that. 4. Once you're on the "Print Book" display, it shows the page numbers in the TOC. By doing the above, I was able to determine that "the first 26 pages" = Chapters 1 & 2. I used Evernote to take a screen capture of the entire TOC, which I'll refer back to."

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.

If you have a PC and want to write offline and then upload, Windows Live Writer is your option. It is actually a very powerful (free) tool for blogging. Here's a blog post about why Scott Hanselman uses this app for his blogging. I've used it off and on but am using it even more now that I have a Surface Pro. I used to draft on my ipad in Blogsy but the biggest issue I had was adding links and full compatibility with wordpress - I can do it all on my Surface Pro using Windows Live Writer. This post links to the app and the why-to from this blogger. It works with wordpress, blogger, and more.

Science teachers will love this - a mystery of silk towers in the Amazon is finally solved. These structures went viral after someone posted and asked what they were on the Internet and now it has been discovered: a spider - although no one is really sure how. It baffled entemologists. This whole topic is very cool because it is science but it is also social media and how the two have become inextricably intertwined. This is a great one to talk about in your science classes because there are so many ways you can go with it. So cool.

Scientists confirm new element after atoms collide New Element #115 has been announced but is not officially "approved" (which must happen before it is added to the official periodic table.) Scientists "slammed calcium atoms into americium." Then, the element vanished quickly into a flash of radiation - but scientists could measure it. It has 115 protons at its center so that puts it at 115 on the table. This would be a great one for classes to discuss in chemistry. Neat topic.

Yes, it is time to explore space. It may just take a political competitor to wake up the United States to the space-age advantage it has had for decades as the Chinese plan to land a robotic probe on the moon. We need to be talking about space. "China's mission to robotically land on the moon next month is sure to stir up lunar dust, but it may also cause a political dustup, too. China is in the final stages of preparing its robotic Chang'e 3 moon lander to launch atop a Long March 3B rocket, slated for liftoff in early December. The ambitious mission is built to first orbit the moon, then propel down to a landing site, after which a small, solar-powered lunar rover will be unleashed."

Guidance counselors and principals should read this article - not to share and tout as a defense of bullying for there is no defending meanness ever - not among adults and definitely not among children. However, it is time to de-escalate the frantic misreporting and hysteria that some are causing on the topic of bullying and suicide. Suicide is horrible and often the person who commits suicide is bullied -- here's a quote from the article that I thought was telling. This would be worth discussing with those who can maturely see the balance that is called for here and again, not to use it to excuse atrocious behavior. "Reporters are often reacting to other misinformed authorities.  For example, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd explained to reporters that he arrested two girls (one 12, the other 14) in Sedwick's death, after seeing a callous social media post from one of the girls, "We can't leave her out there, who else is she going to torment? Who else is she going to harass? Who is the next person she verbally and mentally abuses and attacks?" While it's a great quote, it implies that this girl has the ability, through random meanness, to inspire others to commit suicide. "Everything we know about unsafe reporting is being done here - describing the method(s), the simplistic explanation (bullying = suicide), the narrative that bullies are the villains and the girl that died, the victim," Wylie Tene, the public relations manager for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, wrote in an email to me. "She (the victim) is almost portrayed as a hero. Her smiling pictures are now juxtaposed with the two girls' mug shots. Her parents are portrayed as doing everything right, and the other girls parents did everything wrong and are part of the problem. This may be all true, and it also may be more complicated.""

Article by Wil Richardson on Collaboration