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The POETS Society is an informal gathering of people who are interested in exploring ways of using information technology for learning and communicating with other people. We have focused on electronic text;

[George Siemens] June 12th, 2007 "...It's the change underlying these tools that I'm trying to emphasize. Forget blogs…think open dialogue. Forget wikis…think collaboration. Forget podcasts…think democracy of voice. Forget RSS/aggregation…think personal networks. Forget any of the tools…and think instead of the fundamental restructuring of how knowledge is created, disseminated, shared, and validated. But to create real change, we need to move our conversation beyond simply the tools and our jargon. Parents understand the importance of preparing their children for tomorrow's world. They might not understand RSS, mashups, and blogs. Society understands the importance of a skilled workforce, of critical and creative thinkers. They may not understand wikis, podcasts, or user-created video or collaboratively written software. Unfortunately, where our aim should be about change, our sights are set on tools. And we wonder why we're not hitting the mark we desire. Perhaps our vision for change is still unsettled. What would success look like if we achieved it? What would classrooms look like? How would learning occur? We require a vision for change. It's reflected occasionally in classroom 2.0 or enterprise 2.0 projects. But the tool, not change centric, theme still arises. We may think we are talking about change, but our audience hears hype and complex jargon. What is your vision for change?"

"July 31, 2011 By David Glenn Cambridge, Mass. This past April in Switzerland, Lawrence Lessig gave an impassioned lecture denouncing publishers' paywalls, which charge fees to read scholarly research, thus blocking most people from access. It was a familiar theme for Mr. Lessig, a professor at Harvard Law School who is one of the world's most outspoken critics of intellectual-property laws. But in this speech he gave special attention to JSTOR, a not-for-profit journal archive. He cited a tweet from a scholar who called JSTOR "morally offensive" for charging $20 for a six-page 1932 article from the California Historical Society Quarterly. The JSTOR archive is not usually cast as a leading villain by open-access advocates. But Mr. Lessig surely knew in April something that his Swiss audience did not: Aaron Swartz-a friend and former Harvard colleague of Mr. Lessig's-was under investigation for misappropriating more than 4.8 million scholarly papers and other files from JSTOR. On July 19, exactly three months after Mr. Lessig's speech, federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment charging that Mr. Swartz had abused computer networks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and disrupted JSTOR's servers. If convicted on all counts, Mr. Swartz faces up to 35 years in prison."

"Posted on August 1, 2011 by Claude Almansi In 2006, Copiepresse, the rights managing society of Belgian publishers of French- and German-language daily newspapers, sued Google about the snippets shown in Google News and about the cached versions displayed in Google Search. On May 5, 2011, a decision of the Brussels appeal court slightly reworded but basically confirmed the 2007 judgment of the first instance court : (...) This decision of the Brussels Court of Appeals is therefore important for legal studies: not only because of the doubt about what it actually ordered, but also because its long and detailed initial considerations illustrate several differences between the US and European legal cultures. Until recently, this decision was only available as a photographic PDF on Scribd. This meant that it was inaccessible to blind people and awkward to study for everybody. Fortunately, the BJ Institute of Hyderabad, India, has now made it available as accessible PDF and DOC files. This is the version I used for the above quotation. Thanks to the collaborators of the BJ Institute for their very accurate work."

At first, it may look like they're taking part in a graduation ceremony, but the students who march across the stage at Maine's Falmouth Audubon Society to shake hands with their principal and teachers aren't walking away with diplomas. They're walking away with tangible results of their learning. In this particular case, the eighty-five seventh graders from King Middle School in Portland each received a copy of "Fading Footprints," a CD-ROM they produced about Maine's endangered species. During the ceremony, which included thank-yous to teachers and experts who had helped on the project, some students explained the process. "I made sure all the links worked." Others talked a little about what they learned. "You can ask me anything about the harlequin duck." Then they all repaired to a courtyard for cake and punch.

Watching the Oscar-winning global-warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth, I was struck by the similarities between climate change and education change. These seemingly unrelated crises on our planet and in our schools are, in fact, connected. Both have taken many decades to develop and, at least in the United States, both originated in an industrial economy built on manufacturing. The effects of global warming and school decline are difficult to detect year to year, but over several generations, their impacts accumulate -- and are now converging to limit the future health of our economy and our society. To reverse these declines, similar fundamental shifts in thinking and behavior will be required at the individual, institutional, and societal levels. Consuming less, recycling more, and the ethic of caring for the environment should begin with our youngest children, as modeled by their parents, teachers, and caregivers. It's the same with literacy, curiosity, and a love of learning. Just as green technologies can make energy consumption more efficient, learning technologies can play a key role in modernizing the learning process.

A free science library and personal learning tool brought to you by Nature Publishing Group, the world's leading publisher of science.

"Scitable currently concentrates on genetics, the study of evolution, variation, and the rich complexity of living organisms. As you cultivate your understanding of modern genetics on Scitable, you will explore not only what we know about genetics and the ways it impacts our society, but also the data and evidence that supports our knowledge."

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International Society of Technology Educators is asking for your thoughts on their keynote for ISTE 2010. Go there and share!

Reformers have largely worked within, rather than on, the system of education. Working within the system has resulted in status-quo preservation, even when reformists felt they were being radical. Illich failed to account for how educational institutions are integrated into society. Freire spoke with a humanity and hope that was largely overlooked by a comfortable developed world incapable of seeing the structure and impact of its system. To create and nurture change, a message must not only be true for an era, but it must also resonate with the needs, passions, interests, realities, and hopes of the audience to whom the message is directed.

If she knew 2.1C, this could have been avoided! It is amazing how this type of thing still happens in our society when there is a simple and uniform understanding of how to proactively avoid it. Learning 2.1C the hard way usually means a life altering mistake has been made. If you do not know what 2.1C is, or how to practice it, you should learn ASAP!

McGraw-Hill launched its first all-digital, cloud-based textbook for the K-12 market on Monday at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference. This is called CINCH and is a "cloud based curriculum" for K-12 math and 7-12 science. It makes everything available through a browser. Citation: RT @TradRobinson - Publishers Launch First Digital-Only Textbook for K-12 http://t.co/C1Ny9ck via @mashabletech @mashable #ISTE11

"In the week when the OECD published their latest report, noting that educational disadvantage starts from the age of 10 (click here to read the story) across many countries, and widens throughout students' lives, it is clear that many societies still have a lot to do. Whether the disadvantages are down to family circumstance, race, gender (identification), wealth and socio-economic background, or a distinct lack of opportunity and belief in oneself - what can education and educators do to help bridge the divide that allows opportunities for some, more than others?"

"We often tend to think about gender as the biological differences between women and men - however, this is incorrect. Gender is what actually gets expressed - how we look, how we act and how we feel. While sex is determined by what is dictated by our biology or what is written into the chromosomes, known as genotype, it is the interaction between the genes and the environment that determines gender. The amazing thing about gender is that it is completely created by society. It is a social construct that has been accepted by many, and from the moment a child is born, they are faced with gender stereotypes from clothing to how boys and girls are treated and expectations of behaviour. The question is, how do we as educators eliminate gender stereotypes?"

"The importance of offering a broad curriculum within the school system cannot be over-stated, allowing students to explore a range of topics that spark their interest, and potentially inspire them to follow a career path that can have a positive impact on their lives, society and the environment. STEM activities (built around Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) offer a broad range of opportunities, opening up the potential of enquiry based learning that is relevant to the world we live in. Many education systems globally place a great emphasis on a STEM curriculum for all students, no matter of age, race, gender or ability, but what STEM based activities work best in your setting, helping students see the world differently, and potentially inspiring to enter STEM careers of the future?"

"Despite the prevalence of depression in the population, the devastating impact it can have, and the rise in public awareness in recent years, schools (and society at large) still find depression a taboo. Something which is often ignored and misunderstood. Where support is available wonderful things can happen mitigating some many of the pressures when the black dog comes barking. While a societal shift is needed, there are many, often small things that educators can do to help those who need help."

"Metacognition or 'thinking about thinking', as I like to call it, forms the basis of the Growth Mindset theory. As a society we seem to have moved away from the truth that no matter what your starting point you can always make a huge amount of progress if you apply the right kind of effort over time. Struggle is a natural part of learning, take a shortcut and you don't learn as much; why then do we equate struggle with failure?"

"Researchers from the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), part of the University of Oxford, used an eight-year survey of UK households (Understanding Society, part of the UK Household Longitudinal Study) to study how long teenagers spent using social media on a normal school day and their corresponding life satisfaction ratings. This is the first large-scale and in-depth study testing not only whether adolescents who report more social media use have lower life satisfaction but also whether the reverse is true. Before this study scientists had little means of disentangling whether adolescents with lower life satisfaction use more social media or whether social media use leads to lower life satisfaction."