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I agree with Audrey Watters -- we need a way to QUESTION TED talks. Good ideas worth spreading are worth interrogating and discussing. There is NO platform for that and a growing issue, I think that TED MUST address if it is going to live long and prosper. Good educators, good leaders always question and are curious. We try things out and we wonder. We want solutions but solutions packaged in a cute 15 minute presentation aren't ever really as simple as they seem. There is a different between a sound byte and a bit of something I can REALLY use.  I agree with Audrey - READ her post. My worry is that we're spreading ideas that haven't, perhaps, been tested and gone through full examination. IF we didn't learn anything from the Mortensen "3 cups of tea" fiasco then education deserves to be mislead again. We should examine and have transparency with the speeches and be able to continue the conversation. "But I have questions. I have questions about this history of schooling as Mitra (and others) tell it, about colonialism and neo-colonialism. I have questions about the funding of the initial "Hole in the Wall" project (it came from NIIT, an India-based "enterprise learning solution" company that offers 2- and 4-year IT diplomas). I have questions about these commercial interests in "child-driven education" (As Ellen Seitler asks, "can the customer base be expanded to reach people without a computer, without literacy, and without any formal teaching whatsoever?"). I have questions about the research from the "Hole in the Wall" project - the research, not the 15 minute TED spiel about it. I have questions about girls' lack of participation in the kiosks. I have questions about project's usage of retired British schoolteachers - "grannies" - to interact with Indian children via Skype. I have questions about community support. I have questions about what happens when we dismantle public institutions like schools - questions about

Just received this in my inbox: "WASHINGTON DC (August 25th, 2009) - Curriki, the largest online community for creating and sharing open source K-12 curricula, was asked by the Department of Education, Office of Innovation and Improvement (OII) to provide a continuity of learning plan for states, school districts, and individuals as part of a nationwide readiness initiative for a possible resurgence of the H1N1 virus. Curriki's continuity of learning plan includes access to a free and open repository of teaching and learning resources built on an open platform that can be customized for individual states or school districts. Like an iTunes playlist, users of Curriki can create collections of free and open educational resources, along with repositories of other supplemental content. If a teacher prefers one lesson to another, he or she can easily swap content in or out to meet the individual needs of the students. States or school districts can take advantage of customized landing pages designed to provide specific information, news, resources, and links to their education stakeholders. Additionally, Curriki's group function allow members of a district, school, or community to stay connected and privately share resources, communicate and post news and collaborate on projects from any location. " I think that perhaps online learning is about to completely boom largely as a result of the growing pandemic and the need for isolation and ongoing learning. Curriki has things together for this and I'm going to take a look at this for our school.

", new research demonstrates that spending does matter. The authors-C. Kirabo Jackson, associate professor of human development and social policy at Northwestern University, Rucker C. Johnson, associate professor of public policy at University of California, Berkeley, and Claudia Persico, a doctoral candidate in human development and social policy at Northwestern University-show that "increased school spending is linked to improved outcomes for students, and for low-income students in particular…Increasing per-pupil spending yields large improvements in educational attainment, wages, and family income, and reductions in the annual incidence of adult poverty for children from low-income families. As they also show, it matters how the new money is spent-such as on instruction, hiring more teachers, increasing teacher pay, hiring guidance counselors and social workers. Money well-spent "can profoundly shape the life outcomes of economically disadvantaged children and thereby reduce the intergenerational transmission of poverty. Money alone may not lift educational outcomes to desired levels, but our findings confirm that the provision of adequate funding may be critical.""

Jonathan Trenn writes an article on the "fallacy of community" that many of the vendors at NECC should read. Edubloggers / educators/ educational groups of people emerge because we want to. We create a community when we need to and have the passionate desire for a common purpose. However, the word community and social network was so overused at NECC this year as to become a curse word. Used by people told it was important but who may not understand it themselves. This is a great article and strikes a cord with me.

An articlea bout the fallacy of community.

Great post by Ben Grey on his participation in Constructing Modern knowledge - he hits several things including the fact that many at the conference said that computer programming should be mandatory for all students and a presenter who said that the problem with today is that too many people have a voice. My comments from Ben's blog are below. Great conversations happening here! Programming - OK, on the programming thing, here are my thoughts. In our curriculum our objective is not as much a specific LANGUAGE. One year I may use HTML with Javascript, this past year I used LSL - what I want kids to know that when they encounter programming and coding that there are certain conventions. Some are case sensitive, some are not. How do you find out how to add to what you know about programming? Do you know where to go to find prewritten code? Can you hack it to make it work to do what you want it to do? We spend about a week - two weeks but I require they know how to handcode hyperlinks and images - they are just too important. But to take 12 weeks or 6 weeks to learn a whole language - yes maybe some value - but to me the value is HOW is the language constructed or built. What are the conventions and how do I educate myself if I am interested in pursuing. What comes out of this time is kids who say either "I never want to do that" or "this is really cool, I love coding." They are doing very simplistic work (although the LSL object languages were pretty advanced) but since we don't have a full course nor time in our curriculum, I do see this as an essential part of what I teach. I'm not teaching it for the language sake but for the sake of understanding the whole body of how languages work - we talk about the different languages and what they are used for as part of Intro to Computer science and have an immersive experience. To me, this is somewhat a comprimise between leaving it out entirely or forcing everyone to take 12 weeks of it. I

A long-standing educational philosophy is under attack as a new research report downplays the importance of different learning styles.

An interesting contribution by psychologists to a field usually left to educational researchers. Given how dominant the belief in 'learning styles' has become in education it is quite troubling.

Artificial Intelligence and the "deep learning" movement are hitting it big time: big bucks and big influence on our future. Geoff Hinton is working for Google to help improve voice recognition, image tagging and more. Microsoft, IBM, Baidu (search enging in China) and others are getting into AI. This is part of education as AI and learning tools can be greatly impacted. Read and share this article if you're an education or technology futurist. Fascinating.

A slick presentation about Google apps for education. Becky Evans created and shared this and says you can use it as a presentation to introduce current features to teachers at your school. Take a look as you prepare to give teachers an overview of Google Apps for Education.

Students talking about trends on the Horizon report are amazing me!

YEs, they are here. Smart furniture. This is the smart table. Expect to see desks and more as we begin to merge our technology with everything around us. This would make a great unit for a demo or cool interactive learning center. " SMART Table® 442i collaborative learning center. Publicly unveiled at the British Education Technology Conference in London today, the SMART Table features an engaging 360 degree, multitouch surface with a brilliant 106.68 cm (42") high-definition 1080p LCD display. The SMART Table enables up to eight students to interact simultaneously and actively collaborate to achieve shared learning goals."

The US is not the only country in government educational induced turmoil. Here is an overview of what is happening in England right now. "Make teachers redundant or have them teach subjects they are not trained in - that is the stark choice cash-strapped secondaries will face if national curriculum changes proposed this week are introduced, ministers are being warned. The bleak scenario is predicted by heads' leaders and teacher recruitment experts if the Government follows the recommendation of its national curriculum review expert panel to make history, geography and modern foreign languages compulsory for all 11 to 16-year-olds from 2014."

Steve Hargadon's new whitepaper on social networking in Education (which does include some comments from Julie Lindsay and me.) Full disclosure: Elluminate provides Kim Caise, our Flat Classroom administrator, to us for 20 hours a week and we appreciate it very much. Go to this page to download the whitepaper.

Literacy literature digital literacy future of education curation of content.  Good writeup on Twitters role in curation

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."

One of my students turned up this information that Facebook is working on controls to help kids under 13 use the service. It is no surprise that 7.5 million Facebook users are under the age of 13 and that 5 million of THOSE are 10 years old or younger. COPPA, while set up to protect children, is actually keeping them from participating in society as they want to. This infographic and information is worth sharing as you educate your students. If you want until they are 13 to talk safety online, that is too late. "Last June, Consumer Reports magazine said they had unearthed "several disturbing findings" about children and Facebook, including: 20 million minors had used Facebook within the year prior to their study. 7.5 million of those users were under the age of 13 and not permitted to use the site. 5 million of those were 10 years old or younger. 1 million children had been harassed, threatened, or subjected to other forms of cyberbullying in the year prior."

Love the HLW Skypers which has been founded by some of my favorite educators: Anne Mirtschin, Theresa Allen, Karen Lirenmen. Love what they are doing. There is information about how Mystery Skype works as well.

" Kristy Cooper's insanely rigorous mixed methods study, Eliciting Engagement in the High School Classroom: A Mixed-Methods Examination of Teaching Practices, published in the April 2014 American Educational Research Journal, does an exceptional job of showing what works. Cooper, an award-winning researcher at Michigan State University with an MA and Ed.D from Harvard, examined the impact of three well-supported strategies that teachers employ to increase student engagement. As you read each summary below, try to guess which practice had the greatest impact." Todd Finley shares the three methods and asks which has the most impact: 1) Lively teaching, 2) Academic Rigor and 3) Connective Instruction. A fantastic must-read on student engagement that you'll want to email your staff.

The partners in learning network is updated for educators. Lots of tools and free resources. This was just unveiled on Thursday , January 10 at BETT in London.

Great article by Elliott Bristow on the Edublogger about Minecraft in schools and how it is being used. This is a great reference for those of us working to integrate this into our classroom.