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For most of us, science arrives in our lives packaged neatly as fact. But how did it get that way? Science is an active process of observation and investigation. The Evidence Project examines that process, revealing the ways in which ideas and information become knowledge and understanding. a case study in human origins In this case study on human origins, we explore how scientific evidence is being used to shape our current understanding of ourselves: What makes us human-and how did we get this way?

This is a very honest, open discussion between educators about why diigo or delicious -- I think the fact we can have this conversation within diigo at all says a lot for the usefulness of the tool. Diigo is an emerging tool for social bookmarking and collective intelligence.

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There is a new type of wiki called the "federated wiki" that is the new brainchild of wiki inventor, Ward Cunningham. INfluenced by GitHub, this invention lets you "fork" a wiki page and make your own version with the original author having the choice to integrate your changes or keep it separate. This may be a great type of collaborative writing tool for researchers and academicians who often are concerned about adding to a common repository in that the page could evolve to no longer represent their views but their name is still affixed to the page. On the other hand, those who may not understand it, might incorrectly attribute something that has been forked and edited but not approved by the original author. I like the potential, however. For those of you who do collaborative work, this is an excellent read.

AwesomeStories is a gathering place of primary-source information. Its purpose - since the site was first launched in 1999 - is to help educators and individuals find original sources, located at national archives, libraries, universities, and government web sites. Sources held in archives, which document so much important first-hand information, are often not searchable by popular search engines. One needs to search within those institutional sites directly, using specific search phrases not readily discernible to non-scholars. The experience can be frustrating, resulting in researchers leaving sites without finding needed information. AwesomeStories is about primary sources. The stories exist as a way to place original materials in context and to hold those links together in an interesting, cohesive way (thereby encouraging people to look at them). It is a totally different kind of web site in that its purpose is to place primary sources at the forefront - not the opinions of a writer. Its objective is to take a site's users to places where those primary sources are found, and to which the site's users may otherwise not go. The author of each story is listed on the "chapters" page of the story. A link to the author provides more detailed information.

"as a result of being forced into a lockstep teaching method, I've lost touch with my original vision of teaching, and by extension, my original philosophy - my teaching "religion." "

List of the best Paint.net tutorial. Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins. It started development as an undergraduate college senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the Microsoft Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple image and photo editor tool. It has been compared to other digital photo editing software packages such as Adobe® Photoshop®, Corel® Paint Shop Pro®, Microsoft Photo Editor, and The GIMP.

Irreverent look at what social media is and why you should be using it. Original audience is for business, but it isn't irrelevant for education. Originally was listed as copyrighted, but Alec Couros (@courosa) contacted the author and it was changed to CC-BY-NC. Good example using social media...

If you hear people talk about "Inbox Zero" - here are the original documents to help you understand what it is.

Great resource of original documents

"Generation V is not defined by age, gender, social class or geography. Instead, it is based on achievement, accomplishments and an increasing preference for the use of digital media channels to discover information, build knowledge and share insights." Additionally the percentages that create content, contribute, etc. affects classroom and project planning. Do we allow students to "lurk" Findings about these Generation V segments: * Up to 3% will be creators, providing original content. They can be advocates that promote products and services. * Between 3% and 10% will be contributors who add to the conversation, but don't initiate it. They can recommend products and services as customers move through a buying process, looking for purchasing advice. * Between 10% and 20% will be opportunists, who can further contributions regarding purchasing decisions. Opportunists can add value to a conversation that's taking place while walking through a considered purchase. * Approximately 80% will be lurkers, essentially spectators, who reap the rewards of online community input but absorb only what is being communicated. They can still implicitly contribute and indirectly validate value from the rest of the community. All users start out as lurkers."

Join in the plurknovela. So cool. This is the original one.

Plurk novella - the first one.

Plurk novella - the first one.

Wednesday, September 9, at 8pm eastern time, at Harvard University and live via teleconference, Harvard Professor of the History of Science, Everett Mendelsohn, will deliver the inaugural lecture of the 150th anniversary "Origin of Species" lecture series hosted by The Reading Odyssey and the Darwin Facebook project. Sponsors include Citrix Online and Constant Contact. Professor Mendelsohn will speak on "The World Before Darwin" drawing from his popular undergraduate course, "The Darwinian Revolution" and his many decades of experience studying the history of science and the impact of Darwin.

Great article outlining copyright, fair use and explaning the 5 principles of fair use in education.

In a huge turn of irony, at least if one considers how Bill Gates began his programming career, a spat over Office 365 coming to the ipad and Apple's desire to get 30% commissions for anyone signing up for the service if it originates on the ipad, may mean that office 365 won't come to the ipad at all. The evolution of the platform to tablet devices is critical to software companies and yet, many balk at the steep cut some like Apple take. It is interesting to watch, but there is a bigger issue here. Microsoft continues to have the best Office suite, but, as with Google Drive, many move because of a lack of ubiquity and collaborative ability driven by the walls erected by Microsoft in their traditional, but understandable proprietary system. I have to think that there are bigger issues at stake for Microsoft here. These are interesting times, to say the least, as I sit here watching Batman on my Apple TV streaming via the wifi and read this article on my ipad as I blog in the den using a bluetooth logitech keyboard.

This useful tool analyzes data without the statistical jargon but will make it simple as you analyze it. This is something you may want to use with students as they analyze data from Google forms or other original research.

As I'm reading on inquiry based learning, I came across another article, I'd like to share. In this article, it discusses how inquiry-based learning projects are driven by students. This very much aligns with the questions we ask on the Flat Classroom and other projects. The one point of meaning that I'm working to understand (and finding different answers depending upon the site) is that some differentiate that students should develop the questions rather than teachers "handing them" the questions. I have a lesson plan I sent through Diigo where the instructor designed a lesson around the question "Can there be giants?" and called in inquiry based. Under this article, it may not be called true inquiry based, and yet, I'm wondering if the question is intriguing and of interest and can be used in a way to teach if it really matters where the question originates.  My class is a mix of student-created inquiries (Freshman project) and project-generated inquiries (Digiteen, Flat Classroom). Interesting. Look forward to reading and understanding more (and sharing with you.) This is another nice article on the topic. Feel free to share yours. "Inquiry-based learning" is one of many terms used to describe educational approaches that are driven more by a learner's questions than by a teacher's lessons. It is inspired by what is sometimes called a constructivist approach to education, which posits that there are many ways of constructing meaning from the building blocks of knowledge and that imparting the skills of "how to learn" is more important than any particular information being presented. Not all inquiry-based learning is constructivist, nor are all constructivist approaches inquiry-based, but the two have similarities and grow from similar philosophies.

Smagorinsky nails the real origins of NCLB testing as a $20 billion cost to states that profit the testing/textbook companies.

An amazing digital storytelling project. Watch videos of children telling original stories. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/English

Excellent overview of the term community of practice. The origin of the term and the use of it in education is important as many of us are working through the social aspects of learning. I have seen that when established community habits and expectations occur, that learning is facilitated and the group as a whole becomes more engaged and focused. I'm citing this research in my new book about collaborative writing from Eye on education.