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"Have you ever faked a restroom trip to check your email? Slept with your laptop? Or become so overwhelmed that you just unplugged from it all? In this funny, eye-opening, and inspiring film, director Tiffany Shlain takes audiences on an exhilarating rollercoaster ride to discover what it means to be connected in the 21st century. From founding The Webby Awards to being a passionate advocate for The National Day of Unplugging, Shlain's love/hate relationship with technology serves as the springboard for a thrilling exploration of modern life...and our interconnected future. Equal parts documentary and memoir, the film unfolds during a year in which technology and science literally become a matter of life and death for the director. As Shlain's father battles brain cancer and she confronts a high-risk pregnancy, her very understanding of connection is challenged. Using a brilliant mix of animation, archival footage, and home movies, Shlain reveals the surprising ties that link us not only to the people we love but also to the world at large. A personal film with universal relevance, Connected explores how, after centuries of declaring our independence, it may be time for us to declare our interdependence instead."

Sept. 9, 2011 "...we have not yet even begun to develop the protocols for the new world of communication parallel with the ones we created for the 19th and 20th century world of communication. We will. We're fifteen years into the commercialization of the internet and now is the perfect time to begin thinking how to protect ourselves as worker in an "adjunct" world (and not just for academe), how to train ourselves as life-long learners to make the tools help us not use us. "

09 DECEMBER, 2010 How Music Works by Maria Popova "What Stanley Kubrick has to do with Medieval harmonies and universal lullabies. Music. It's hard to imagine life without it. How flat would a world be where films have no scores, birthdays no 'Happy Birthday,' Christmas no carols, gym workouts no playlists? Music is so ubiquitous and affects us so deeply, so powerfully. But how much do we really know about it? How well do we understand its emotional hold on our brains? How Music Works, a fascinating program from BBC4 (the same folks who brought us The End of God?: A Horizon Guide to Science and Religion), explores just that. Composer Howard Goodall takes us on a journey into music's underbelly, examining the four basic elements that make it work: Melody, rhythm, harmony and bass."

A very good and indepth article on the use of delicious in education

Wikis are an exceptionally useful tool for getting students more involved in curriculum. They're often appealing and fun for students to use, while at the same time ideal for encouraging participation, collaboration, and interaction. Read on to see how you can put wikis to work in your classroom.

Anyone who uses their whiteboard for ELT / EFL classes will know what a really useful teaching aid it can be, so how about using one with your distance learners?

Julie and I are excited about participating in the ISTE Eduverse Talks next Tuesday 5PM SLT. Here are the show details. Just think, if you come in, you can see HOW BAD I am at operating my avatar. (Actually, I don't think I"m as bad as I think, but my strength is definitely scripting.) Julie is having to get up at 2 am to make this happen but she is such an amazing dear -- she is doing it! We are SOOOOOO excited and hope you'll take a venture into SL to join us. We're so excited. Maybe you'll join us. If not, their blog will have the video and audio. Hey, and if you come, I"ll hang around afterwards -- would love to acquire some notecards about your projects. Let's post these in my office in the C.A.V.E. or any where else. When we talk about flattening, it is not just about these projects but all of the projects going on out there -- so share your notecard and we'll find a place to collect and share them all. HOpe to meet you soon! I'm CoolCat Whitman on Second Life (and ReactionGrid -- my favorite home for virtual worlds.)

Environmental Defense has created twelve educational signs as part of an effort to reduce copy paper use through our work with Citigroup. Please use the signs in your office to encourage double-sided printing and copying, which reduces paper use, helps the environment and cuts costs.

ABCya! Kindergarten computer activities and games have large and easy-to-use navigation buttons as well as voice instructions. The first activity is an interactive tutorial demonstrating how to use navigation buttons. The following activities include: learn the alphabet, uppercase to lowercase letters, categorizing, mouse manipulation, drawing, counting numbers and much more. These activities are great to use in the computer lab!

Looks like the problems many of us have been having in Firefox (last week in particular) may actually be from Microsoft? Come on !! I love firefox and don't have my students use IE for this reason (slowness, lack of ad ons, viruses, malware.) The only time I'm using Chrome now is for special webapps (Toodledo) and also Google Wave (it seems to consume any other web browser.) This ZDNET article is a follow through from Stephen Downes' amazing resource sharing blog - if you haven't subscribed, you should.

Useful ways to link twitter to your blog - pick the one you want (I wouldn't use all nine!) Just makes it easier to share.

You can use your Google account to link the printers on your PC with your Google account using Google Cloud print. This incredibly useful feature can let you go to work on Monday and when you fire up your computer, it will printout the things you want to have printed. (If it works) this is a very cool feature. I'm enabling this today.

"Students perform less well in end-of-term exams if they are allowed access to an electronic device, such as a phone or tablet, for non-academic purposes in lectures, a new study in Educational Psychology finds. Students who don't use such devices themselves but attend lectures where their use is permitted also do worse, suggesting that phone/tablet use damages the group learning environment."

"Although many schools ban smartphones, the reality is that many pupils have them hidden away, or are an integral part of their lives once they leave the premises. The 'Selfy' phenomenon is clearly here to stay, but this video (created by London-based design and animation studio weareseventeen) illustrates how we can easily be distracted with our devices, missing out on the world around us - which could be useful for a discussion / assembly activity within schools when talking about online use or safety:"

"Many of us will have fond memories of children's TV engaging us to turn our used bottles into rockets, our wooden spoons into cartoon character puppets, and attaching googly eyes to anything which keeps still for more than 3 seconds! Schools are great at turning recycling into creativity, and design is at the heart of this. Later, the skills pupils learn turning pasta into planes and tins into trains fuel are the beginning of making the engineers and artisans of the future."

Looking to keep a fitness resolution this year? Find motivation to get moving and keep fit with this superb location-based strategy game for runners and walkers. Gain virtual coins for being active which you can use to advance your settlement. Locations are not precisely show nor in real time, so you can use it with pupils without safely concerns. If using it for yourself, it can link to Strava to keep you motivated to lace up your running shoes without extra hassle. But don't you come around here and fight me for MY castles!

"A great, simple, collaborative mindmapping site. Invite other users to share ideas together in real time. It uses html which means that you can use it with most web enabled devices. Sign in using a Google account."

"Creating music tracks used to be time consuming and expensive. But with sites like this, anyone can make their own synthesised tracks using virtual mixing desk. Click on launch to start the app. Choose your equipment or use the default desk to get you going. You can listen and even remix tracks from other members on the site."

"Reading and learning seem to go together, but a shift in reading habits is changing the way we consume information and changing our relationship with a book. Should schools embrace this change, or celebrate a traditional model of reading and paper books? How are books being used in today's classrooms, and how could they be used better? What are the reading habits of teachers and how do educators use books to improve their teaching?"

"This is a maths resource that can be used to challenge pupils to complete a magic square, using only the numbers provided, to make sure that each row, column and diagonal all add up to the focused magic number. The resource provided challenges students to add up to 9, 12, 15 & 18, and could be used as a homework challenge, an additional classroom activity, or as a main activity within a maths lesson. Challenge pupils to work on two different methods for each magic number. This activity could be adapted with larger number, and other mathematic operations"