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I was recording a session with Sue Waters tonight about the Edublog Awards and she mentioned this post from Joyce Seitzinger about why the edublog awards matter and I wanted to share it. While many pundits and critics arise and say negative things any time an awards program happens, I think that the Edublog Awards matters because it helps find new voices. Voting will open soon but realize that if anyone nominates you -- it is an honor. Take the time to go through the finalists, add them to your RSS reader and your Twitter account. Take a read at this great post to know why the edublog awards do matter... thank you Joyce for a lovely, compelling post (and some great nominations.)

A great list of UK Edu Bloggers

Amazing Apple and Android app which allows you to take a poll from your class instantly using the camera on your device. Your students simply hold up the symbol for the multiple choice answer they wish to give. The app logs how many answered each choice, but also who chose which answer - Making assessment and feedback easy. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

Civil War Augmented Reality project -- just in my inbox. You civil war buffs and history teachers may really get a "kick" out of this. Speaking of "kick" they are trying to get a grant that requires people to vote for them. Take a look: "This message is from a group of educators in Pennsylvania who have developed a Social Studies project that is in the process of raising a modest amount of money to build prototypes for gathering additional partners. Our project, the Civil War Augmented Reality Project, is intended to enhance the experiences of students visiting Civil War sites. It is also intended to increase attendance and revenue for historic sites by offering both "high" and "low" tech experiences to best reach the majority of the population. We feel that our project is fulfilling a need that educators, park workers, technology enthusiasts, and Civil War enthusiasts have discussed in the past: How can historic sites both raise educational value and public interest in their institutions though technology, while not alienating the non-technical history fans? We have worked hard on the answer, and are interested in promoting our creative solutions. We would like to make clear that the project is not intended solely for Pennsylvania. It is our hope that the project will expand to other venues, as we feel that we have the ability to use our ideas to enhance the experiences of all students at historic sites."

Faculty voted unanimously this week to approve a resolution that allows MIT to freely and publicly distribute research articles they write. MIT plans to create a repository to make these articles available online.

Please help show Obama YOUR SUPPORT for education by voting for this important cause! The top causes will be presented to the new Obama administration at the Inauguration in January.

2008 awards were so suprising to me. Thank you to those who voted for Cool Cat Teacher for best teacher blog and the Flat Classroom project 2008 for best educational wiki. Thank you so much! So many great award winners here AND great people who were finalists also. There are many new gems among the finalists and I hope you'll take time to look there as well.

PBS Teachers website provides multimedia resources, PD for K-12 educators along with RSS feeds to keep you up to date.

Science and Technology After School Seminars

This is the Coalition's website for After School activities - this is the detail from the American Express proposal that I shared also in this post. If you like this idea and organization, please go vote at the American express link. Thanks!

American express grants for educational activities.

American Express has a set of proposals for education and is asking us to vote on their proposals. The organizers of this particular project have contacted me directly and asked me to share it with you. Take a look. I do wish there wer emore specifics about the project as I think we've got a watered down version here. However, the more science and technology, the better.

Obama Works is an independent grassroots organization that helps Obama supporters in neighborhoods across the country to organize community service events. The group was founded in early 2008 by a group of Yale students who were inspired by Barack Obama and felt that the energy surrounding his campaign could be channeled to do more than generate votes.

The state Board of Education voted Thursday to require all high-school students to pass algebra II to graduate, and it agreed to work toward raising other graduation requirements as well. Board members have been discussing, for example, whether to increase the number of classes students would have to complete to earn their diplomas, essentially making the list equal to what they''d need to apply to public, four-year colleges in Washington. That would mean additional classes in English, science, foreign language and more.

Faculty members at Stanford University's School of Education have voted to make scholarly articles available to the public for free, a policy change that the university says makes Stanford's education school the first such school in the nation to join the growing "open access" movement in academia.

Great Visual Aid when talking about the Electoral College. GET OUT AND VOTE!!!

backchan.nl is tool for involving audiences in presentations by letting them suggest questions and vote on each other's questions. backchan.nl is intended for conference or event organizers who want a new way to solicit questions from the audience and make better use of question and answer time.

SCHOOL CHOICE is a controversial public education reform -- but not as controversial as it should be. Support for choice remains strong in the face of mounting evidence that long-standing controversies are being decided in favor of the critics of choice. Our study of the choice program in the Boulder Valley School District adds to the growing body of research documenting serious flaws in the theory, procedures, and outcomes of school choice. Advocates of school choice contend that competition gives parents a voice and the power to vote with their feet. Schools that consistently perform poorly will lose "clients" and be forced to go "out of business," resulting in overall improvement in both achievement and parental satisfaction. Advocates of choice also contend that school choice can better accommodate a diversity of student interests and needs than the "one-size-fits-all" approach they ascribe to traditional public schools. Finally, they contend that school choice can reduce inequities. School choice is really nothing new, according to them, for parents have long chosen schools by choosing their place of residence.

2009, Tasmanian educators shared ideas on free software for education. A list of useful software was assembled and an online survey was developed. Iinterested educators began to rate the free tools, and new suggestions were added. Finally, after several weeks, a list of the "Top 10" free tools for education had emerged based on rankings by Australian teachers. And so, colleagues, to the top 15 (there were several cases where the difference in votes was too close to call, so the 10 became 15)

Glenn Kantz, a librarian in a Swiss Boarding school wrote an article on "patron drive acquisitions" that I find boh fascinating and really something that libraries should consider. In the past, it has often been librarian driven. But if the libraries have books that patrons want, will the libraries be more populated? Now that ebooks and overdrive solutions are coming, doesn't it make sense to take a patron driven model? Should people be able to "vote up" the next acquisition? Fascinating thoughts and I look forward to reading more on this.