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If you're not already using Dropbox - you should. They had a developer conference and will likely end up everywhere in every app. Some very cool things coming. Just like Evernote - who has a powerful "trunk" features where developer work is showcased - Dropbox is going to find that opening up to development opens a whole new marketplace and ingenuity beyond what they have in house.  Some info from the wired article.  "But after all that single-mindedness, Houston and Ferdowsi now want to let their baby sing. Today, at Dropbox's first-ever developers conference, the company is officially launching a new set of coding tools designed to push Dropbox into every corner of your digital life. Not content to stay sequestered inside the box, the company's co-founders are unveiling ways for developers to meld their service with every app on every device you own. For the first five or so years of its existence, Dropbox was synonymous with its "magic folder." Save your files in the Dropbox folder on your computer, and they "magically" reappear in your Dropbox apps on your phone and tablet and in your Dropbox account on the web. Now, if developers take to the company's new tools, the service will escape the confines of this folder, fusing with third-party apps running on practically every computer and smartphone operating system. Houston wants Dropbox to become the "spiritual successor to the hard drive." He says the hard drive needs to be replaced because so many of us are doing so much computing on devices that don't fit the traditional paradigm for working with files. Users don't interact with files on iOS, Android, or the web the way they do on PCs. Apps don't have "open" or "save" options that launch a separate window where you tap through a folder tree."

This is an easy to use animation tool. Choose your objects from the bank on the site or upload your own. Then drag your items into place and select a point on the timeline and move the object again to set how the animation moves. You can include photos, shapes and text. Your creations can be published and shared or embedded online. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Video%2C+animation%2C+film+%26+Webcams

Description, on video, how to set up a live streaming video including equipment needed.

I knew a lot of very smart, very academically successful kids when I was growing up. I went to CTY which was a rather humbling experience, and then I went to pretty high-powered college.

Student test scores are not reliable indicators of teacher effectiveness, according to a new Economic Policy Institute report, Problems with the Use of Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers. The paper was co-authored by a group of distinguished education scholars and policy makers, including four former presidents of the American Educational Research Association, a former assistant U.S. Secretary of Education, EPI Research Associate Richard Rothstein, and others. The authors find that the accuracy of these analyses of student test scores is highly problematic. They argue that the practice of holding teachers accountable for their student's test score results should be reconsidered.

I'm sorry, but if this is news to anyone, you've been asleep at your desk. I'm sick of people being all professional about this issue, it is well past time to rebel against it. It's bad for the teachers, it's bad for the students, it's bad for society, and it's bad for the economics of education too! Get active, join a group against NCLB & high-stakes testing, and END IT. I would post the group(s) I work with, but I don't want to be dismissed as promoting them - find one(s) that are right for you and get behind them.

Students interact with music, movies, software, and other digital content every day-but many don't fully understand the rules surrounding the appropriate use of these materials, or why this should even matter. To help teach students about intellectual property rights and encourage them to become good "digital citizens," software giant Microsoft corp. has unveiled a free curriculum that offers cross-curricular classroom activities aligned with national standards. The Digital Citizenship and Creative content program was designed for students in grades 8-10 but can be adapted for use in grades 6-12, Microsoft says. In one unit, students are given a scenario in which a high school sponsors a school-wide Battle of the Bands. A student not involved in the production decides to videotape and sell copies of the show to students and family members. Later, one of the performers ("Johnny") learns his image has been co-opted by the maker of a video game without his permission. Students research intellectual property laws to see who owns the "rights" to the Battle of the Bands as a whole, as well as the rights of individual performers, to determine three or four steps that Johnny can take. http://digitalcitizenshiped.com

50 most pivotal moments in Internet history.

Received this great article from Kathy Schrock about the 50 most significant moments in Internet history. Fascinating article from CNET.

A San Francisco wiki services provider has just finished a multiyear project under which it gave teachers all over the world 100,000 free wikis. And now, it is doubling up and getting set to give away another quarter million. The company, Wikispaces, decided in 2006 that it would make helping teachers use the collaborative software to further cooperation between students, both in their own schools and with schools in other cities and countries, a cornerstone of its business. But while Wikispaces hasn't made any money directly from the project--and in fact has incurred significant costs due to supporting the teachers' use of the wikis--co-founder Adam Frey said the company has found that the educators are just the kind of evangelists that can aid a start-up in building a business.

Goes over the definitions for "21st century skills" as several groups define it.

This webinar is Monday about Web 2.0 and I'm co-presenting. If you attend, you'll receive a 3 month free trial subscription to Atomic Learning. Preregister here. This will give you access to the series I did on Web 2.0 and how to set up an RSS reader, etc. Also, the new one I've done on Flattening your classroom will be available as well.

This webinar Monday has free three month subscription to Atomic Learning attached to it.

This will be a worthy course to enroll in!

Connectivism and Connective Knowledge is a twelve week Course that will explore the Concepts of Connectivism and Connective knowledge and explore their application as a framework for theories of teaching and learning. It will outline a Connectivist understanding of educational systems of the future. George Siemens and Stephen Downes - the two leading figures on Connectivism and Connective knowledge - will Co-facilitate this innovative and timely Course.

Class teacher is suspended for letting her students read freedom writers. I would love to have some opinions from other teachers.

This teacher was banned from using the freedom writers diary in her classroom and now has been suspended. I don't know all of the facts, however, I have to wonder why the school sent her to a Freedom Writers workshop and then wouldn't let her use the book. I do respect the desire to limit the profanity -- I wish that perhaps there was a explitive-free version of the book to handle this issue, however, it looks like this entire issue was mishandled. It grieves me as more issues like this seem to be happening in schools. I haven't read this book to have my own opinion, but would love to hear from some of you who have.

The Web site iWASwondering.org is a project of the National Academy of Sciences intended to showcase the accomplishments of contemporary women in science and to highlight for young people the varied and intriguing careers of some of today's most prominent scientists. The site draws from and accompanies the publication of a ten-volume series of biographies entitled Women's Adventures in Science, co-published by the Joseph Henry Press (an imprint of the National Academies Press) and Scholastic Library Publishing.

uk site with heaps of resources, including media studies

upload any document (MSWord, RTF, OpenOffice Document) or write it directly with your browserwork privately on your text with a few chosen collaborators or open the commenting process to the publicuse comments to improve your document and create new versions of your textexport your text (and all comments) in any format (MS Word, OpenOffice Document, etc.)

* It's been a tough couple of years for MySpace, hit by job losses, falling user numbers and changes at the top. But can anything save the troubled social network - which is still, after all, the world's second largest? I spent several hours with new bosses Jason Hirschhorn and Mike Jones last week, grilling them about their plans to push the site back into the limelight. Want to know what they said?