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Yesterday was a big day for Twitter - the company premiered its first ever TV commercial during a NASCAR race, which showed off a brand-new hashtag page that could open a new and very welcome revenue stream for the micro-blogging platform.

"Vision: Our vision for WikiPODia is for it to become a repository of our collective and emergent understanding of our field. It is meant to be nimble and live, moving us from a smattering of disparate comments to a collective understanding of critical and important topics. Building from conference, listserv and other community initiated conversations we view WikiPODia as an important 'next level' resource for the POD community; providing an intermediate state between the POD listserv discussions and a formal POD publication. "

"Altimeter's research examined companies considered to be advanced in social business and their preparations for or ability to avoid a social media crisis. Given the accelerated us of social media on campus within core services, meaning higher education's adoption of a social media business model, the possibility of a social media crisis arising is something that should be expected and planned for."

I was working with some instructors on including a widget in their Angel courses that would update a list of the articles they are bookmarking.  Found a way to do this using Diigo through this informational slide show.  Lots of different tidbits on how to use all the tools Diigo can offer.

Again, another great idea. I'd love to try this out in my classes. So, please let me know asap so I can give it a try. Thanks! Connie

"Providing feedback to students about their in-class presentations can be a juggling act, and students may not be able to connect instructor comments with specific moments in their talks. In this essay, Drs. Curto and Laudato describe a technique for providing feedback via rich media capture. Much like comments in the margins of a written assignment, feedback is received at the appropriate time point in the presentation."

Several instructors have asked over time about different ways to give students feedback on their in-class presentations. This is a PDF article that addresses this specifically.

"Blended learning is a hybrid of classroom and online learning that includes some of the conveniences of online courses without the complete loss of face-to-face contact. The present study used a causal-comparative design to examine the relationship of sense of community between traditional classroom, blended, and fully online higher education learning environments. Evidence is provided to suggest that blended courses produce a stronger sense of community among students than either traditional or fully online courses."

"Around fall 2010, the college began looking for a tool that could be distributed to faculty and students for user-generated content. Said Palson, criteria for evaluation focused on two areas: "It had to be accessible via mobile. And it had to be easy to use." Ease of use included the ability for a new user to "jump into it, create something, and it would be ready to go." The instructional technology staff began a pilot using Brainshark and, according to Palson, immediately saw that it was different from what had been used in the past."

Brainshark - another tool for generating online presentations

These skills and competencies for digital curators include seven areas: 1) Communication and interpersonal competency: This competency is required for clear and effective communication with a variety of audiences, including users, creators, managers, researchers and collaborators. 2) Curating and preserving content competency: This competency is required to understand and carry out a range of activities as defined in the digital curation lifecycle model, including the creation, acquisition, management, representation, access, organization, transformation and preservation of digital content. 3) Curation technologies competency: This competency is required to identify, use, and develop tools and applications to support digital curation activities. The context of this competency is the information technology infrastructure, including the tools and applications deployed to support digital curation. 4) Environmental scanning competency: This competency is required to identify and use resources to stay current and on the leading edge regarding trends, technologies and practices that affect professional work and capabilities within the field of digital curation. 5) Management, planning and evaluation competency: This competency is required for planning, coordinating, implementing, and assessing programs, projects and services related to digital curation. 6) Services competency: This competency is required to identify, understand and build services to respond to a community's and/or institution's digital curation needs. 7) Systems, models and modeling competency: This competency is required for high-level, abstract thinking about and critical analysis of complex systems, workflows and conceptual models related to digital curation.                                                                      Robin Good

"Even though e-textbooks make up a small portion of the bookseller's business, that market is likely to grow in the next several years, and teaming up with Microsoft will strengthen its ability to grab a larger share of the college bookstore market, Mr. Iannone said. One of the first new features the joint venture will offer is a Windows 8 application for Nook, Barnes & Noble's e-book reader."

"The number of college students who say they own tablets has more than tripled since a survey taken last year, according to new poll results released today. The Pearson Foundation sponsored the second-annual survey, which asked 1,206 college students and 204 college-bound high-school seniors about their tablet ownership. The results suggest students increasingly prefer to use the devices for reading. One-fourth of the college students surveyed said they owned a tablet, compared with just 7 percent last year. Sixty-three percent of college students believe tablets will replace textbooks in the next five years-a 15 percent increase over last year's survey"

Very interesting change in student ownership of tablets - and attitudes about textbooks.

It is very difficult to predict trends in edu tech with accuracy but if there is one safe bet, it is that tablets will soon dominate the campus scene, and print is on the way out.

There is a small town, about 12 miles east of Austin, Texas, where a high school devoted to teaching every subject to every student through project-based learning (PBL) opened five years ago. On its own, this would not have been a noteworthy event. The list of schools across America deepening the learning process through PBL has been growing for quite some time. But few schools have fine-tuned the process like Manor New Technology High School in Manor, Texas, where 98 percent of seniors graduate and 100 percent of the graduates are accepted to college

Summary of Results This summary highlights the major conclusions from a nationally representative online poll of 1,214 college students and 200 college-bound high school seniors in the United States. The Pearson Foundation Survey on Students and Tablets was conducted by Harris Interactive from March 8 through 31, 2011. The major conclusions are as follows: 1. College students believe that tablet computers will transform learning. 2. A majority of students in both college and high school are interested in owning a tablet. 3. College students who own tablets believe that the devices are valuable for educational purposes. 4. On average, students prefer print over digital format for both textbooks and leisure reading. Students who own tablets, however, are far more likely to favor digital books over print. Since

"Survey confirms that majority of Canadians agree mobile phones are an invaluable tool for students; unlimited mobile data plans enable Mobile Student 2.0 movement Toronto, ON - August 9, 2012 - Mobilicity today released new research findings pointing to the increasing role smartphones are playing in and out of the classroom. The Mobile Student 2.0 Survey found that 66 per cent of Canadians would use a mobile phone to conduct online research anywhere, anytime; 46 per cent would download mobile apps to help stay organized; 41 per cent would record lectures and tutorial sessions; and 42 per cent would coordinate school and social activities if they were a student. Moreover, the majority of Canadians (56 per cent) think that mobile phones are an invaluable tool for students. The Mobile Student 2.0 refers to the next-gen student who relies on a smartphone with Internet usage to enhance their education and social life. "

"Nature Education, the educational wing of the Nature Publishing Group which also runs Scitable, one of the largest science publishers in the world - is hoping to resolve this with the release its first ever science textbook. It's called the Principles of Biology, and for a $49 lifetime access, students receive a constantly-updated biology textbook, for less cost."

"The Rental Phenomenon In the past two years, the post-secondary textbook rental market has exploded. Driven by the outcry over book prices, federal legislation, readily available pricing information on the Internet, and sophisticated web-based rental management platforms, old and new competitors are disrupting the $10 billion college textbook business. Book rental isn't really a new phenomenon-a few college stores have been renting books since the Civil War. The National Association of College Stores (NACS) proclaimed fall 2010 as the "Year of the Rental." Players include long-timers like Follett and Budgetext, institutional stores and fast-growing start-ups. BookRenter, started in 2008, netted $40 million from investors in a funding round this past February. Chegg, started in 2007, has raised $200+ million in venture capital and attracted senior management from Yahoo and Netflix. The same drivers are growing trade in used books, eBooks, and online instructional content. Rental is also driving new business models for sourcing and distributing educational materials that may carry the industry forward into digital. Having book inventory isn't necessarily required-at least one high-flying firm, BookRenter, exists mainly as an online marketplace. Read on to see how this change in distribution is impacting the higher education market. Next month we'll look at what all this means for K-12."

"The applications tested by the university encompassed: * Blackboard Mobile Learn, on which all clients simultaneously accessed course curriculum and viewed on-demand streaming video; * Video-based curriculum, video delivered by Distribution Access, a Canadian educational video provider; * Apple Facetime for video conferencing; * Apple AirPlay for wireless streaming of multimedia content to an Apple TV connected to a classroom projector; * Live, local video content streamed through Haivision Network Video gear; * ResponseWare real-time polling from Turning Technologies. The university used VeriWave WaveInsite to set up and run the test and to measure performance. Each application was delivered simultaneously to all 100 devices. According to a statement issued by Aruba, the applications performed "with the highest quality and without any noticeable jitter, delay, or frame loss.""

"Ken Robinson: Changing education paradigms This delightfully illustrated video entertains while educating. The video does a wonderful job of explaining how today's factory-like education model is outmoded and how it needs to evolve into a more personalized model if we are going to take it to a new level. Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education This video discusses "The Hole In The Wall" experiment that Mitra started in New Delhi in 1999. Children deprived of learning opportunities available in other parts of the world nevertheless figured out the computer at their disposal and started using it to learn and to teach each other. These results repeated themselves as the experiment was conducted in various other locales. Kids can and will teach kids. How can we take advantage of this to improve on education across the world?"