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We live in a busy world. Whether you're looking around online or off, there's "stuff" going on all around us. Some of us are trying to keep up and some of us aren't. Either way, both parties are inevitably going to miss out on some of this "stuff" I'm alluding to. And that's because we all need to look at not only why we're missing out, but how we can avoid missing out on as much as we do. This is when levels of personal productivity come into play.

This paper examines undergraduate student use of laptop computers during a lecture-style class that includes substantial problem-solving activities and graphic-based content. The study includes both a self-reported use component collected from student surveys as well as a monitored use component collected via activity monitoring "spyware" installed on student laptops. We categorize multitasking activities into productive (course-related) versus distractive (non course-related) tasks. Quantifiable measures of software multitasking behavior are introduced to measure the frequency of student multitasking, the duration of student multitasking, and the extent to which students engage in distractive versus productive tasks.

"Reid Hoffman and Matt Cohler, two of Silicon Valley's social-networking pioneers, are throwing their hats into the education ring. The entrepreneurs-turned-venture capitalists today led a $15 million investment in Edmodo, a free learning site for teachers and students that claims almost 5 million registered users. The cash pile, from Greylock Partners and Benchmark Capital, gives the management team the runway to hire developers and add products without doing the one thing they prefer not to talk about: making money."

Jane Hart is the Founder of the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies, one of the most visited learning sites on the Web. In her monthly column for eLearn she shares some "gems"-useful or valuable tools, resources, and products she has unearthed for learning and performance improvement/support. In this month's column she lists her 10 favorite articles from 2011.

>> Web conferencing engages multiple senses. >> Web conferencing affords trainers flexibility in content delivery. >> Live training content often requires significantly less preparation and production time than on-demand elearning. Reality is that Web conferencing is opening up new possibilities as well.

In December of last year, Google released its new Google Earth Engine, an application created specifically with scientific research in mind. This new product provides an unprecedented 25 years of satellite images with the goal of enabling more precise climate modeling, based on change studies and mapping trends of the Earth's environment with a principle focus on identifying areas of deforestation.