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The Indiana Department of Education is thoughtfully considering exactly how to incorporate technology into the classroom, resisting buying new technologies based on trends or marketing pressure or the desire to keep up; they are trying to carefully select tools that will help children learn in the classroom and improve performance rather than have technology for technology's sake. I think that this is a very important difference and one that every school that is purchasing new technologies for the classroom should consider very carefully.

Ed Murphy, vice president of business development at Learn360. "The recent adoption of both sets of new Standards affords Learn360 boundless opportunities to provide even more resources and tools to help students think critically, make informed decisions and ultimately make larger social contributions in a heavily wired world." Additionally, the 21st Century Learning Skills focus on helping students master the multi-dimensional abilities required of them in the future by blending specific skills, content-knowledge, expertise and literacy with innovative support systems"

This article details the findings of a recent study of 6th, 7th and 8th graders in Arizona that found that the students that used a new math and science curriculum called Adaptive Curriculum scored higher on post-tests and assessments than students with the traditional curriculum. The new treatment teaches conceptual understanding of math through content and technology, and emphasizes real-world, informal applications of math and science. 

As edX emerges, MIT's new president reflects on the continued and evolving value of on-campus education.

They had great campaign along with election supporting kids to learn and discuss on topics that mattered a lot as future voters. I believe they will begin international version soon this month.

A news story from Cornell talking about integrating mobile devices into higher ed...paints an unfortunate, yet realistic picture of the discrepancies between research/trends and practice  

Google is building a new search tool that pre-guesses what you are looking for. This is a step beyond children being able to look up answers to any questions they have without thinking.

The City University of New York's Graduate Center has announced a project to expand the social-media reach of academics working on social-justice issues. The project, called JustPublics@365 and supported by a $550,000 grant awarded this month by the Ford Foundation, seeks to train professors and graduate students to use social media to make their social-justice research more visible to a wider audience and to measure its impact.

"The way that young people learn and get inspired is totally different"

No hard news here; but this reminded me of Sherry Turkle and her (misguided, I think) argument that parents are too caught up with their phones to pay attention to their kids. There's a lot more subtlety in this piece. And even though this is literary and not academic, I think there's valuable food for thought re: T561 because of big questions about "real" experience vs. digital or "virtual" experience.

"Language online is now a zero sum game."

True. But japanese expansion was maybe not too much due o the power of internet as much as english. Curious about Chinese given there are already so many dialects.

This is an interesting perspective, thanks for sharing. I was speaking with some friends from Germany and Spain, who explained that English has become much more motivating due to its pervasive existence online. However, mandarin is preferential to higher SES families who want their children to excel in business.

Survey participants identified four key factors as "extremely important" in building a successful K-12 online education program: -Reporting and progress monitoring tools that enable teachers to assess student comprehension and identify those that need additional help; -Teacher who are readily available to assist struggling students; -Educators specially trained to teach in an online environment; -Rigorous curriculum, designed to accommodate different learning styles, that keeps students focused and engaged.

"The intuitive software platform for EV3 is based on National Instruments LabVIEW™ graphical programming software, and includes new data-logging capabilities that allow students to collect, graph, and calculate their data."

''Previously, standardized tests accounted for 100% of a school's API (academic performance index). Under the new rules California high schools will have no more than 60% of students' test scores contribute to their API. ''

Apparently their new strategy is to "airdrop" OLPC laptops into communities and let students teach themselves. Now, I'm all for students learning by creating and constructivist pedagogy... but this seems altogether irresponsible. Also, seems like we're promoting different standards for students in low income/low resource settings vs. students in resource rich settings through initiatives like this--and not in a good way. =/

Neuroscience News brings us a fascinating collection of articles re: artificial intelligence. If you have an hour or three, indulge!

I just found a current MOOC, highly relevant to the conversation in class today. --free and accepting new participants now. "Weekly Topics: Change pressures: What is influencing higher education? (Oct 8-14) Net pedagogies: New models of teaching and learning (Oct 15-21) Entrepreneurship and commercial activity in education (Oct 22-28) Big data and Analytics (Oct 29-Nov 4) Leadership in Education (Nov 4-11) Distributed Research: new models of inquiry (Nov 12- 18)"

Fascinating new school in New York, focusing on Science and teaching entirely through educational gaming.