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Saw this over the summer and thought it raised some good questions about IEP initiatives, a child's ability to learn technical frameworks without explicit instruction, community engagement, technological innovation in impoverished areas, etc.

Speaking at LIFT 2007, Sugata Mitra talks about his Hole in the Wall project. Young kids in this project figured out how to use a PC on their own -- and then taught other kids. He asks, what else can children teach themselves? Sugata Mitra's "Hole in the Wall" experiments have shown that, in the absence of supervision or formal teaching, children can teach themselves and each other, if they're motivated by curiosity and peer interest.

I thought this was a great video when I watched it. Very interesting experiment. It reminded me of how I know people who learned other languages through their love of music--they just memorized song lyrics and practiced until they figured out the language!

Ed.D. and TED Senior Fellow Juliette LaMontagne discusses her best ideas to fix K-12 schools. Her vision includes increased informal learning, greater access to emerging software and online content such as Khan Academy and project-based work that allows students to apply what they learn to real world situations.

I love competative learning labs. I wish this project based co-opetition model were a standard in our schools. Innovation and team dynamics are mindsets and skills that need to be developed in our kids.

Teacher tips for blogging in classrooms

A fun way for kids to learn algebra -- specifically Pascal's Triangle --- using a fun interactive tech tool-- MIT's Scratch program --

Published Online: October 17, 2011 Published in Print: October 19, 2011, as When Educational Content Gets Blocked For most of last school year, Nowmee Shehab never thought twice about using school computers to pull up websites of the Trevor Project, the It Gets Better Project, or the Gay-Straight Alliance, as she searched for resources for her high school's own GSA club.

Boston area Landmark High School received a Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam grant, which seeks to foster innovation and focus on STEM fields. These students will work on creating a water desalination system for countries with low rainfall. This type of project has a lot of potential to develop 21st century skills and teach complex problem solving skills.

In India, three young men redefine teaching in the slums of India through the "smile school" project.

T561 Alumni involved in this project.  Somewhat similar in approach to SmartyAnts

Interesting project that builds sound, light sensors, motion detectors into building blocks.

If you are not familiar with the 21st Century Fluency project, have a look. When I received this week's newsletter, there was a lot of alignment with the conversation we had in Monday's lecture.

http://www.fluency21.com/perspectives/LNE_perspective.pdf This is a great intro to the thinking these guys are doing. Their breakdown of the 5 fluencies is probably one of the most actionable representations of what everyone is calling 21st century skills.

It appears I've been posting this wrong, and it hasn't made its way to the HGSET561 thread directly. Sorry about that. This article is relevant to the CAST project I'm working on for this class as well as a general evaluation of this emerging market. Is the big money in the analytics of user behavior? Hmmm...

Good ideas for many different educational projects with step-by-step instruction

Founded in 2004, Games for Change facilitates the creation and distribution of social impact games that serve as critical tools in humanitarian and educational efforts. Unlike the commercial gaming industry, we aim to leverage entertainment and engagement for social good. To further grow the field, Games for Change convenes multiple stakeholders, highlights best practices, incubates games, and helps create and direct investment into new projects.

"Minerva..... is an entirely different pedagogical species. The San Francisco-based company aims at a soup-to-nuts undergraduate education, resulting in a traditional bachelor's degree, but all via the Web, and with all of the social cachet of the country's priciest sheepskin. ....Nelson, its 36-year-old founder, has no experience in education; .....But Nelson managed to not only score a huge investment from Benchmark - the same VC firm that backed the likes of eBay, Yelp, and Mint -but also persuaded a group of A-list luminaries, including former Harvard president Larry Summers, to be on its board of advisors.

interesting that the founder has no experience in education.... :/

The Aakash 2 was unveiled by the Indian President Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday 11 November, India's National Education Day. It is an upgraded version of the world's cheapest tablet computer.

Stanford's acclaimed d. school inspired 50 teams of graduate students to pitch projects at Aspen Ideas Festival. Spark Truck, one of the winners is a "mobile maker lab" that brings simple tech to help inspire kids to become creators.

related to the previous bookmark from the Economist. 

Interesting- Bellow's latest project is eduClipper, an educational "digital clipboard" that curates educational content online. "eduClipper works on the same 'shared resources' premise as eduTecher," he explained, "but now I'm flipping the equation and instead of providing information to the masses I'm getting teachers and students to the eduClipper site to share their own information."