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This is an interesting talk which shares techniques that journalists use to determine fact from fiction. Could be very useful for teaching critical thinking skills.

Really interesting and definitely related to developing critical thinking skills. However, the idea that someone can crosscheck sources using Google maps to identify locations makes me wonder about how journalism in a web 2.0 ecology impacts privacy.

A new proposal calls for a Consumer Reports-like rating body to evaluate new digital learning tools. Ed tech innovators like the idea in theory but they worry that it won't work in practice.

Funny, I was just talking with someone about this very idea the other day. We absolutely need something like this and my guess is that we will have a few competitors, at least early on, for the top ed tech review site. I think there is space for both an organization that specializes and for a yelp like site that essentially crowd sources the reviews. It will be tough to keep up, but think of how many products and areas Consumer Reports deals with- we can do this, and need to do this, for ed tech to get used wisely in our schools.

With regards to e-learning, I think inevitably some company or organization will provide ratings of the quality of online degree programs and learning tools. Whether this is Consumer Reports or US World & News Report or some new player (investment opportunity?), the need for objective assessments of digital learning tools is definitely needed. The Benchmarking e-learning wiki is interesting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benchmarking_e-learning

software identifies key topics in digital text and collects videos from YouTube and other online sources to enrich reading

Thank you for posting - this is fascinating. This is not only a threat to Blackboard, but also the MOOC companies (Coursera, Udacity, etc.). If the tool continues to be developed in terms of functionality and ease of use, AND third party developers build out applications that plug into this platform, then colleges and universities will start to build their own online courses, and not farm out their content to the Coursera's of the world... This reminds of the dot com era (circa 2000) when companies large and small hired "web development" firms to create websites for them. Now companies largely do this themselves...

Thanks for sharing Mohit. It's great that it's open source and allows teachers all over the world to build their own courses. I wonder what this would do to the larger online course companies...

Building on Maria's link from GeekWire, here is another article about a bubble forming in ed tech...and building on Jason's comment about not wanting to investmenting in ed tech, it seems like a lot of wealthy people aren't worried about it! This article goes into the numbers a little more on trying to show the bubble effect, such as the number of investment rounds and startups. It also talks a bit about Christensen's "innovator" profile and how a lot of the ed tech folks now are mission-driven people who are innovating like Christensen describes. Not sure if what they are doing will work, but trying because they are passionate about it

Can Ed tech start-ups be classified into those driven by a desire to improve education and children's lives or those simply seeking to make a lot of money? Or are motives and intentions always impossible to judge and inextricable from behavior.

Thanks for sharing. I liked the last message of this article. "But as long as we remember that it takes both the tool and the teacher to create success, the mission-driven innovators will outnumber the market-driven copycats. And innovation will outshine the bubbles.". EdSurge is one of my favorite source too. One of my former client at Hedge Fund in HK messaged me earlier this month ''btw u might be spot on on this education stuff. this should offer a sizable business opportunity in coming years u should go grab some" - def. he is one of those guys out there who might contribute to the bubble in the future...

Its great to see an organization like PBS jumping into both providing resources and support for educators to maximize the use of technology and not compromising quality content. Includes a teacher survey on use of technology in classrooms across the country (successes & challenges)

This articile describes the educational effect of the Time To KNow Digital Teaching Platform used with low SES students in Isreal.

This article that highlights Khan Academy but also other interesting resources. I found this to have good information to add to our discussions about Khan and it's effectiveness. Other interesting aspects include a mention about open source college textbooks (Connexions) and a paper about effective teaching ("Why Not Try a Scientific Approach to Scientific Education")

In Disrupting Class we explained that prosperity is a bittersweet reward. Poverty often serves as an extrinsic motivator for some students, as it causes them to endure monolithic, batch teaching of subjects like math and science. When prosperity has removed this source of motivation, the solution must be to make learning intrinsically motivating. Student-centric learning will play a key role in addressing this challenge. The purpose of this paper is to draw upon another model from our research on innovation to dive more deeply into students' motivation to learn. If children are motivated to learn and if we enable each one to learn effectively, we will have an education system with a great performance record. As the late educator Jack Frymier often said, "If the kids want to learn, we couldn't stop 'em. If they don't, we can't make 'em."

Fascinating article about backlash to a non-profit working with school districts to integrate student data sources. Raises lots of pertinent issues beyond student data: intersection of business, foundations, and school districts; parent reactions to educational technology; districts going down the rabbit hole of tech contracts without a clear sense of what they'll get....

"Dramatic mission creep on one hand, and the dissolution of families and communities on the other, have made teaching impossibly difficult and beyond the skill set of average people," writes Gisèle Huff.

Background on Augmented Reality. Reading for 9/14.

Google Wave, which combines email, instant messaging and wiki-style editing will go on public trial today. The search giant hopes the tool, described as "how e-mail would look if it were invented today", will transform how people communicate online.

Agh! Not another way to communicate! I can't even remember my passwords to all these things! I can't even remember I have a Facebook account until someone "friends" me! What happened to isolation and Transcendentalism? Needing to read Walden in the woods alone right now...

I would be for this. I could not believe a place so big on recycling (Harvard) murdered so many trees with the printing of course packs. I like this idea if you could get the material from other sources than just the school (say the author or publisher directly or something like Amazon). Otherwise, there is no opportunity for competition or bargaining.

On the lighter side, perhaps you are a prodigy and you just haven't discovered it yet.

Open Access can have important implications for educational technology. From the website: ""Open Access" to information - the free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as you need - has the power to transform the way research and scientific inquiry are conducted. It has direct and widespread implications for academia, medicine, science, industry, and for society as a whole. "