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Neuroscience Professor decries technology for creating "egotistic" users.

As new technologies appear and become incorporated into existing systems, new problems and opportunities for abuse are also created. 

Let us now argue about how to create the next Jobs Having paid Steve Jobs the full measure of our devotion, let us now argue about how to create the next Steve Jobs. Which choices can governments and educators make that will encourage the next miraculous hybrid of gearhead, design genius, marketing whiz and change catalyst?

"Jochim and Siddell's books converge a traditional children's book format, a CD-ROM, a webcam and a computer to create "the same interactivity you could have on an iPad or (a Hewlett-Packard Co.) tablet, but with paper," said Jochim, president and founder of the Tempe-based Digital Tech Frontier."

An interesting product for reading and comprehension. Tim McEwen, chairman, chief executive officer, and president of Archipelago Learning. "Once children learn how to read, it's important to keep them engaged in and enlightened by reading. This product offers teachers a way to do this by leveraging a channel that already appeals to them - social networks and virtual worlds. If we can relate the core principles we're hoping students will learn to the areas that already interest them, then we create a mutually beneficial and relatable teaching environment."

"Spanish-language resources will be publicly launched in the coming months, to create what will be the largest online learning disabilities resource nationwide."

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.

The partnership of Knewton and publisher Pearson will give a boost to digital textbooks and online course materials. The objective is to present educational content personalized to each student's learning pace and abilities. This deal will give it access to millions of students for the first time. Knewton uses alogrithm to personalize education, and the Pearson deal will give it access to millions of titles to create the network effects necessary for its algorithms to be adopted.

This is HUGE! School for One will have a run for its money against the breadth and depth of content that Pearson has that can be tied to individualized learning through this type of algorithm and logic! Its a nice place for Pearson (and me) to be!

Now this service/interface seems to offer real potential -- it's flexible, it's based on a dynamic interplay of different applications -- it's been around for a few years now -- anybody have first-hand experience with it?

Being a 2nd year part-time student, I already took David Rose's UDL course last spring. My group project for UDL was exploring VoiceThread-- understanding its current feautres and capabilities, testing it out in a real world situation with some students, and envisioning changes to fix shortcomings plus new features. Overall, we thought VoiceThread was really cool! Could allow students to communicate in different kinds of ways (text, voice, submitting video statements, drawing-- whatever someone preferred or was comfortable with) and enabled a growing transcript of student dialogue in reference to a piece of content. But there was a real learning curve- in figuring out how (as a 'teacher') to create an original VoiceThread using our media. And then students had to figure out the interface and tools available to them as they used VoiceThread to browse a stream we created and comment on it. As of last spring at least, I felt it was a bit cumbersome. Really wish it was more intuitive so both creators and viewers could jump right in and get right to communicating. Haven't gone back to using it as of late, but I hear they now have iPhone/iPad access!

Key concerns about the sudden rush to dump textbooks for open source content

This transition will happen relatively quickly given the current cost of textbooks and the low cost of tablets. Fortunately, I think we will find that the digital textbooks and other features on the tablets will be far more engaging and effective teaching tools than the traditional textbook. The ability of the digital text to read aloud (in several languages) and provide visual support including high def color diagrams, animation, and video, as well as create intuitive links to vocabulary and 'checking for understanding' will be a great support to students and teachers.

User created app ratings for Android phones. Appsfire, a leading and pioneering marketing platform for mobile apps through visual and social discovery.

I've heard of 3D printers before. I thought it would be interesting to try out in schools. For example, if students were designing towns to learn volume and surface area. This could help with spatial learning, which is essential to understanding math. I don't know how feasible this it though...

Hi Irina, Yes! Nothing like seeing your ideas take a concrete shape. Looks like the cost of these printers is comparable to that of SmartBoards, so it may be feasible to try them out in classrooms pretty soon. That said, unless the projects are well integrated into the curriculum, they will end up as another fancy toy.

Harvey and I had a conversation about these last week - Harvey spoke of the way that these printers could open up opportunities for those who can visualize their creations in their heads, but have trouble putting those ideas in tangible form. We spoke of the potential in art and design.

A new idea for text books: "Books are one of the defining inventions of the civilisation-and today they are poised for a revolution. Our aim is to create a new kind of book that makes use of emerging technology to redefine the book, reinvent publishing, and forever transform the act of reading."

How schools are utilizing technology to create a measurably better educational future

Chelsea Clinton chimes in on the role of tech in education and the need to create equitable access to digital technologies

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.

The SPINNER project from the Responsive Environments Group at MIT Media Lab is the first research platform designed to investigate the world of ubiquitous video devices. The Spinner can automatically edit video to fit a narrative structure. It uses video from cameras installed at the Media Lab and sensor data from people generated by wearable smart badges to track their activity and location. The system then creates a video using the characteristics detected from the sensor data with the video captured by the cameras.

Here are some resources for generating assessment rubrics in UDL fashion...

Pearson gets into the MOOC action by creating a search engine for content.

Pearson makes an interesting business move by recognizing and organizing Open Educational Resources. I often wonder how the questions of academic integrity, quality, etc will be answered in the marketplace.

This is a natural progression for MOOC's. But I have to wonder, if the wave of the future is a MOOC higher education, then how will our young adults develop, socially? developmentally? psychologically? Will we create a society of socially incompetent adults who are not able to work intereactively, or in groups with co-workers, or lacking negotiation skills, or many of the 21st c. skills needed in many workplaces.