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This is great! I'm very curious to see how this is being used, what types of conversations are being asked, and how and if this turns into longer term mentorships. Our team for Innovation be Design class is looking to create something like this for high school girls already engaged in STEM...so we are looking at the step right before this so making sure that the "interested" girls actually major in STEM fields.

Founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, Atari played a central role in the early history of video games, going on to create what are still some of the most recognizable arcade games on the planet, like Pac-Man and Pong, to name a few.

very interesting. With the rise and widepsread adoption of mobile devices as the gateway of choice for gaming, more and more game companies are jumping on the mobile app bandwagon. With Atari shifting its focus like this, it instantly makes me think what other founding game company have or will need to do. Sega, another big name in the early gaming days, eventually had to drop out of the hardware game because it couldn't compete. It now produces game content for its former competitor's gaming hardware. And Sega now even ports lots of its classic video games from the 80s and 90s to mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad. Nintendo is still in the hardware game, but it's portable gaming hardware is now competing with directly mobile devices (& apps) head on. Nintendo's revenue and userbase is shrinking, and most analysts and observers are pointing to the rise of iOS and other mobile devices as substitutes to dedicated gaming devices. Will Nintendo still stick around using its current model- making its own gaming hardware to sell its own (highly regarded) 1st-party properties, like Mario, Zelda etc? Lots are predicting (or even encouraging) Nintendo to drop making its own hardware, and to produce content with its prized properties onto mobile devices.

This article explore's a high school teacher's efforts to teach students how to create apps for androids. I think it's a good example of how technology can and should be used in classrooms.

Nice contrast - one company believes in design and the other in data.

I'm intrigued by the writer's argument that a focus on data (Google) helps make the existing technologies more effective and powerful, while the focus on design (Apple) helps create new technologies and bring about revolutions in technology usage. It seems to me that we must have both existing to reap maximum benefit, but it's not clear whether the two ideologies together will be as effective as they are apart.

Some very useful lessons to learn fro Mooresville. Looks like the broader ecosystem (such as cheper access to broadband internet) has been thought through rather than just dropping a laptop into the classroom.

Interesting comment from one of the parents, attesting to how technology can be out to good use in education - "My son, just yesterday, completed a mutlimedia project about the Sahara desert working together with another student. They created a video imagining them driving a vehicle through the desert while reciting facts about the desert and incorporating pictures and graphics about what they were describing. It was as if they were taking me on a virtual tour of the desert. This is the way we communicate now. What we learn is only as important as how we are able to communicate it to make things happen."

Like most Facebook users, many educators use Facebook to connect with friends new and old, but the Internet's most popular site can also be a great learning (and teaching) tool. There are many Facebook pages that have been created as a resource to collect, share, and disseminate information about education and education technologies.

10 Beneficial Facebook Pages For Educators To Check Out

Interesting article about a multimedia tool for teachers with the main goal of implementing best methodologies in the classroom. Teachers can share students' performance via text, photo, audio or video.

Quoting directly from the company-wide email (to Microsoft) "Microsoft YouthSpark is a new companywide initiative that will create opportunities for 300 million young people around the world over the next three years. We know young people everywhere face real challenges....Yet, this is more than philanthropy. We are mobilizing the company. From Partners-in-Learning to Office365 for EDU to Skype in the Classroom, we're marshaling a wide range of company's programs to support youth. As Steve said this morning, "We believe that working with our partners we can help empower young people to change their world, and we are committed to using our technology, talent, time and resources to do that."" (Personal Communication)

As blended learning continues to expand across the K-12 sector, definitions are important to help people talk about the new phenomena. This white paper refines our previous work in helping to create a shared language for the emerging field so that innovators can build upon each other's ideas, rather than talk past each other.

A profile of a teacher in Florida who is using smart pens from LiveScribe to create pencasts of exercises for her HS math classes.

Following up on Chris's comment about how social media is allowing students to create a society. Have a look. The work of this graduate class in anthropology is fascinating.

Alex Hernandez from the Charter Growth Fund highlights some key topics in blended learning, one of which is 'Can we increase the velocity of learning and create more space for such things as projects, the arts and deep thinking?' While so much emphasis is placed in STEM education, the idea of also utilizing blended learning environments to foster creativity and engage students in artistic processes is one we should also consider.

Multiple Choice with Tech

"Anything digital can be seen, manipulated, experienced."

Students from Norco College created an interactive game that introduces middle schools students to career technical education. '' It's so important to get students thinking early about their future'' (Director of Career & Technical Education Projects)

Here's a report from FutureLab at the National Foundation for Educational Research. It's a long report but they touch on a number of ways that neuroscience and technology can be integrated, whether it being using fMRI to demonstrate how brain activity levels are heightened when someone is allowed to choose their own avatar in a video game, or creating an app that helps dyslexic children read based on a neuroscience framework.

This is a new interface for taking notes -- what are the implications for studying and for content mastery?

Hey Prof! Funny you tagged this article. I was just searching for advanced note-taking software and was having a difficult time finding anything that would resemble my handwritten notes. Also, I came across a similar device that is described in your article today at my internship at Soup2Nuts. Since all of the animators/artists use Flash to create the cartoons, they have something similar to this "magical pen". However, they need to use a specific type of tracking pad to draw. The idea of applying this same technology to any piece of paper is a useful idea (if you are one of those people who remember to bring paper and pads to class).

This article talks about online-learning and the ways it may change the college experience. While I agree that new technology is affecting the way our courses are run, I don't see it leading to the complete shut down of Universities. While it is wonderful that people have access to courses and resources that they may not otherwise have, I believe that there will always be a need for face-to-face interactions that one can only get from a University setting.