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As a recent New York Times article wryly explains, it turns out that even the nation's technological elites-the same engineers, software designers, and idea people, who brought us Google, E-Bay, and Facebook-would prefer that their children grow up and learn in a technology-free environment. WOW -- SIMPLY WOW!! This is real food for thought. I completely challenged my thinking!!

When a brain scientist got a stroke, she got the opportunity to study her own experience. She found this remarkable ability of her mind to enter the conscious and sub-conscious realms, accessing information on different levels all the time. I wonder if artificial intelligence would ever have this ability, to think and feel on their own...

Is this what Caitlin was talking about in Section last November? Anybody earned this badge? :-)

A wide spectrum of handy tools

3D classroom created for learning would be helpful where cost cutting measures are required without compromising on the quality of instruction, it would also help in giving confidence to students who are shy to interact in real life to collaborate in the virtual world, speak their minds and raise questions without fear or hesitancy

platform for game creation

Platforms like this open up so many possibilities to put development into the hands of the masses. It boggles the mind to consider what will be the effect of removing the barriers to entry from development.

Technology is playing an increasingly prominent role in America's schools. These days, computer games teach math skills and lectures are given at home via YouTube while class time is reserved for practicing the material, in what has become known as a flipped classroom. I WOULD JUST FALL TO SLEEP IN ONE OF THESE SCHOOLS! It is a shame that people allow their biases to hinder children. People running away from the present and future --- it is like that very bad M. Night Shyamalan movie ---> THE VILLAGE. COMPUTERS are like the imaginary demon! In truth, the demon only lives within the mind of people stuck in time.

Interesting take on how to be more creative. I don't agree with the title implying that creativity can be taught easily, but there are some interesting points and ideas.

"Success is the result of a solution that truly meets the website and communication needs of every K-12 stakeholder. With that in mind, we built the new Learning Community Management System (LCMS) from Edline-the first truly integrated website communication platform for K-12 school districts and their learning communities."

I'm sharing this more for an example of author bias & incentives in writing about edtech, than because I think he's right: he doesn't think tech will replace teachers at all. (Keep in mind who his customers are.)

Play Games to Learn Business and Entrepreneurship

I had known that photo editing happened for magazines and still photographics, but had no idea it could exist for entire movies... if this is true, what implications does this have for the kids watching tv and movies today?

Interactive tv Perhaps educators could have an impact if they coordinated?

This is a really interesting and cool idea. I know that Disney's intense storyboarding model in its 'golden age' relied on months and sometimes years of collaborative, co-creation of a story between 10s-100s of people. And their decline in quality is often attributed to adopting a one-author/screenwriter process (The book: The Illusion of Life, Disney Animation; by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston talks about the company's process with lots of beautiful illustrations, how-to advice, and historical narratives..). What will happen when the general public, with potentially 1000s to millions of viewers put their minds together to evolve the best story?

Tying into discussions this week about bringing access to mobile devices to all via non-prohibitive costs, while still reaching a set of bare-minmum technical specs for actual use: India's "$35 tablet" has been a pipedream in the tech blog-o-sphere for awhile now, but it's finally available (though for a price of roughly $60). Still though, as an actual Android color touch tablet, with WiFi and cellular data capability - I'm curious to see how it's received and if it's adopted in any sort of large scale

I had heard months ago that India was creating this, but was not going to offer it commercially - rather, just for its own country. Just like the Little Professor (Prof Dede) calculator, when tablets get this affordable, educational systems can afford classroom sets of them and then use them regularly. But to Prof Dede's point - can they do everything that more expensive tablets can do? Or better yet - do they HAVE to?

I think this is what they're aiming to do - all classrooms/students across the country having this particular tablet. They won't be able to do everything today's expensive tablets can do, but I think they'll still be able too to do plenty. This $35 tablet's specs are comparable to the mobile devices we had here in the US in 2008/2009. Even back then, we were able to web browse, check email, use social networking (sharing pics and video too), watching streaming online video, and play basic 2D games. But even beyond those basic features, I think this tablet will be able to do more than we expect from something at this price point and basic hardware, for 2 reasons: 1. Wide-spread adoption of a single hardware. If this thing truly does become THE tablet for India's students, it will have such a massive userbase that software developers and designers who create educational software will have to cater to it. They will have to study this tablet and learn the ins-and-outs of its hardware in order to deliver content for it. "Underpowered" hardware is able to deliver experiences well beyond what would normally be expected from it when developers are able to optimize heavily for that particular set of components. This is why software for Apple's iPhone and iPad, and games for video game consoles (xbox, PS3, wii) are so polished. For the consoles especially, all the users have the same exact hardware, with the same features and components. Developers are able to create software that is very specialized for that hardware- opposed to spending their resources and time making sure the software works on a wide variety of hardware (like in the PC world). With this development style in mind, and with a fixed hardware model remaining widely used in the market for many years- the resultant software is very polished and goes beyond what users expect from it. This is why today's game consoles, which have been around since 2005/6, produce visuals that are still really impressive and sta