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Meez, a start-up that expanded last year from an avatar creation service into a full-out virtual world for teens, is touting some good news: it's been profitable since April and "every month is better than the last month," CEO John Cahill told CNET News.

"The best professional-development research shows that teachers need sustained contact hours (between 30 and 100) of training before altering their practices. So, she did a back-of-the envelope calculation about how much time it would take to implement 50 hours of formative-assessment training over the course of a school year...... Teachers would need about six hours a month, for eight months, which amounts to one early-close afternoon a month plus two additional hours. (Good luck with that in this economy.)"

Perhaps this is where technology can play an enabling role. Easy to use and real-time tools like Socrative or technology based learning environments with embedded formative assessments (like my formative assessment design proposal for VPA) could help reduce the time / training barriers for teachers to incorporate formative assessment into the teaching practice. At the very least, new curriculum initiatives aligned with common core standards SHOULD BE REQUIRED to incorporate formative-assessments. Unfortunately on PARCC is. "Of the two assessment consortia, the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, is not developing formative-assessment resources as part of its federal grant. The other consortium, known as SMARTER Balanced, is."

This website is a resource for adult education teachers and tutors who are interested in integrating technology into their instruction. Each month it features a different theme. This month, the blog features daily tech tips that can be used to support reading.

Do any of you know 'LINE'? as of last months, 80mn users globally (36mn users in Japan) and its pace of growth is exceeding that of any other types of social media in the country (Facebook, Twitter, etc). They target 1) users who have smartphones but not PC, 2) those who are interested in communication emotions effectively through ''emoticons'. If some people are concerned about how twitter/facebook/texting would have adverse impact on children language skill, let's talk about the implication of this thing if kids learn to communicate just by selecting emoticons (whose designs and variety are great by the way) and sending that to each other. I still have LINE on my PC but seeing this rapid growth in my home country concerns me a bit. 

A few months ago, EDUCAUSE sponsored a "short course" on evaluating the effectiveness of mobile learning initiatives. This page contains a wealth of resources on mobile learning related to the course. Especially useful for classmates working on EDC term projects related to mobile learning!

Company in Taiwan claims to be only two years from a commercially available Folding computer touch screen. ... This was 6 months ago. The lighter weight, ultra portable nature of a folding screen increase the ability of educators to move learning outside the classroom, and allow learners of all ages to access information on demand anywhere.

I thought this was interesting following our discussion about Sherry Turkle yesterday. Robots assessing "risky behavior?" A South Korean prison will begin a month-long trial to see if robots make good prison guards. (Image Credit: Asian Forum For Corrections) The BBC reports that a jail in Pohang, South Korea, will soon begin a one-month trial of three new robots, which will be there in a support capacity to monitor for "abnormal behavior."

Top Educational Apps of the past month. Would love breakdown of educational objectives of some of these apps

UbiSlate, another version of Aakash tablet to be introduced next month ($50 approx) while OLPC XO-3 is yet to arrive. This indian company DataWind plans to roll out similar projects in Brazil, Egypt, Panama, Thailand and Turkey. With more roll out, the product may get even cheaper.

Founder Institute goes global using technology and helps entrepreneurs create their own companies.

Maung, Thanks for sharing this article. I liked the basic premise but also agreed with the comment by Babson College President "the vast majority of ventures take more than that amount of time [ 4 months] to become operational businesses people can be proud of". I think this 4 month program can be nicely incorporated as a course in a formal entrepreneurship program.

The LA Board of Education will be meeting later this month to discuss providing iPads to every student + teacher in the nation's 2nd largest school system.

The presentation on the ARG alien abduction in class today reminded me of this awesome news story a couple months back. Sans fancy technology, a school staged an alien abduction for its students. Unfortunately, they got some flak for the War of the Worlds effect it had on the younger kids. But this school seems really awesome and I hope no one got disciplined for providing an innovation learning experience.

Hi Ellen, I think this is an interesting topic. You may be interested in Piskorski's work at HBS. Professor Piskorski's current research examines why and how people use on-line social networks, both in the US and abroad. Using extensive fieldwork and large scale empirical analyses, he constructed theories of social failures and networks as covers which allow us to understand numerous facets of people's on-line behaviors. http://drfd.hbs.edu/fit/public/facultyInfo.do?facInfo=ovr&facId=10663

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?

A child as young as 9 months can set goals when playing the apps in iphone. More and more parents let children play with their iphones. I-phones, which consist of many interesting apps and colorful designs, are easy to catch children's attention. Easy apps which can help children develop their basic skills (such as counting skills), do have great market and should be developed and improved.

Esquire releases an augmented reality magazine this month.

Popular Science magazine also used AR on the magazine cover earlier this year.

I particularly like the "The Kid Should See This" link

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

They had great campaign along with election supporting kids to learn and discuss on topics that mattered a lot as future voters. I believe they will begin international version soon this month.

Article illustrates how adept kids are with technology and what they can take away from it even when informally introduced. The article discusses a mobile tech experiment in Ethiopia. Really interesting outcome!!!

Great article originally posted by Lindsey Dunn on the discussion boar, about what children can do with technology. Is this the major difference that needs to be made in OLPC in order for it to be successful?