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In Victoria, Australia, schools are signing up for the eSmart program, a cyber-safety program that is intended help students learn safe ways to surf the net.

"This cyber-safety program will eventually be provided to all Victorian government schools and about 300 Catholic schools in the next three years."

Dueling opinions on what the Net offers us.

I just found a current MOOC, highly relevant to the conversation in class today. --free and accepting new participants now. "Weekly Topics: Change pressures: What is influencing higher education? (Oct 8-14) Net pedagogies: New models of teaching and learning (Oct 15-21) Entrepreneurship and commercial activity in education (Oct 22-28) Big data and Analytics (Oct 29-Nov 4) Leadership in Education (Nov 4-11) Distributed Research: new models of inquiry (Nov 12- 18)"

Definitely worth looking at for an overview and detailed look at applying big data in education. Overview slide deck: http://www.slideshare.net/marbienk/educational-data-mininglearning-analytics-issue-brief-overview-12328469 Detailed report: http://evidenceframework.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/EDM-LA-Brief-Draft_4_10_12c.pdf

Delivering on the promise of Learning Analytics in Higher Education

Adults these days (especially those who love themselves some Dateline) seem really into chastising video games those crazy kids are into as symptomatic of the human race's inevitable, steady decline. Like every hobby and medium, legitimate concerns regarding these technologies certainly exist, but their complete lack of validity is decidedly not amongst them.

The Federal Trade Commission is working on updates to COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) with implications for how children's data can be collected online. Is this an opportunity for a new generation of ed tech to use student data in more comprehensive and smarter ways, or a threat to children's privacy?

An intro course for those interested in an education venture.

This article introduces an online resource for giving and earning badges. It addresses the debate surrounding earning badges in education.

This is very "hot" in India at the moment. The president of India has given 200 of these to the university I work at and they are distributing it, for free, to loads if other institutes. It costs $25!! I haven't seen the quality of the device, but I have seen other low cost, about $150, tablets and I don't like them AT ALL. D you think e device quality and user experience will not be deterrent given the price point?

Mohit, I've heard a lot about the poor quality of the device and very little about HOW universities intend on using these tablets. It seems like another case of top-down intervention that's tech-driven rather than learning-driven, which is rather unfortunate. Also seems even more unfortunate that even though it's a tech-driven initiative, they haven't thought out the *quality* component of the tech. Oy... See this article for critiques of the tablet: http://www.techulator.com/resources/5523-Most-Annoying-Defects-Flows-Datawinds.aspx

About what social media can be used for in schools and how districts that block SNS block ability to learn from said sites.

Not exactly a link re: technology, but really good reading if you intend to IMPLEMENT any of the stuff we have talked about for the last several months. You will need to move people to change habits - Marshal Ganz of HKS describes a process to articulate a vision of change and move people to action.

A few people posted about using Skype in the classroom. Thought I would add to that especially since this article reminded me of the virtual session we had on Monday when HGSE had cancelled classes due to weather conditions.

A teacher's perspective on the issue: http://gazette.teachers.net/gazette/wordpress/steve-sherman/innovation-10-reasons-google-skype-should-be-used-in-the-classroom-a-teachers-view/

This looks promising. If Skype/Google Hangout add a few more features to their interface, it could render obsolete Blackboard and other paid software for video conferencing and online classes. I think the engineers at Google and Microsoft have the skills to put together a better product than what's currently out there. It's just a matter of whether they seize the opportunity.

A MacArthur Research Network report on youth and participatory politics from June 2012. A nice complement to our time with Helen Haste.

The leading badge consortium?

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...