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PresenceLearning allows students to receive speech therapy services online. Willows is a tiny farming town in Northern California about 20 miles from where I grew up. Imagine my surprise as I read this article and realized that the superintendent they were quoting, Vicki Shadd, was actually my Jr. High School volleyball coach. The real benefit of distance therapeutic services in this instance is the ability to provide services to rural students who would would otherwise be neglected due to the school's location and budget. 

I dare you to take 20 minutes and watch this. Not particularly about technology, but very much about transformation of education.

This article relating to speech and literacy discusses the possibility of an interactive system, Technology Assisted Reading Acquisition, to allow children to acquire literacy naturally as opposed to the traditional way of "teaching" reading.

A ban that likely would have been overturned under free speech provisions.

In the USDOE Educational Technology plan, Universal Design for Learning standards require that information be presented in a way that is accessible to people with disabilities such as sight or hearing impairment. I found this article about automatic text-to-sign avatar software that would seem to be a no-brainer for anybody who is creating an eLearning experience that is primarily text-based. We have text-to-speech, which is as easy as opening a document and having a robot read the text for you. I wonder if there are any text-to-sign avatars that are available in English.

Article on Education Week about online speech-therapy sessions

With the global focus on combating digital piracy while protecting people's free speech and rights on the internet (the current controversies over SOPA, for example), here is a thought-provoking idea about what the future of IP, digital piracy, and citizenship will have to deal with: 3D printers- as they become cheaper, better, and more mainstream... will designs for actual physical objects become what is easily pirated online? So now, you can make a physical object (toys, clothing, etc) by downloading the design files on pirate sites, then make the object yourself. Will digital piracy extend into theft (making unauthorized copies) of physical objects?

When a teacher must accept their restriction of their rights, as a special class of individuals, because it protects a district from the abuses of a free, everyone else must understand they are accepting the lost of freedoms for us all.

From text to speech solutions to describing dyslexia, this is a great list of apps for reading challenges. For EDC

I actually love this idea; it makes the president as an authority figure somewhat more accessible to kids and as long as his message sticks to the importance of school, I think it will be beneficial, especially to minorities. I can't remember the president ever addressing me directly as a student! Guess I was a little young to remember the first Bush's address..

Obama will address students in their classrooms via TV broadcast on the first day of school; controversy is naturally sparked.

Fascinating article on augmented reality technology that is being built into contact lens!

I'm missing something because i don't understand why she feels scared to be in the country because POTUS is telling kids to stay in school.

The US Department of Education announces the Digital Badges for Learning competition which asks for prototypes for educational digital badges that will help teachers and students keep track of what they have "mastered".

This opinion article attacks RIM (Blackberry) for the outage fiasco experienced earlier this week and it got me thinking about the server outages, latency, bandwidth issues that schools face routinely even when trying to upgrade their infrastructure to meet the demands of today's technology. If education adopts mobile devices as essential or central tools in the formal learning space, how might the frequency of "dead zones" or transmittal issues effect the synchronous advantage of using such devices in class? If RIM had issues, I guess maybe it just adds one more layer of complexity and consideration to the integration of mobile technology into the classroom that will have to be accounted for and more importantly - tolerated?

While this is a factor to consider, we must consider the frequency of such outages.