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.

The gender imbalance in the startup world, and more specifically the development world, is a frequent topic here and elsewhere. Last week I learned of a new meetup in Cambridge aimed at getting more women to become Ruby developers by simply bringing in women to teach them. Also, read the group's blog here- http://www.railsbridgeboston.org/blog/2012_aug_recap

Mitchel Resnick The Media Laboratory Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Design Thinking Toolkit for Educators contains the process and methods of design, adapted specifically for the context of education. You can download the toolkit by registering on the website.

Comparing parent-child co-reading on print, basic, and enhanced e-book platforms...'Quick studies' by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center to address the problem of how fast technologies seem to be growing and the gap between their emergence and research to back up their effectiveness.

This video series goes inside the classrooms of educators who use technology tools in their lessons every day. Learn from their challenges, celebrate their successes, and share their resources in every episode.

The technologies that can have the best impact on education are evolving quickly from year to year, and the pace seems to be quickening.

Speaking at LIFT 2007, Sugata Mitra talks about his Hole in the Wall project. Young kids in this project figured out how to use a PC on their own -- and then taught other kids. He asks, what else can children teach themselves? Sugata Mitra's "Hole in the Wall" experiments have shown that, in the absence of supervision or formal teaching, children can teach themselves and each other, if they're motivated by curiosity and peer interest.

There's been a surge in the number of Infographics published this year that focus on instructional technologies and how they are evolving and being used.

Produced in collaboration with Facebook, this article shares resources and reflections on how social media can be brought into the classroom.

http://k12blueprint.com/k12/blueprint/story_video_bridging_our_future.php

Occurred to me that it is interesting to map some of the similarities between the Microsoft video we saw in class, today, and this Intel video which projects its vision for education.