HGSET561

This is a very interesting use of tablets in the classroom. Students are using iPads to create 'Screencasts' that allow the them to create a kind of 'tutorial' using a mixture of elements (audio, images, drawing and text) to showcase what they have learned.

A fascinating approach to internet privacy for children. In addition to a "no post" policy for content related to their daughter, these parents have created a "digital trust" of pre-registered accounts and domain names for her to access when she's mature enough.

Makerspaces are potentially powerful ways of making academic learning lifewide

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.)

Articles gets into the details of how the tech is designed. I'm more interested in the implication of touch screens that are flexible and thus potentially made more ubiquitous than we can currently imagine. Like in the Microsoft video, what if every surface we interact with is a digital portal? What implications not only for technology, but all forms of human action and interaction?

brief overview of some of the themes addressed in the readings

Application of FreshAir

The Foundation for Learning Equality is working to get content to the 65% of the world who live without internet. Currently their only project involves offlining Khan Academy lectures and loading them on SD cards which can be loaded onto Raspberry Pi servers and sent along with e-readers to anywhere in the world. To me, this seems like an incredible opportunity to simultaneously address quality and access issues in remote parts of the world, though I don't think Khan Academy's content is necessarily the best. As a technological innovation, however, I think there is a real possibility to scale this, insofar as there are on-the-ground resources in each location facilitating the learning on the e-readers. Does anybody have any critique or insight to curb my excitement?

Innovation Excellence provides a top ten list of emerging educational technologies and how they are being used.

Omosa is a virtual learning environment which helps students to learn ecology and biology. It aims at the current condition that students are having fewer opportunities to go on real field trips and work with real animals. It's cool in helping students learn the biological circle of animals and the environment.

UT-Austin professors pilot "Synchronous Massive Online Class" (SMOC)

An interesting experiment attempting to get an equivalent of a 4-year college degree in just 1 year with MOOCs.

Make your own computer kits. Curious how similar or dissimilar these are to MaKeY MaKey

An argument against MOOCs..

this could lead to augmented reality applications in journalism

Key choices are now being made about the E-Rate in terms of both amount of funding and how that money can be used. I and others are advocating that E-Rate should fund mobile devices and networking outside of schools.