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The need for schools to prepare for 21st century learning was top of the agenda at this year's BETT conference.They must embrace mobile technologies, games, podcasts and social networking, according to leading educationalist Professor Stephen Heppell.Schools should also break away from traditional classroom and curriculum models, he argued.The gap between those schools embracing technology and those not is getting bigger, he said.Prof Heppell was speaking to delegates at BETT, the world's biggest educational technology show.

"Anyone who has driven a car through an unfamiliar place can attest to how easy it is to let GPS do all the work. That GPS can have a transformative effect on a society is undeniable. We have come to depend on a technology that, in theory, makes it impossible to get lost. But not only are we still getting lost, we may actually be losing a part of ourselves."

Every technological impact has a positive and negative side, apparently.

"So instead of switching off the internet, the conversation should be about how to change it. How to clarify what we're giving for what we take. And the responsibility should not be with young people, in their WiFi-reliant worlds - it should be with the massive corporations that profit from them. As with cigarette packets (their photos of messy lungs a stark reminder of the choice you're making), so should the internet be required to advertise its risks, to alert you to where your data is being held. Because this is not just somewhere we play. The internet is where we live."

"One of the oldest and most well-known iPhone suppliers has been accused of using forced Muslim labor in its factories, according to documents uncovered by a human rights group, adding new scrutiny to Apple's human rights record in China."

"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.""

"A Russian YouTuber could face five years in jail after he filmed himself playing Pokémon Go in a church. Ruslan Sokolovsky was filmed catching Pokémon in the Church of All Saints in Yekaterinburg at the beginning of August, when the Pokémon Go hype was at its height."

"Imagine if it would have more of an impact for Palestine to be recognised as a sovereign country by Google than by the UN. It's a suggestion that's caught fire - a five-month-old online petition demanding Palestine be labeled and bordered in Google Maps has gained more than 250,000 signatures just over the past few days."

"Kristoffer Koch invested 150 kroner ($26.60) in 5,000 bitcoins in 2009, after discovering them during the course of writing a thesis on encryption. He promptly forgot about them until widespread media coverage of the anonymous, decentralised, peer-to-peer digital currency in April 2013 jogged his memory. Bitcoins are stored in encrypted wallets secured with a private key, something Koch had forgotten."

Interesting how technology can be used to bring communities together for good :)~

"It's hard to incentivise profit-driven companies to change their services according to specific needs while maintaining them free and accessible for all."

"Algorithms and the data that drive them are designed and created by people, which means those systems can carry biases based on who builds them and how they're ultimately deployed. Safiya Umoja Noble, author of Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism, offers a curated reading list exploring how technology can replicate and reinforce racist and sexist beliefs, how that bias can affect everything from health outcomes to financial credit to criminal justice, and why data discrimination is a major 21st century challenge."

The creator of the world wide web would like to see the service become free for everybody to use.

Car crashes could soon be eradicated, unless it happens to be the car's fault instead.

This did not bode well for PS3 when it did happen :P