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New Online Partnership Brings the Library Deeper Into the Digital Age. (Description from Emerging Ed Tech, 10/1/13) The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) officially opened to the public on April 19, 2013. Though still in its infancy, the DPLA is a mightily ambitious undertaking that strives to give free access to the best of America's libraries, museums and archives. Launched with the support of multiple partners such as the Smithsonian, the New York Public Library, the National Archives, and an array of highly respected institutions of learning including Harvard, the DPLA opened with more than two million items on display. According to executive director Dan Cohen in an article featured online by the Huffington Post, this is just the beginning, and the public can expect "tens of millions (of additional resources) to come in the years ahead."

"The Department of Justice's revised regulations for Titles II and III of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) were published in the Federal Register on September 15, 2010. cover of Justice Department's 2010 ADA StandardsThe Department has assembled this official online version of the 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design (2010 Standards) to bring together the information in one easy-to-access location. It provides the scoping and technical requirements for new construction and alterations resulting from the adoption of revised 2010 Standards in the final rules for Title II (28 CFR part 35) and Title III (28 CFR part 36). "

Case study of a School who used Google Hangouts for teacher observations. Summary of "pros" follows: "Maynard, the observing teacher in whose class Grubb worked, believes Google+ Hangouts offers a lot of potential for student teachers. "They could sit down with professors and supervising teachers and analyze lessons much easier," she says. "I like how multiple people can be invited as well. In the past there has been just one professor from the university sitting in the classroom observing." With Hangouts, multiple people could participate in the observation--including other student teachers. Plus, she added, the recordings could be useful for new teachers; they could simply take it to a job interview and share it. "That could be a huge part of interviews in the future.""

University of Victoria Counseling Services provides an excellent overview of Bloom's Taxonomy written from the student's perspective that provides a list of demonstrated skills and question cues for each level. The site suggests that students who know more about the types of questions that are likely to be asked can better prepare for exams.

From NTEN-This is a subscription-based online infographic creation tool that provides users with the ability to create and publish a variety of different infographics. The site currently offers five templates to use as a starting point, or you can create your own from a blank page. While there are a number of options for customization, there are fewer backgrounds than Easel.ly. Venngage does provide the ability to choose from a variety of chart types, and you can upload data as a CSV to create charts. The finished product can be embedded on a blog or website, downloaded as an image, or accessible online. The company provides a variety of pricing plans, along with a 14-day free trial for new users.

Last month, without warning, Facebook and Twitter killed-off access to RSS feeds. With the launch of the new Twitter interface, you could only access RSS feeds on Twitter if you were logged out of your account. Now, it seems you can't access them at all. To access the RSS feed of any user, use the following link: http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name={USERNAME} So for example, if you want to access the RSS feed of The Next Web's Twitter account, you would use the following link: http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=thenextweb

"When most of us think of Pinterest, we probably think of young people sharing links to web pages, photos and videos with their friends - just another social network for people to show off things they like, what's going on in their lives, favorite video's, and so on. But how often do we consider Pinterest as a tool to aid in teaching and learning? Here are a few ways in which Pinterest can play a role in the classroom."

"Idealware's new report, Infographics for Outreach, Advocacy, and Marketing: From Data to Design, is a guide to help you think through the process of understanding and creating infographics. In it, we cover what defines an infographic and help you create one that presents your data in a compelling and easy-to-understand way. We've also included a number of examples of infographics, both good and bad, to make the point clear."

Inspired by a "Read Freely" philosophy and a passion for innovation, Kobo is one of the world's fastest-growing eReading services. Read Freely stems from Kobo's belief that consumers should have the freedom to read any book, anytime, anyplace - and on any device. As a result, Kobo has attracted millions of readers from more than 170 countries and features one of the world's largest eReading catalogues with over 2.5 million eBook, newspaper and magazine titles.

There are methods and models for implementing blended learning -- from the flipped classroom, to the flex model. All of them are on the continuum of just how much time is spent online and in the online classroom. Blended Learning can provide a unique way of not only engaging students in collaborative work and projects, but also personalizing and individualizing instruction for students.

The newest version of D2L has what looks like some very positive changes in terms of usability

Tagxedo turns words -- famous speeches, news articles, slogans and themes, even your love letters -- into a visually stunning word cloud, words individually sized appropriately to highlight the frequencies of occurrence within the body of text."

"YouTube for Schools brings the power of video to your classrooms for free. Access thousands of free high quality educational videos on YouTube in a controlled environment"

"The phrase "Death by PowerPoint" has become increasingly popular. Most people have experienced Death by PowerPoint at some point while attending meetings, conferences, or seminars. The irony is that PowerPoint, which is supposed to make presentations more powerful and effective, can also be a weapon of mass destruction. This white paper documents the symptoms of Death by PowerPoint, and, more importantly, details the cures. There is no one cure, but rather many techniques. The good news is that the techniques are simple; you just need to implement them."

"Google launched an open source course building web application for the growing list of K-12 and big-name universities developing online classes. The barebones website is a lightweight way to bring course material online, track student engagement (with web traffic and surveys), and evaluate performance. "We want to use this launch to show that Google believes it can contribute to technology in education," says Google's Director of Research, Peter Norvig. "

"The Center for Academic Technology is a university resource center with the focus on supporting faculty in the effective use of technology in the classroom. The Center is faculty-driven in a setting that is sensitive to all technology comfort levels. We partner with faculty to seek out and integrate appropriate technologies. Acting on suggestions from faculty, we have outfitted the center with a variety of software, equipment, and training resources. The greatest of these resources are the Academic Technology Specialists who provide expertise and leadership and are committed to supporting and promoting all academic departments in the use of technologies for teaching and learning at Regis University."

Tableau is desktop-based data visualization software used by many large companies and media properties to create sophisticated visual representations of large datasets. They have now released Tableau Public, a free web-based tool that allows users to create and share interactive charts. The catch is that there is no ability to create private visualizations - all data that you upload to the Tableau Public site is publicly accessible to anyone on the web, and anyone can download the workbook (and underlying data) that you are displaying. The site has active forums, and is full of helpful information for people trying to get a handle on data visualization best practices.

"We are pleased to announce full Google Apps for Education Integration with Wikispaces Private Label. Wikispaces Private Label is the most effective way to help teachers and students collaborate, communicate and learn. And now you can have the power of Google Apps for Education tightly integrated with the classroom management, review, monitoring, and organization flexibility of Wikispaces."

From Nicole Ellison: Perspective is a platform for exploring, creating, and sharing audiovisual stories with data. Today's storytelling involves a mishmash of apps, websites, blog tools, and technologies. Perspective simplifies all this by combining the essential elements of storytelling into a single iPad App.

"Continuing from last week's post about "The Gamification of Education", this week we bring you a guest post from Justin Marquis, who examines the why's and how's of incorporating game based learning elements into the higher education curriculum."