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My friend and colleague Marc (who really needs a blog) alerted me to this story regarding a recent legal ruling in the matter of the University of Ottawa and the Association of Professors of the University of Ottawa (UPUO). The case arose when the U of O charged that Professor Denis Rancourt "had misrepresented his course in a detailed web posting, in such a way as to have described a dramatically different course not compatible with the official course description." The 65-page ruling the case supported Dr. Rancourt's actions as within the purview of academic freedom.

Will the transhuman technologies that our accelerating future promises enable us to increase our empathy to others? Or will their use decrease our ability to understand 'the other' that exists outside our own selves, families, communities and cultures? As the world grows smaller and more connected, humans will grow ever more divergent because of their possession - or not - of a multitude of transhuman technologies, and so the role of empathy grows larger and more important than ever. In theory, sensory/media input stimulates mirror neurons, which enable empathy.Practically, empathy is created through storytelling, which is not only the most successful remote means of creating social empathy, but has actually been the engine of social/cultural liberalization and change. I will demonstrate both the positive and negative affects on empathy through the increasing reliance we have on transhuman media technologies and how I believe storytelling is the key to empathy creation.

The Mindset List is not a chronological listing of things that happened in 1990, the year they were born. It is instead an effort to identify the worldview of 18 year-olds in the fall of 2008. Of course, our students come from many backgrounds and different traditions and these generalizations may not apply to all. The list identifies the experiences and event horizons of students and is not meant to reflect on their preparatory. It is also not deliberately designed to make readers feel really old! We welcome correspondence, suggestions, and requests regarding the Mindset List.

According to the National Association of College Stores in a 2007 survey, the average cost of a new college textbook was $53. The founders of Flat World Knowledge, which launches with its first run of college textbooks this fall, consider that too high--so high, in fact, that they'll be offering textbooks for free, at least in versions that can be read online. If the student wants to buy a printed copy of the textbook, it will be printed on demand by the company and provided in color for one price or black and white for a lesser price. For the student who prefers to listen to the book on an MP3 player, audio versions will be available too. Each format will have its own cost structure, but on average, it'll tally up to about $30.

Is it educational technology? Only insomuch as most of us couldn't do what we do without a lot of caffeination. However, it is education, since business education has become largely inseparable from technology. That being said, his thoughts are quite timely as more and more businesses look to employ some degree of "compassionate capitalism," whether that means spending extra on facilities and building green, giving back to their communities or employees, or otherwise spending money in thoughtful ways that don't simply line the pockets of investors and executives. So here's a little departure from ed tech and some thoughts from Dean Cycon on the impending closing of Starbucks' retail outlets.

The Effective Professional Learning Communities project is a study of effective professional learning communities in schools and of how they are created and sustained. It is an exciting, new, collaborative venture between the Universities of Bristol and Bath and the Institute of Education, University of London, which is funded by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), General Teaching Council for England (GTC) and the National College for School Leadership (NCSL)

NCLB provides strong incentives to choose education policies and programs that work. Yet traditional educational research has rarely been designed with the goal of providing scientific evidence of "what works," and relatively few educational researchers have been trained in how to do that kind of rigorous quantitatively sound research. WCER's Interdisciplinary Training Program (ITP) in the Education Sciences is preparing a new generation of scholars who can provide solid evidence of "what works" in education.

The term professional learning community has become quite commonplace in education circles. The term describes a collegial group who are united in their commitment to an outcome. In the case of education, the commitment would be to student learning. The community engages in a variety of activities including sharing a vision, working and learning collaboratively, visiting and observing other classrooms, and participating in shared decision making. The benefits of professional learning community to educators and students include reduced isolation of teachers, better informed and committed teachers, and academic gains for students. Shirley Hord of the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory says, that as an organizational arrangement, the professional learning community is seen as a powerful staff-development approach and a potent strategy for school change and improvement.

The biggest political story of 2008 is getting little coverage. It involves the collapse of assumptions that have dominated our economic debate for three decades. Since the Reagan years, free-market clichés have passed for sophisticated economic analysis. But in the current crisis, these ideas are falling, one by one, as even conservatives recognize that capitalism is ailing. You know the talking points: Regulation is the problem and deregulation is the solution. The distribution of income and wealth doesn't matter. Providing incentives for the investors of capital to "grow the pie" is the only policy that counts. Free trade produces well-distributed economic growth, and any dissent from this orthodoxy is "protectionism."

Critical Mass: How Digital Technology Will Define the Way You Live Digital communities are where you live-that's "you" as in Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2006, which recognizes and celebrates "the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter." This Digital Communities Special Report discusses how the 120 million Americans who are active online users and creators of content and services are changing the world by redefining it around their preferences and predilections, and by the technologies they use and the way they use them. Also see http://www.accela.com/products/whitepapers.asp

If you're serious about increasing your strength, follow this six week training program and you'll soon be on your way to completing 100 consecutive push ups! Think there's no way you could do this? I think you can! All you need is a good plan, plenty of discipline and about 30 minutes a week to achive this goal! No doubt some of you can already do 50 consecutive push ups, but let's face it, you're in a big minority. Most of you reading this won't even be able to manage 20 pushups. Actually, I'm sure many of you can't even do 10. However, it really doesn't matter which group you fall into. If you follow the progressive push ups training program, I'm positive you'll soon be able to do 100 push ups!

It's already hooked America's youth, and now Facebook is set on winning the hearts of two potentially lucrative demographics: Adults and the rest of the world. First, the adults: Facebook this week took on LinkedIn and other popular networking sites for working professionals with a new set of privacy controls that will give users greater control over who can see their profiles. Now a member can restrict who gets to see that drunken St. Patrick's Day photo - an important tool for working-age adults worried about a boss catching wind of their extracurricular activities. LinkedIn

Just two decades ago, many schools had only a few computers and taught lessons about typing. But Monday marked a drastic change for Arizona schools as one of the first K-5 technology academies opened its doors to students. Scales Technology Academy in Tempe boasts a 1-1 ratio of students to laptop computers. The school''s principal, David Diokno, said it is the first Arizona elementary school to do so. The Arizona Department of Education does not track such information.

Beloit College releases its Mindset List to give a snapshot of the world view of the incoming freshmen class born in 1992.

So imagine this: A student arrives in school in the morning and answers five questions that will be calculated in a customized algorithm to figure out what she'll be doing that day. That algorithm will decide which teacher she'll work with, her level of learning based on what she learned the previous day, and her specific activities. The system completely subverts the traditional classroom model of one teacher for 25- 30 students per classroom. And each student learns in different modalities throughout the day: individually with computer software, with groups, with a virtual tutor, with a live tutor, and so on.

Tomorrow marks a turning point in the history of our schools as well as our country. Note how the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whom we honor today, had to confront the cold, hard, in-your-face prejudice of a legally segregated system, while the next president, Barack Obama, speaks of a softer negligence, illuminated by the frequently heard phrase, "These kids can't learn."

Gathering data. You do it all the time. With it, you've gained an expert understanding of how your school operates. But have you also capitalized on it to improve your students' learning? Data Retreats, two-day leadership institutes, help you focus on the important data you've gathered and create the strategies you want to help improve your school. A Data Retreat guides you through the discovery and analysis of four types of school data: Student achievement Demographic Program Perception