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Appealing ideas are often simple: how much of a letter can be removed while maintaining readability? After extensive testing with all kinds of shapes, the best results were achieved using small circles. After lots of late hours (and coffee) this resulted in a font that uses up to 20% less ink. Free to download, free to use.

Americans value mobility across the country and through the class ranks. This mobility remains especially important in times of economic stress. As educators, we can move to new schools or educational settings.

Many educators will need the support and ideas of their peers over the next few years.

Have you bought any textbooks recently? K-12 book prices are outlandish; college textbooks border on criminal and publishers are moving slower than molasses in January when it comes to moving towards any sort of electronic publishing model. I know, let's cut down countless trees, print on them with toxic inks, and gouge the heck out of students when we could drastically cut costs and environmental impact by publishing books electronically! Good call.

Revenue from music sold over the Internet, via mobile phones and in other digital forms, rose by 25 percent last year, to $3.7 billion, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said in a report set for publication Friday. Digital sales accounted for 20 percent of the industry's revenue, up from 15 percent a year earlier.

one of the most profoundly important articles I have read recently. "For educators and the schools in which they teach, the challenges of this moment are significant. Our ability to learn whatever we want, whenever we want, from whomever we want is rendering the linear, age-grouped, teacher-guided curriculum less and less relevant. "

According to the latest data, the U.S. "adoption rate" for mobile phones stands at 85 percent. That's higher than the percentage of Americans who have DVD players (84 percent), home PCs (80 percent), digital cameras (69 percent) or MP3 players (40 percent), according to the Nielsen Co. "The concept that within my lifetime we'd have the kind of penetration we have today is unimaginable," says Martin Cooper, 79, the former Motorola researcher who invented the portable cell phone in 1973.

Successful initial implementation and ongoing maintenance of process improvements requires overcoming the resistance to change. Green Belts are change agents who need to recognize, understand and interpret resistance to change and develop skills to manage it effectively. Managing change resistance is often covered in training, yet a primary learning issue facing most organizations is the lack of engagement and motivation in lecture-based training. By using simulations, exercises or games, practitioners can enliven their learning environments and improve knowledge retention, skills and applications. This will keep the audience members interacting with each other and with the content.

Online, what's personal is increasingly becoming what's professional, and vice versa. Locking down the bits streaming in from Facebook and other social networks may seem like a good idea at the time, but it's likely shutting down one of your employees' most powerful networking tools. We're in a knowledge economy, people. And people and relationships and who knows what and who knows whom are an integral element of the knowledge economy value chain. And you want to shut that down? Really? Seriously?

At Empire High School in Vail, Ariz., students use computers provided by the school to get their lessons, do their homework and hear podcasts of their teachers' science lectures. Down the road, at Cienega High School, students who own laptops can register for "digital sections" of several English, history and science classes. And throughout the district, a Beyond Textbooks initiative encourages teachers to create - and share - lessons that incorporate their own PowerPoint presentations, along with videos and research materials they find by sifting through reliable Internet sites.

"Last month I was somewhat surprised when my teenage son announced that he was going to sell his iPhone and start using a £10 monocrome mobile instead. Naturally I was interested in trying to understand his motivation for downgrading so dramatically. It seems that after six months of trying out various apps and dealing with the fragility and complexity of the iPhone, he was ready for something simpler."

100 blog posts speculating on the future of learning.

This series really ticked my funny bone on a night when I really needed it -- sort of "My Way" teacher style.

The new HP Pavilion dv6929 notebook has ditched the Styrofoam and cardboard boxes that traditionally protect computers in favor of a 100 percent recyclable messenger bag that reduces packaging by 97 percent.

Have you ever had the nagging sense that there's something not quite right with the adulation that follows Malcolm Gladwell - the author of Tipping Point? But you couldn't quite put your finger on it? We're here to help, dear reader.

Our" up-to-the-minute digest of what is being reported elsewhere. Brought to you by Nature News."

From davegray | dot info: Dave Gray is the Founder and Chairman of XPLANE, the visual thinking company. Founded in 1993, XPLANE has grown to be the world's leading consulting and design firm focused on information-driven communications. Dave's time is spent researching and writing on visual business, as well as speaking, coaching and delivering workshops to corporate clients.

Teacher Toolbar included in Jane Hart's Directory of Learning Tools

Have you seen Squidoo? I would roughly describe it as a means of mashing up information from a variety of resources into a lens (as in the eye of a giant squid