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# Copy and paste this link into your Email or IM: Share this thing # 4See the Cerne Giant in your bedroom Visit some of the world's most famous and unusual places on Google Earth. You can search for places you know or visit the Google Earth KML directory to make new discoveries. *Download required. Download Google Earth Copy and paste this link into your Email or IM: Share this thing # 5Automatically save every draft of your wedding list/seating plan Google Docs automatically saves every version of your document so you never have to worry about losing a valuable draft again. Try Google Docs Copy and paste this link into your Email or IM: Share this thing # 6Flight arrival and departure times in real time With Google Search, you can enter a flight number and get updated information on when the flight is arriving or departing. Copy and paste this link into your Email or IM: Share this thing # 7Say 'I don't speak Italian', in Italian With Google Translate, type the word or phrase you want to translate and select your languages to receive your translation. Please note that Translate is only available in some language pairs. We're adding more as fast as we can. Copy and paste this link into your Email or IM: Share this thing # 8Are you big in Uzbekistan? With YouTube Insights, you can find out what countries your viewers are from and also get additional information like viewer demographics. Go to YouTube Copy and paste this link into your Email or IM: Share this thing # 9Settle trivia disputes in the pub Settle a bet in the pub with Google Search on your mobile. Access all the information on the web without needing to be in front of your computer. Go to Google search on your mobile by typing m.google.co.uk into your mobile phone browser Copy and paste this link into your Email or IM: Share this thing # 10Watch your favourite YouTube clips in high-resolution If you have a fast internet connection, you can change the setting in your YouTube account to

The way we see it there's a lot of educational content on Youtube and Wikipedia. What's missing is context. You see "nibs" make context by connecting a spot on the video to a relevant Wikipedia article.

Mahara is an open source e-portfolio system with a flexible display framework from NZ.

Mahara is an open source e-portfolio system with a flexible display framework from NZ. Mahara, meaning 'think' or 'thought' in Te Reo Māori, is user centred environment with a permissions framework that enables different views of an e-portfolio to be easily managed. Mahara also features a weblog, resume builder and social networking system, connecting users and creating online learner communities.

This is a great Lulu published book from Silvia Tolisano. You can purchase a copy from Lulu for $8.15 or alternatively you can download a pdf version for free. As Silvia says ".... this guide was written especially for educators, who want to teach 21st century skills, such as collaborating, communicating, and connecting, through digital storytelling."

This website is a virtual convener. It facilitates a 'handshake' between teachers interested in cross collaboration project.

Ben Hazzard's place for K-12 teachers to find other teachers for cross-classroom collaboration.

Lots of ideas connected with a variety of aspects of visual language including blog layout

Yoowalk is a 3D representation of the world wide web which lets you browse the web as an avatar, connect with friends and design your own space

Mahara is an open source e-portfolio, weblog, resume builder and social networking system, connecting users and creating online learner communities. Mahara is designed to provide users with the tools to demonstrate their life-long learning, skills and development over time to selected audiences.

iTALC is a use- and powerful didactical tool for teachers. It lets you view and control other computers in your network in several ways. It supports Linux and Windows 2000/XP (Vista support will come) and it even can be used transparently in mixed environments! In contrast to widely used commercial equivalent software, iTALC is free! This means you do not have to pay for expensive licenses or things like that. Furthermore the source-code is freely available and you're free in changing the software to fit your needs as long as you respect the terms of iTALC's license (GPL). Freedom in two ways! Features iTALC has been designed for usage in school. Therefore it offers a lot of possibilities to teachers, such as * see what's going on in computer-labs by using overview mode and make snapshots * remote-control computers to support and help other people * show a demo (either in fullscreen or in a window) - the teacher's screen is shown on all student's computers in realtime * lock workstations for moving undivided attention to teacher * send text-messages to students * powering on/off and rebooting computers per remote * remote logon and logoff and remote execution of arbitrary commands/scripts * home-schooling - iTALC's network-technology is not restricted to a subnet and therefore students at home can join lessons via VPN-connections just by installing iTALC client Furthermore iTALC is optimized for usage on multi-core systems (by making heavy use of threads). No matter how many cores you have, iTALC can make use of all of them.

School of Everything connects people who want to learn with passionate teachers in their local area. The award-wining site is free to join for both people who want to learn and people who want to teach.

"fring™ is a mobile internet service & community that enables you to access & interact with your social networks on-the-go, make free calls and live chat with all your fring, Skype®, MSN® Messenger, Google Talk™, ICQ, SIP, Twitter, Yahoo!™ and AIM®* friends using your handset's internet connection rather than costly cellular airtime minutes."

Zhura provides the most advanced online screenwriting software in the industry, plus the ability to connect with writers around the globe. On Zhura you can work on your own projects, work with friends in private groups, or collaborate with other writers in the public community.

From the University of Ballarat, FolioSpaces.... is a fully featured electronic portfolio, weblog, resume builder and social networking system, connecting users and creating online communities. Foliospaces free ePortfolio provides you with the tools to set up a personal learning and development environment. The standard version of Foliospaces is free. Unlike some institutional ePortfolio solutions, you keep your Foliospaces when you graduate, or change employment. An ad free premium ePortfolio version is also available for a small annual fee.

Connect Secondary is an education site (DEECD - Department of Education and Early Childhood Education) designed to help you locate great resources to help you study.

key points (see also my bookmark to the BLC '07 keynote by Professor McFarlane) - technology is not helping learning (1:30) - american high schools are counterproductive to success in knowledge society (Bill Gates) (2:30) - have a model where kids produce their own digital representation of how they see the world (4:00) - make learning deeper rather than try to cover a lot of content but shallow learning (5:00) - one suggestion is teaching people to be able to recognise an evidence-based argument and not be susceptible to incorrect information (6:00) - model for assessment based on this sort of change to curriculum (7:30) - meaningful coursework - mainly in school - not allowing homework to restrict their self learning - treat school like work in a way with emphasis on quality not quantity (10:00) - need to connect with parents who see school as different than their schooling and unsure about its benefits (11:00) - access to technology (12:00) - benefit based on having the access first bit also that their environment but also their culture at home helps them benefit - top 15% (from BLC keynote) are getting most benefit from access and their culture - but these normally high achievers can't see school as relevant to them based on what they experience at home and are failing at school (13:30) - community knowledge and learning capacity building in technology (14:00) - "digital challenge" program in Bristol (14:40) - community mentors that learn something then teach to others in the community - giving more people access and that means they can have choices on what they can do

Professor MacFarlane discusses many issues which ring true to me. In particular: - lack of vision for what education could be like with new technology (around 4 min mark) - the web2.0 and technology revolution is great for the 15% of people who have a good life anyway because of their suituation and culture (5:30) - others don't benefit from the access to the technology - they need help (6:00) - no change in classroom over last 20 years with computers and in danger of no change in next 20 years (7:30) - instruction vs. construction (8:30) - expect learning to change with introduction of technology (10:30) - but hasn't really done so - student self-directed learning is separate from school work i.e. at home and not related to school (14:30) - much of what kids do on computers at home is trivial (16:00) - the ones that do have good experiences are the same 15% (16:30) - kids that are missing out have a computer at home probably but no access to the community that enables them to have these experiences (17:10) - doing something by themselves does not really benefit them - it is being part of a community that had benefit for learning - what are we dong for these people? (19:10) - talking about missing pedagogical model for how to teach (22:00) - teachers are expected to use technology to provide innovative learning but no model against which to do so, some don't use it at all, some use it inappropriately - there maybe some individual examples but not overall (23:00) - schools bad at connecting with their communities in a learning sense (26:00) - talks about chinese online writing community and how they comment, collaborate (34:00) - community (47:30) - communitites aren't formed when people are brought together in schools etc. - need to have a common problem or interest (48:30) - Plant's definition? - in education the problem is because assessment is done individually (49:00) - so forming groups and sharing ideas is not attractive for students - worried about not getti

Technology, when used appropriately, can help make the history and social studies classroom a site of active learning and critical thinking and further student connections with the past. Teachers can use technology to enable students to meet people of different cultures, explore ancient and modern worlds, do authentic primary-source research, problem-solve through inquiry-based activities, and much more.

This is part 1 of an ongoing community project to help people understand how to get jobs during a recession. This data is slightly skewed towards those that are already active in social media as the survey went to those within my network on my blog and the highly connected Twitter community. There were 214 respondents to the survey although this graphic only represents those who got jobs since Sept 2007 (71 respondents) that represent those that were hired during the announcement of the recession. This is a personal research project, and is not tied to my employer, clients, or anyone else for that matter.