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The ideas and concepts apply to tablets (or mobile devices) not just the ipad

Ask any teacher what they wish they had more of and the most common answer is likely to be time. Schools are inherently busy places and there is always much to be done. We all want to meet the needs of every student, add value to their education with breadth and depth, ensure adequate coverage of the curriculum and include aspects of play and discovery. Add up all that is done in a day over and above face-to-face teaching and you can only wonder at how we manage to fit it all into the time we have. So is there an answer to this dilemma, is there a secret method to finding more time in our schedules to achieve all that we want to?

While it's no secret that there seems to be more use and reliance on digital and blended learning with each passing semester, a transition may be happening faster than you think writes Tom Vander Ark. At a conference he talked about a dozen of the factors accelerating the shift to digital learning:

"Get your hashtags ready: Twitter is a far more effective source of CPD than more traditional approaches, research has found. Indeed, teachers believe they derive more from the 140 characters of a tweet than they do from several hours of seminars or lectures. Academics from two US universities surveyed 755 members of school staff about Twitter. They found that the most popular use of the social media website was for CPD, with many praising Twitter's advantages over more traditional methods. Twitter, many teachers told researchers, allowed them to create a virtual staffroom, filled entirely with their own choice of colleagues. Indeed, a middle school English teacher explained: "I have learned so much from other teachers. It has transformed my teaching. And this is my 18th year [in the profession].""

A growing number of videos that may be of interest for science. "for instance BBC Brit's Biggest Bangs is a fun, interactive video experience that allows users to channel their inner mad scientists, mixing dangerous chemicals with sometimes explosive results without a proper laboratory. The secret behind the interactivity is a central choose-your-own-adventure video around which annotations lead to separate videos that respond to your chemical selections." You choose your first chemical and then select another from among eight on the laboratory table.  You'll see the team scientist take each chemical from the table.  Then pause to consider-will it explode or won't it? If it doesn't, the oh so serious, oh so British narrator offers background on why the bang, or the lack of bang (NR or no reaction) may have disappointed, as well as what the resulting compound is and does.

"Discover rock secrets through these activities. Create a rock collection as you learn about the three main types of rock, find out how to tell the different rock types apart, and see how rocks change from one type into another!"

The Bodleian library republishes a rediscovered volume of how the "canting crew" spoke. The cant was the secret language of the rogues, beggars and vagabonds who peopled the underworld of early England. The word 'slang' itself is not recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary until 1756

THE communications regulator has been forced to change its internal processes after the address of a prohibited anti-abortion web page in its top-secret blacklist was widely distributed on the internet. The move comes after the Australian Communications and Media Authority threatened a fine of up to $11,000 a day against a web host for displaying the banned web page link. The host supplies services to popular internet community website Whirlpool.

The FlipInFocus site is all about the Flip video camera and associated peripherals. With a blog, videos forums and other aspects the site has lots of information for anyone who has a Flip camera. For $14.95 you can purchase a lifetime membership of the site which entitles you to access all of the workshops and other information.

Perhaps you've attended some high brow conference that produces 10 bullet points on "How to Change Education"- and not much happens. Maybe you work an at institution that restricts you from using a certain technology or forces you to use another. And while the image of a revolutionary edupunk is charming, most of us are not ready to burn down our organizations- we believe in their purpose. Despair not! There is something out there- an approach of creatively side stepping what limits us, to exploiting what we are forced to use in new ways, to sneak innovations in the back window that don't rock the house.

Making seemingly private comments on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter is now a sackable offence for some professions.

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