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It is tempting to make predictions of the skills that our students will need beyond their time at school. Such wondering can be a useful guide as we contemplate what we shall focus on with our curriculum. Unsurprisingly, there is no shortage of predictions for future skillsets published by educators, economists and analysts. What might we learn from such lists, and how should education systems respond?

I want my students to be sceptics. I believe that in the present age scepticism is more important than ever. Easy access to information, ease of publishing, scams and confidence tricksters combine to create a climate where blind trust is dangerous for our security, our finances and our knowledge bases. For students of all ages a healthy dose of scepticism is much needed not just so they may reveal falsehoods but to allow them to discover new truths.

Innovation is very much on the agenda in Australian and globally. The OECD publishes lists of nations most likely to succeed through innovation and nations seek to encourage increased innovation to maintain their competitive edge. The result of this in Australia is the recent launch of a new 'Innovation Australia' policy with wide reaching measures to encourage and foster a culture of innovation.

A great post that goes into some detail about digital stoytelling by @langwitches. NB: Digital storytelling is NOT just a story told/created/published on a digital platform.

Reading Australia has been developed by the Copyright Agency and aims to make significant Australian literary works more readily available for teaching in schools and universities. These works are supplemented with online teacher resources and essays by popular authors about the enduring relevance of the works. There is a list of titles (download as a PDF). These titles have been selected by the Australian Society of Authors' (ASA) Council. They were asked to select works they thought students and others should encounter, to give a view of Australia's rich cultural identity: works that would tell Australia's history and also how we are currently developing as a nation. The ASA Council are adamant that this list should be merely the beginning, and it should be built upon with other works that have already been published, as well as the great new works that continue to be published in Australia. There is a wide range of teacher resources available (PDF) for Primary and Secondary school teachers and all of these teacher resources include classroom activities, assessments and links to the Australian Curriculum. In addition, many of the Secondary resources include an introductory essay on the text written by high profile writers. The Primary level resources have been commissioned by the Primary English Teaching Association of Australia and the Australian Literacy Educators' Association, and the resources for Secondary level have been jointly commissioned by the Australian Association for the Teaching of English and the English Teachers Association NSW."

Reading Australia has been developed by the Copyright Agency and aims to make significant Australian literary works more readily available for teaching in schools and universities. These works are supplemented with online teacher resources and essays by popular authors about the enduring relevance of the works. There is a list of titles (download as a PDF). These titles have been selected by the Australian Society of Authors' (ASA) Council. They were asked to select works they thought students and others should encounter, to give a view of Australia's rich cultural identity: works that would tell Australia's history and also how we are currently developing as a nation. The ASA Council are adamant that this list should be merely the beginning, and it should be built upon with other works that have already been published, as well as the great new works that continue to be published in Australia. There is a wide range of teacher resources available (PDF) for Primary and Secondary school teachers and all of these teacher resources include classroom activities, assessments and links to the Australian Curriculum. In addition, many of the Secondary resources include an introductory essay on the text written by high profile writers. The Primary level resources have been commissioned by the Primary English Teaching Association of Australia and the Australian Literacy Educators' Association, and the resources for Secondary level have been jointly commissioned by the Australian Association for the Teaching of English and the English Teachers Association NSW."

"Want to be a reporter and see your story published on Splash? Start making your 90 second news story now."

A good tool for story creation that features some sophisticated editing tools perfect for middle or high school students. Students begin with story starters or a completely blank book. The site includes numerous templates and images to insure a professional looking book. Mixbook also offers accounts designed for teachers.

"SCAMwatch is a website run by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). SCAMwatch provides information to consumers and small businesses about how to recognise, avoid and report scams. Many scams originate overseas or take place over the internet, making them very difficult to track down and prosecute. If you lose money to a scam, it is unlikely that you will be able to recover your loss. The ACCC publishes this website to help consumers recognise and prevent scams."

9 easy-to-use web 2.0 sites to publish, share and celebrate student work.

" The nominees for the annual Teens' Top Ten have been announced today in honor of Celebrate Teen Literature Day by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA). Nominations are posted every year on Celebrate Teen Literature Day during National Library Week. This year, the nominee list features 28 titles that were published between Jan. 1, 2012 and Dec. 31, 2012. The nominees can be found below on the Teens' Top Ten website www.ala.org/teenstopten and on the new teen friendly Teens' Top Ten website http://www.ala.org/yalsa/reads4teens.

"Post by Steve Saville, deputy principal at Alfriston College in South Auckland. For four years, Steve has championed the use of comics in the classroom through a series of innovative workshops which have allowed students to develop and publish their own high quality comic books. In the first of a two-part guest post, Steve tells the story of Alfriston's unique comic book education project."

"COPYRIGHT AGENCY is a not for profit rights management organisation. We enable the use of text and images in return for fair payment to writers, visual artists and publishers. This includes managing the Viscopy business: services to artists and users of images."

Interesting development with social media and the law.

Leanpub is a free web service that allows you to create, edit and publish your own book in PDF, .epub (iPad) and .mobi (Kindle) formats, and to sell it online at your own set price.

What is the difference between blogging and curation if they are both about finding and sharing great content?  According to Deanna Dahlsad at Kitsch-Slapped, is the focus. While bloggers often cover anything that interests them as the are online where as curators are characterized by a strong focus on a specific topic.  

Ebooks can make an important contribution to knowledge but quality remains an issue for the academic community. Sophie Tergeist lists five ways to ensure your ebook is up to scratch