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If this doesn't paint a picture where teaching and learning with technology isn't critical I don't know what does.  Our collective challenge is to think about how we approach this moment as an opportunity.

One of my idols from my photography days, saw him speak once at Pitt. Still uses film. These two paragraphs were interesting: The only color picture in the New York exhibit was taken more recently, on Jan. 20, 2009, at one of the inaugural balls. Newly sworn-in President Obama and the first lady wave to the crowd from a brightly lit stage. All across the bottom half of the photo, the crowd waves back, with a sea of upraised illuminated smartphones. "It's an illustration about the use of cameras these days," Erwitt says. Inaugurals, graduations, birthday parties, backyard barbecues - everybody's taking pictures. Too many? "All you need is a pencil and a piece of paper to write a novel, don't you?" the Magnum photographer answers with a wry smile. But he points out that "not even with a very good pencil" will those novels necessarily become the next War and Peace. The same for photographs.

Sam Sennott created an app that helps some autistic and non-verbal people communicate using the touch screen and a series of pictures. He happens to be a PhD student at Penn State in the Special Education program.

This is another market the iPad is disrupting. The previous devices to address this were incredibly expensive and bulky.

I thought you'd be interested in this. I'd like to bring Sam down here for a demo and discussion about his app. I think it would be a very interesting discussion - and a truly excellent use of a mobile touchscreen device.

A project out of College of Ed that ETS collaborated on.  This group created some augmented reality apps for the iPod and iPad to help young students (I believe 3rd or 4th grade) learn about their natural environment, in particular how to identify trees.  Pretty cool stuff.

"During the event, faculty and staff led children through a variety of hands-on learning stations. For example, Zimmerman, along with Associate Professor of Education Susan Land and a team of six education graduate students, led a station titled, "Tree Investigators," in which they used iPads and iPods (provided by Penn State's Educational Technology Services) to give the kids an in-depth lesson on how to identify trees. "We used iPads to figure out what type of tree we were planting," said Collin Wayne, a student from Park Forest Elementary School, who attended the event. "We were in groups and we used a tree-finder app. You take a picture of a symbol and it tells you about the tree.""

Penn State Live article about a College of Education project. Elementary school students used iPads and iPod Touches to interact with data about trees in the arboretum. We talked with Susan Land and Heather Zimmerman about the project and helped out by loaning them some equipment. Future partnerships with them are in the works.

This is quite the rant. I know World Campus had a social media expert and Liberal Arts has a Curator...is this trend on the upswing of the downswing in terms of hiring personnel specifically for this at PSU?

There are some good points in this article. It seems that as social media has become the norm for online interaction, it has ceased to become something that people can specialize in. I was talking to some students and they asked what Web 2.0 was and I explained that it was everything they use online: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google Docs, blogs, user forums, etc... So while "social media expert" used to be a label of innovation, it has almost become a limiting label - just part of the picture. In contrast, I see people like Robin Smail who are moving beyond "just" social media and into areas like community engagement. Sure, some of that involves social media, but it's more about building relationships, ownership, and buy-in through openness and transparency. The other points of the article - like knowing your audience and not having inflated expectations about social media's impact on your business and customer relationships are right on target.

While about web design this is a look into how we need to think about designing learning online.

"Eighty-seven percent of college students surveyed said they considered their institution's technology when selecting their college. This finding is also reflected in CDW-G's 21st-Century Classroom Report, which looked at educational technology in K-12 and found that 92 percent of current high school students say technology is an important consideration as they evaluate colleges. "

Oh - and it reminds me of the University of Michigan learning spaces designs - Cole took pictures. I think it's their North Quad.

I wasn't able to download the report w/o creating an account, but I'm curious *what* technologies are important to students as it pertains to selecting a university. Another highlight claimed that both faculty and students find 'virtual learning' and 'e-reader/mobile technologies' important. Not sure if those are the top 2 things kids look at when selecting a university...I would find that somewhat hard to believe. I know bandwidth cap still plays a role here in terms of on-campus housing post freshman year. Wonder if that also plays a role in university selection.

The stunning things to me is that this is probably the best service I use regularly on my iPhone and they only have 5 people.