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This book review seems a good companion to Justin's post below on artificial intelligence/human-computer interaction. The reviewer ties three different books together under the theme of how humanity seems to be integrating itself with its digital machines - including discussion of brain-computer interaction (whoa.) and Google's search algorithms or "contouring."

The section on the ideological dissemination of information as it relates to Google is eye-opening (and really worrisome). I think when we talk about Singularity, "fear" will continue to be at the center of our discussions. For some, the biological integration with machines is just too radical to fathom, though the daily use of the Internet is now commonplace. I think we can rightly call certain technologies "external minds" (@ Mary, above) - so it's really not so much the shifting sense of what are bodies are as it is the effect - or danger - of increasingly personalized information certain technologies host that should be cause for concern.

Later in the article she talks about the same concepts as Jesse Schell, in terms of racking up points for online activity, though she draws the conclusion that your information will be sold to advertisers. Really a fascinating article!

While searching web 2.0 and social software applications in K-12, I cam across this interesting article about how the success of gaming is based on perceptions of teachers. This idea of "perception" I becomes really important when trying to implement new technologies in schools.

Case Study: Implementing Database Activity Monitoring for a Major International Telecommunications Company Business need: A leading international telecommunications organization needed a cost effective means to protect the privacy of its customer data and comply with regulatory requirements. Solution: The customer's systems are managed by a well-known global systems integrator. After inquiring with Gartner and Forrester Research, the systems integrator evaluated multiple database auditing vendors (including Oracle) and chose the InfoSphere Guardium solution. InfoSphere Guardium's appliance-based technology allows companies to secure their enterprise data and rapidly address compliance requirements without affecting performance or requiring changes to databases or applications. Benefits: InfoSphere Guardium provided a fine grained audit trail of all sensitive data access, along with automated reporting and compliance workflow, satisfying the needs of auditors. Real-time blocking and alerts ensured privacy policies were strictly enforced. .

Cengage announced their "Personal Learning Experience" - an integrated e-learning experience that has video, audio, annotations, and other source materials embedded in the application. No Shelf Required did a write-up here: http://www.libraries.wright.edu/noshelfrequired/?p=2059. This is the kind of thing that looks really cool, but unless they can get course adoption, I don't see how it would gain a wide enough audience to be accepted.

If you don't have time to read, there's a video about the new school. I thought this was going to be a "distance learning" sort of school, but was glad to see that they simply have prioritized integrating technology into the school. This article is from 2009. I wonder how well the school is doing two years later?

It will be even more interesting to see the effects once they move on to college and graduate. The kids seemed really excited about this new system too!

Yes, very interesting.... I wonder if this might not be a new school media specialists opportunity.