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""It will be harder to get into Minerva than any other university," says Nelson. "You'll have the same criteria for your grades, essay, and application. But you'll get no brownie points for how good an athlete you are, for how much money your parents can donate, or for what state you were born in.""

"Here's a thought, if you are spending all of your time worrying about a term no one can define, its time to get a different hobby.Thus, step three in Changing Gears 2012 is to stop using the term rigor, and to start to actually define what you want from education for your students."

Lessons Worth Sharing 

Super resource!

The real opportunity, I think, is in trying to build longer arcs. Now that the cycle of new is eating itself in a race to ever-faster, there's a bigger chance to make long term change by consistently focusing on what works (and what's important), not what's new and merely shiny.

The idea that a college diploma is an all-but-mandatory ticket to a successful career is showing fissures. Feeling squeezed by a sagging job market and mounting student debt, a groundswell of university-age heretics are pledging allegiance to new groups like UnCollege, dedicated to "hacking" higher education.

we have to realize that no matter the level of tech saturation in their lives outside of school, that this introduction of ever-present connectedness during school is something very different for students too. So my approach with the following students was to ask them to simply share what some positives and negatives were with their first few months of this newfound access to the Web. Here are their unabridged responses…

The widely acknowledged need to improve the tech skills of teachers and other school officials, and help them understand how digital tools should be used in the classroom, should be a major area of focus among state officials and other policymakers, according to a report released today by the National Association of State Boards of Education.

"That's the latest number from the Social Media Report, an annual snapshot by Nielsen and NM Incite. The report says that Facebook is still the top social network, though its tally of unique visitors has fallen 4 percent from the same time last year. Blogger, the second-place network, also saw a slight decline (3 percent) while third-place Twitter saw a gain of 13 percent. Wordpress, likewise, saw a 10 percent jump. The break-out social media star of the past year has been Pinterest, the report said, which jumped 1,047 percent from the same time last year. And since its Sept. 2011 debut, Google+ has grown 80 percent."

"She's a celebrator," said Anne-Marie Slaughter, a Princeton professor and former State Department official. "You feel the tremendous amount of pleasure she takes in finding these things and sharing them. It's like walking into the Museum of Modern Art and having somebody give you a customized, guided tour."

Model Rubric for evaluating e-Portfolios

"Unmasking as a Way to Regulate Social Norms"

"iCivics has just released its seventeenth educational game for students. The new game is called We The Jury. We The Jury puts students in the role of a juror for two trials"

Thanks, Mat - this is so neat!

"To nudge students toward job-friendly degrees, the governor's task force on higher education suggested recently that university tuition rates be frozen for three years for majors in "strategic areas," which would vary depending on supply and demand. An undergraduate student would pay less for a degree in engineering or biotechnology - whose classes are among the most expensive for universities - than for a degree in history or psychology."

"This article examines a relatively recent and increasingly problematic trend in fair use jurisprudence: courts' tendency to decide whether a copyright defendant has made a fair use of the plaintiff's work based in part on whether the defendant has acted in "bad faith." Courts use the term "bad faith" to encompass a wide range of conduct weighing against a finding of fair use."

Thousands of Idaho students in public, private and charter schools big and small next fall will be able to log into math, physics and history classes provided by the Khan Academy, a growing content provider focused on making free education available to anyone, anywhere. With $1.5 million in startup money from the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation, Khan Academy content will be provided in 47 schools, making Idaho the nation's first proving ground for a statewide implementation of the academy's free educational content and teaching model.