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Today is Banned Website Awareness Day, and all across the country, educators are doing their part to raise awareness of how overly restrictive blocking of educational websites affects student learning. The dialogue around filtering must also include bring-your-own-device policies, appropriate use of social media in schools, and overall responsible use of technology in school.

"The learning spaces an institution plans will inevitably be in a network of other spaces.  Being not just aware of those connections, but actually leveraging that awareness, making the spaces explicitly connected to one another, raising the visibility of the spaces to teachers and learners alike, can have an impact. "

Schools and libraries subject to CIPA may not receive the discounts offered by the E-rate program unless they certify that they have an Internet safety policy that includes technology protection measures. The protection measures must block or filter Internet access to pictures that are: (a) obscene; (b) child pornography; or (c) harmful to minors (for computers that are accessed by minors). Before adopting this Internet safety policy, schools and libraries must provide reasonable notice and hold at least one public hearing or meeting to address the proposal. Schools subject to CIPA have two additional certification requirements: 1) their Internet safety policies must include monitoring the online activities of minors; and 2) as required by the Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act, they must provide for educating minors about appropriate online behavior, including interacting with other individuals on social networking websites and in chat rooms, and cyberbullying awareness and response.

"Comics have also been used to address social issues as well. They have done so over the years and while having controversial story lines they have helped to raise awareness about important issues. A comic can be an easy way to put your views (or make a joke easily!) and grab readers attention. If you can make your visitor smile, all the better. An engaged, smiling visitor will crawl longer and will be more likely to remember you."

The e-mail drill was one of numerous mind-training exercises in a unique class designed to raise students' awareness about how they use their digital tools. Colleges have experimented with short-term social-media blackouts in the past. But Ms. Hill's course, "Information and Contemplation," goes way further. Participants scrutinize their use of technology: how much time they spend with it, how it affects their emotions, how it fragments their attention. They watch videos of themselves multitasking and write guidelines for improving their habits. They also practice meditation-during class-to sharpen their attention.

Findings of the study indicated that faculty are more aware of textbook affordability issues than they used to be, though they see the appropriateness of materials as the most important factor when it comes to choosing resources to use in a course.

"I was aware that my daily routine and lifestyle were unsustainable."

"Shows like To Catch a Predator  sensationalize and feed the fear of parents having their child exposed to a child predator. It is a real fear and certainly a serious consideration.The facts however support evidence that over 90% of child predators are family members, close family friends, or clergy. We do not ban family picnics, playgrounds, family reunions, or church functions. There are no laws addressing these issues.The best way to defend our children against these threats is to educate them. Warn or rather teach them of the dangers,make them aware of the possibilities.Or, we can lock them away, effectively banning them from the outside world in which they will eventually have to live, leaving them to use whatever they picked up on their own about responsible digital citizenship, a topic probably not stressed outside of education."

"The same is true in the digital world. Gregory Ulmer, a theorist at the University of Florida coined the term electracy to describe this broader notion of digital literacy. At universities we are all more aware now of the growing significance of digital literacy, as we are seeing a widespread transition from print to digital and an accompanying transformation of teaching and learning practices."

"As your company searches for new ways to boost productivity and increase sales, it's important to be aware of the ways your plans can be thwarted. Turns out, your everyday work habits may actually be standing in the way of your success. Want to know how to kill your productivity? Do these seven things."

"Below you'll see a guide to who is using social media (pretty much everyone is aware of it) to which actual social networks they prefer. Surprising Info Most teachers don't use Twitter. They opt for Facebook and YouTube by a large amount LinkedIn is preferred over both wikis and Twitter Just about every social network can play a pivotal role in education, so it's time to start learning about all of them!"

"The project involves choosing a charity in the UAE, contacting them and working with them to discover their needs - then planning, organizing and leading an event, awareness campaign, fundraiser, etc and then explaining the results and all the feedback loops involved (the control phase). The final report will be a one page summary outlining the highlights of POLC and a five minute video of the POLC process they took."

"The Global Education Conference is a collaborative, inclusive, world-wide community initiative involving students, educators, and organizations at all levels. It is designed to significantly increase opportunities for connecting classrooms while supporting cultural awareness and recognition of diversity and educational access for all. Last year's conference featured 300 general sessions and 20 keynote addresses from all over the world with over 13,000 participant logins. "

"Social collaboration is the reason our business is able to remain connected, agile and profitable in multiple markets. It does this by acting as an unbreakable thread which connects each and every person, 24/7, 365 days a year. The prevalence and value of our social interactions has resulted in all employees regarding the intranet as their 'home base'. Company HQ. The central point from which they start and finish their days, and coordinate their individual tasks. It's also the place where they build real relationships with colleagues in other locations and gain awareness of activities occurring in and around the business."

Imagine how transformative it would be if we could combine self-paced, self-directed postsecondary learning (which has been around in one form or another for millennia) with online delivery of content that has embedded in it both the sophisticated assessment of learning and the ability to diagnose learning problems, sometimes even before the learner is aware of them, and provide just-in-time interventions that keep the learner on track. Add to that the opportunity for the learner to connect to and participate in groups of other learners, and, to link directly to the faculty member and receive individualized attention and mentoring. What you would have is the 21st-century version of do-it-yourself college, grounded in but well beyond the experienced reality of the thousands of previous DIYers such as Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Thomas Edison.

Once we become aware of our multitasking, the number of tasks we're juggling doesn't change. What changes is our attention level to the juggling itself and, in the taxi example, our anxiety about the consequences of the juggling.

Learning analytics holds increasing potential for student agency and autonomy, highlighting a need for ethical discourse at all levels of higher education institutions. Topics central to this dialogue include student awareness of analytics, the future of algorithms and learning analytics, and the redefinition of failure.

""You may not be aware, but this can actually have a massive effect on the performance of the [student] cohort," he said. "If the wrong students set up [the most popular] group, and that's the one everyone goes on, the amount of control they have…is massive." He continued: "If the group is set up by students so that only they can post and nobody else, they can censor discussions."

"More troubling is the microphone. The TV boasts a "voice recognition" feature that allows viewers to control the screen with voice commands. But the service comes with a rather ominous warning: "Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party." Got that? Don't say personal or sensitive stuff in front of the TV."

The House education committee, led by Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., released its reauthorization proposal over the summer in four smaller bills that respectively focus on simplifying the financial aid application process; increasing transparency by creating a centralized "College Dashboard" containing information on student outcomes; increasing financial awareness by providing counseling options for students and families; and promoting innovation through competency-based education pilot programs. All but the first bill have been passed in the chamber, but Democrats have criticized the House package for not doing enough to curb the high cost of college.