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putting the ATF's problems with tracing guns aside, it could still help agents track you down a lot faster than they could before - along with finding out everything else about you.

"I asked the lead tech  developers of several Cedar Rapids companies what they look for when hiring, and they all responded with, "The applicant's Github [open source] portfolio." Not their GPA. Not their test scores or transcripts. Their what-have-you-done files. The only way a student can have a Github portfolio is if they have a project worth working on, and the only way they can have that is if they've had generative interactions with the greater community; a community who has a plethora of problems worth working on."

"What makes so many of those atrocious singers laughable to us-excepting the ones who put on deliberately bad performances in order to get on camera-turns out to be a problem that plagues many undergraduates, especially the weakest among them: an inability to judge accurately their own level of skill or knowledge in a specific area. Poor metacognition means that some terrible yet hopeful singers on American Idol are unable to assess their own weak vocal talents. And it means that some students have a mistaken sense of confidence in the depth of their learning."

"Six weeks into Coursera's Passion Driven Statistics course from Wesleyan University, students received a notice that they would participate in a new kind of peer-based grading exercise for their final projects. While nothing has been said publicly about the experiment until now, this marks a radical departure from the usual quiz-based examinations provided by MOOCs."

"When machines anticipate needs and wants and solve problems without consulting their owners, we will be living in the future. I believe the infrastructure, the revenue model, the customer base and the deep learning techniques are finally ready to enable entrepreneurs to seize the opportunity and build the future."

"Our flipped school model is quite simple. Teachers record their lectures using screen-capture software (we use Camtasia) and post these lecture videos to a variety of outlets, including our school website, and YouTube. Students watch these videos outside of class on their smartphone, in the school computer lab (which now has extended hours), at home or even in my office if they need to. Now, when students come to class, they've already learned about the material and can spend class time working on math problems, writing about the Civil War or working on a science project, with the help of their teacher whenever they need it. This model allows students to seek one-on-one help from their teacher when they have a question, and learn material in an environment that is conducive to their education. To change the learning environment even further, we've used Google Groups to enable students to easily communicate outside of class, participate in large discussions related to their schoolwork and learn from each other."

In front of the jury as in reality, the bottom line is that you only get one shot. Your partners, investors and prospects have to be convinced that your idea will solve their problems. I believe a good presentation is the key to success, so here are some guidelines I give in my sessions:

Anyone who has ever tried to teach a kid how to multiply knows how hard that job is. (Try teaching a child what an adverb is long enough and you'll develop a facial tic.) But set the student up with an interactive, electronic game that is fun, competitive, and self-diagnostic, and suddenly teaching these basic subjects becomes both efficient and effective. Does that make teachers obsolete? Quite the opposite: it frees them to teach the higher levels of the cognitive domain-analysis, problem solving, synthesis, and creative thinking. The parts teachers normally never get around to because they're too bogged down in the basics.

after teaching the class once and seeing the historical grade distribution instantiate itself, it seemed to me that if I wanted to do something about this acculturation problem, I needed to do three things that weren't happening already:

Ms. Wirth had tried to use Google Docs to help the course's 40,000 enrolled students to organize themselves into groups. But that method soon became derailed when various authors began editing the documents. Things continued downhill from there; some students also had problems downloading certain course materials that had been added to the syllabus at the last minute. When the confusion continued, Georgia Tech decided to call a timeout.

This is an interesting article about the potential pitfalls, but no where did I see anything about the spirit of experimentation. When moving forward there are bound to be hiccups.

I really liked Ms Wirth - I was enjoying the lectures. The other students were so enthusiastic and eager to get started in the discussion groups. I guess it needed a different format? Maybe we need a course on how to design a MOOC. When the number of students start getting in the tens of thousands...small discussion groups are a little more complicated...It will be interesting to see how this moves forward.

"Nothing has more potential to lift more people out of poverty - by providing them an affordable education to get a job or improve in the job they have. Nothing has more potential to unlock a billion more brains to solve the world's biggest problems. And nothing has more potential to enable us to reimagine higher education than the massive open online course, or MOOC, platforms that are being developed by the likes of Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and companies like Coursera and Udacity."

"The unpopularity of personal data encryption isn't a problem in itself but a symptom of a bigger issue: The increasingly social, distributed and proscriptive nature of computing means that if you want to use the latest software and services you simply cannot keep your personal data to yourself."

"In other words, the key is to define indifference, rather than non-attendance, as the problem.  Attack the indifference -- preferably by having trusted colleagues show or discuss the cool new thing they've found -- and the non-attendance will take care of itself."

Many companies now search candidates' social-media accounts to get a better feel for their personalities, to see if they have creative flair, and to find out how well they communicate. Done right, your profile can work in your favor. Of 2,184 hiring managers recently surveyed by CareerBuilder, one-fifth said a candidate's online profile helped them land a position. More often, though, it backfires: 43 percent said they found information that led them not to hire a candidate, up 9 percentage points from last year. That trend means either that more job applicants are behaving badly online or that human resources is getting stricter in sniffing out problems.

I think this article raises a point that we should absolutely acknowledge. Although I don't believe I am "behaving badly" online, what if some of my viewpoints do not entirely mesh with a future employer. Are they less likely to hire me because I have critical opinions about certain policies, etc.? I think it is this issue in particular that makes people reticent to fully participate. However, this is our new reality. How to balance it?

The National Center for Technology Planning (NCTP) is a clearinghouse for the exchange of many types of information related to technology planning. This information may be: school technology plans available for downloading online; technology planning aids (checklists, brochures, sample planning forms, PR announcement forms); and/or electronic monographs on timely, selected topics. The NCTP was created for those who: need help, seek fresh ideas, or seek solutions to problems encountered with planning.

"The problem with the internet is that nothing is temporary. "

"Last year, based on our departmental assessment procedures, I determined that I wanted a more subjective way to give feedback to my students. To me, programming is more than just right or wrong code; I want students to develop good habits and styles of programming that use the tool to communicate the process of problem solving, not just the final answers. And I felt that that would be better achieved by giving students consistent verbal feedback, in addition to simple rubric scoring of their work."

"Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds, and incentive to learn the habits of heroes. What if we could harness this gamer power to solve real-world problems? Jane McGonigal says we can, and explains how."

"But there is value in seeing what happens when that advice is ignored. And that's where an incident at George Washington University comes in. If technology is just thrown at the problem with no consideration of helping educators to adopt sound pedagogical design, then we can see disasters."

"After looking for one of those "joke" worksheets to review competing the square I thought I'd try some group work (ala @druinok) via index cards.  I decided to write problems in varying degrees of difficulty... those with an "a" value, those without, those that would result in fractions, etc.  I pulled out my Sharpies to start writing and what did I discover?"