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After several months, the kids in both villages were still heavily engaged in using and recharging the machines, and had been observed reciting the "alphabet song," and even spelling words. One boy, exposed to literacy games with animal pictures, opened up a paint program and wrote the word "Lion."

"The two industrial giants aren't so much showing off as signalling transformation. Both firms are going through the most profound change in their corporate histories, attempting to switch from being makers of machines into fully digital businesses. GE's chief executive, Jeff Immelt, says the plan is to join the world's top ten software firms with sales of programs and services worth $15bn as early as 2020."

"For the vendors, when this model works they get a far higher revenue per student that would have been possible with platforms sales or other fee-for-service approaches. As I described in a post about 2U, that company makes $10k - $15k per student per year, whereas an LMS vendor might make $20 per student per year. While 2U is the high end of the market and not all OPM vendors get that kind of revenue, we are talking about several orders of magnitude difference per student."

"As edtech expert, Tony Vincent, would say, "Date the tool, but marry the ability." There will always be multiple edtech tools, programs, and products that provide similar principle functions to support student engagement. However, to achieve engagement that exceeds the element of surprise or novelty, which is often necessary as an instructional "hooking" tool, it is imperative that we place the brunt of our instructional design efforts towards building thinking skills and cognitive growth within students."

"Now let's imagine a university in the 21st century decides, as a matter of choice, to make all of its students attend classes in these sorts of learning spaces. But more than this, they decide to black out all of the windows so that no one can see in and they say that there can be no displays of student work within the room. They provide a standard overhead projector in each room and they insist that teaching consists of a 5 minute introductory presentation from the teacher followed by a question, followed by another 5 minute video and so on. Students are only allowed to talk to each other if they go to a corner of the room that has been walled off from everything else. This method of teaching will be the same for every degree program so the artists and sculptors will use a space like this as well as the engineers and physicists. Learning about modern dance and nursing will all occur in these spaces."

"Dropbox is an awesome service. You can back your files up to the cloud, sync them between computers, and share them with your friends. That's not all it can do, though. Here are our top 10 favorite clever uses for our favorite file syncing program."

"Skitch lets you save what you capture to your desktop, of course, but the program also connects with Evernote, WordPress, and Flickr. If you have an Evernote account, you can save images online and share them in FaceBook, Twitter, or anywhere else you like. One of the best features, though, is annotation. You can add text, arrows, et cetera - and even edit them later on."

"In a recent conversation on the Forum talk program, Rheingold stresses the importance of intention when it comes to managing digital noise. Knowing that every click will likely to lead to a chunk of time spent on what follows will help people decide if that's worthwhile. Every click counts."

"In "whoa buddy, I'm not so sure about that" news, one Texas school district is in the process of implementing a new way to ensure student safety and make sure that kids are where they need to be while on campus. At least, that's what they say. Others may call it a giant mandatory student tracking program."

"Los Angeles Public Library is now adding another innovation to this lengthening list: It's planning to offer high school diplomas. The library announced Thursday that it will work with a private online education company to offer classes for high-school credit with in-person support at individual branches. The program is geared toward adult drop-outs, who would ultimately receive a diploma, not a GED."

Over the next few slides we've rounded up 12 excellent free and open source applications worth investigating and experimenting with.

"Out of 841,687 registrants in 17 courses offered in 2012 and 2013 by the universities' joint EdX program, 43,196 saw the classes to conclusion, according to an e-mailed statement from the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based schools. Some of the students signed up for multiple courses, according to the statement."

"The Martin Institute for Teaching Excellence provides world-class professional development for public and private school teachers.  Participants are teachers and administrators who are eager to develop classrooms centered on critical and creative thinking, collaboration, and brain-based research. The Institute provides on-site seminars, workshops and conferences; a teacher residency program; and funding for off-site professional development, especially at the Harvard Graduate School of Education."

The Utah Open Textbook Initiative (UTOT) began in 2010. From a small pilot involving less than 10 teachers and three grades, UTOT has grown to a statewide program for grades 7 - 12 that improves science learning and drastically reduces the cost of providing every student with access to quality science curriculum. This whitepaper describes the UTOT process for successfully creating and adopting open science textbooks.

The proficiency-based approach university officials described shares much in common with competency-based programs offered by institutions like Western Governors University, Southern New Hampshire's College for America and the new "Flexible Option" from the University of Wisconsin System.

Social media plays an important role in the B2B decision-making process. Use this Social Media Tactical Plan to help you create tactical objectives in order to accomplish the following social media goals: Increase inbound leads at a low cost Expand reach of thought leadership content Engage and excite influencers Better understand, identify, and engage potential buyers Improve customer service and satisfaction Enhance outbound campaign program effectiveness

Coursera just raised $43m of funding - what potential do investors see in MOOCs? Based on recent Forbes article - do you see MOOCs as replacing parts of traditional higher ed? Will growing numbers of online students reduce hesitation of employers to hire online students? How does this affect institutions being proxies for quality? What applications are there for MOOCs beyond academic programs? (with interesting answer from Michael based on DS106)

Howard University announced "Howard University Online," part of a comprehensive initiative that will expand the flagship research University's array of blended/online courses and programs in partnership with Pearson.

"Super Simple The easiest way to test it out is to follow the steps below: Download and install Virtualbox. Download Ripple virtual server Unzip Ripple virtual server Open Ripple.ovf in unzipped folder. (This will open the Virtualbox program and import your Ripple virtual server to use.) Select 'OK' to import. Press Start."