"My time is worth more than said bombardment. Everyone's is. The other day, a friend of mine who teaches at a tony private university in the South messaged me in a huff: "I posted my grades at 10:00, and by 10:04 I had two hysterical complainers. OMG. I hate grades."

"Last fall, Alberta Education sent two 2013 diploma-exam questions along with nearly 1,900 student essay answers that had been graded by teachers to LightSide, a Pennsylvania company that develops computer software to score student essays. LightSide's automated algorithms outperformed human reliability in the Alberta study by about 20 per cent, said the company's January 2014 report to the government."

Social presence remains the key to a successful learning experience, and understanding social presence, with its critical connection to learning and community building, allows us to better support faculty and students. Understanding a wide selection of tools, media, and reflective activities helps faculty assist students in taking responsibility for their own learning. Providing iterative feedback and mindful assessments helps faculty meet learning outcomes and guide student learning. Implementing change in small steps is the key to understanding which strategies work and which lead to frustration and discontent.

"Did you ever wanted to learn how to draw? Me to! But probably there's only one problem - you can't draw... Don't worry. You can learn!"

"More than anything else in the pantheon of modern writing or as the kids call it, content creation, Buzzfeed aims to be hyper-relatable, through visuals! It hopes it can define your exact identity, because only then will you share its URL on Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr as some sort of badge of your own uniqueness, immortality. If the first Internet was "Getting information online," the second was "Getting the information organized" and the third was "Getting everyone connected" the fourth is definitely "Get mine." Which is a trap."

"I recently published an article describing a a creative online assignment that I've been using successfully in my university courses to teach visual digital literacy. It's a very brief and practical article about the amazing student engagement achieved and some pedagogical complications encountered."

"Dystopian literature is specifically a hyperbolic view of a familiar society-one that exaggerates social ills in order to make a point about society's flaws. It's also the opposite of utopian literature, creating a world in which the supposed "ideal society" is actually the worst idea possible, ultimately leading humankind to ruin."

""Privacy in this online environment is a good placeholder for many other areas of law, areas that have either an international dimension or some cross-disciplinary component," he says. "I think that the exploratory, almost playful approach that we apply in Comparative Online Privacy is helpful for other conversations, too.""

"The biggest argument most people make about Google+ being inactive is that they haven't taken any time to circle anyone, because they just want to connect to their friends. "

"According to data from the Delaware Department of Education, the newly-created ninth grade class at Newark Charter School consists of 15 percent Hispanic and African-American students, with representation of low-income students also at 15 percent. This contrasts starkly with the freshman class at Newark High School which is composed of 64 percent African American and Hispanic students and 70 percent low-income students."

"How can critical pedagogy help to examine, dismantle, or rebuild the structures, hierarchies, institutions, and technologies of education? And how can we gather together generously to bring critical digital pedagogy more fully into the conversation about the changing landscape of education?"

Robots are opening new channels of communication for students on the autism spectrum or those with other disabilities. Educators at New York City's special education District 75 say the NAO robot-a bright-eyed, two-foot-tall humanoid developed by Aldebaran Robotics-is now considered a virtual classmate by some students.

"One of the key components of the IT&DML program is that we're big believers in "open" and to that end as much of the content of our program is open, and available online for your use. The rationale for this is two-fold. I believe this helps us adapt and react to changes in the industry and classroom. I also believe that if our materials are open and online, then anyone can use them…but also they can be critiqued and reviewed by anyone. To that end, I have been, and will continue to reflect on the texts and tools, and the components of the program here on this blog."

"In August my brother-in-law died suddenly. All my in-laws live in New York, and I teach in Kansas, so I was gone for a week from all my classes. When I got back, I had a grieving husband and four classes to manage. In October my grandmother died in New Hampshire. Same deal. Four classes, grief. You know what I didn't expect? My colleagues to ask me to attend all my committee meetings, my dean to reprimand me for being absent to attend a funeral, or my students to be unforgiving when I had to miss a week of classes they were paying for."

"A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences addressed this question by conducting the largest and most comprehensive review of the effect of active learning on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education. Their answer is a resounding yes. According to Scott Freeman, one of the authors of the new study, "The impact of these data should be like the Surgeon General's report on "Smoking and Health" in 1964-they should put to rest any debate about whether active learning is more effective than lecturing.""

"At the same time, MOOCs called into question our basic assumptions about college. Free access to content from prestigious institutions revealed that content didn't need to be proprietary. Without having to waste time re-creating the same lectures and class materials, particularly for lower-division courses, many professors saw the opportunity to be even more connected and hands-on in order to make existing content come alive for students. Despite the intense trepidation that technology would somehow replace teachers, it became clear that MOOCs didn't preempt interaction; instead, they forced more contact and accountability on both the student and the teacher."