Christine,
I agree wholeheartedly with your comments! The review of the purpose of tech is refreshing and the sign: well, it should become a poster! I would buy it. In fact, I copied it into my documents and will certainly use it this year. Tech has a lot of hype surrounding it, and this article cleans it up nicely.

Yes, it seems that the newspaper search for jobs is fast disappearing from our times. While social network sites increase/enhance job hunting, publicizing about one's skills, and employer insights into candidates, job applicants still need to prove they have social manners, discretion, and skills that are portrayed with meticulous accuracy.

This article fully explains implementation of blogging in a classroom. The teacher explains: expectations; use of blog posts for classroom discussions, and decorum. She highlights that student blogging enables her to bring to the classroom, without pinpointing a particular student: "insightful responses, inaccurate interpretations, good questions, and lively exchanges". Excellent Information!

This TedTalk presenter shares experiences in teaching kids that "we don't need to know the answer, and it's possible there isn't just one answer", but rather to inquire and learn through the inquiry. She encourages teachers to create opportunities for authentic experiences for students. Teaching is about: "experiential learning, empowering student voic, and embracing failure"

This article provides a number of new tools, but also explanations regarding their practical usage in any classroom. Newer ones include Ipiccy, Easel.ly, Infogr.am, InfuseLearning, BigHugeLabs, SignGenerator, Delivr, Aurasma, TheNounProject, and WeVideo. Others that are more commonly known are: Padlet, Thinglink, & PollEverywhere

This article, written by EDUDEMIC author, Jeff Dunn, offers 5 distinct reasons why schools need to move toward Digital Textbooks/ebooks as opposed to traditional paper books/texts. He begins by adding support to his stance by citing Ed Secretary, Arne Duncan's call to make "textbooks obsolete". Among Dunn's reasons and pertinent to our Media/Inform Literacy discussion are these ideas: Using digital texbooks or ebooks on line, allows for students to interact with the book. Some books have videos, highlighting/notetaking features, moveable models and interactive diagrams. In addition, such technological books are more immediate-they are simply accessed by the press of a button. Arne Duncan also remarked that the US is lagging behind other countries in converting to these computerized books. With states desiring a lead position in education in the US, and Obama's push (Connect Ed) campaign to have all schools connected (internet/computer/tech), this transition to Digital Text/ebooks seems a likely probability-and exciting one too. Though sitting back, especially in a beach chair, with a paper book still holds an appeal for me.