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NYU professor Clay Shirky gave a fantastic talk on new media during our TED@State event earlier this month. He revealed how cellphones, the web, Facebook and Twitter had changed the rules of the game, allowing ordinary citizens extraordinary new powers to impact real-world events. As protests in Iran exploded over the weekend, we decided to rush out his talk, because it could hardly be more relevant. I caught up with Clay this afternoon to get his take on the significance of what is happening. HIs excitement was palpable.

"Southern Miss decided to investigate the feasibility of adding a tool to our current Learning Management System, Blackboard, that would increase opportunities for student-to-instructor and student-to-student interaction. After auditioning applications from several different companies, Southern Miss decided that Wimba Classroom was the best fit for the goals and objectives it had set out to achieve. "

"* Maps: Search for buildings / places on campus, see bus routes and live locations, use GPS to find where you are on the 8,180 acre campus * Directory: Search for students, faculty, and staff in the Stanford directory, tap to call or email, add them as contacts on your phone * Courses: Search for classes, find out where and when they're offered, tap to call or email the professor, enroll during open enrollment, view your courses and grades * Athletics: Get news, scores, and schedules for every Stanford varsity sport * Images: Get photo images of Stanford University, send to a friend, save as wallpaper * Events: Get information about things happening on campus * Videos: Check out Stanford content on YouTube (UTV) * News: Extra! Extra! Read all about it! News from a variety of Stanford news sources - Stanford News, the Daily, Graduate School of Business, Medicine, athletics, and more! * Stanford on iTunes U: Access thousands of Stanford audio and video recordings- including courses, faculty lectures and campus performances - in iTunes U * Library: Search the prodigious content of Stanford libraries in a variety of ways, show content availability and location, call number, view item in SearchWorks * Emergency: Call to report emergency or non-emergency, call to obtain information from the Stanford Emergency Information Hotline * 5-SURE: Call to get a safe ride home"

Best Practices in Online Instruction Using Wimba

The CETL(NI) has developed a Hybrid Learning Model which can be used to describe learning activities as a series of understandable and universal set of learning events where the teachers and students experience and roles are clearly defined at each stage. The strength of this method is its transparency, use of plain English and its potential in breaking down effective complex learning activities into a generic, re-usable format so that good practice can be disseminated, reapplied and evaluated easily.

The Future of Education is a topic often discussed, and at the recent gathering of educators in Florence, it was the title and theme for the conference. Now in its ninth year, The Future of Education is an international conference that attracts educators from around the world and across all domains touched by education. The conference is an inspiring two days of discussion and sharing, with the city of Florence, the centre of the Renaissance, providing a constant reminder of what might be possible when creativity and critical thinking combine. Here are my key takeaways from this event.

This week I spent three days in Brisbane attending the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers' national conference. The theme of the conference was "Why Maths?" and along with 500 other mathematicians, we looked to find inspiring answers to this provocative question beyond the classroom. Here are my key takeaways from this event. 

A common challenge for students and teachers is how to develop a great idea for a piece of writing. Too often students struggle with the process of finding inspiration for their writing. They have a vague idea for the story they hope to tell, but all too quickly it transforms into a list of events with little or no detail. The goal here is to provide our students with a process to use during the planning process. The hope is that by identifying the type of thinking required during the early phases of ideation and to focus their attention on details, that the stories our students subsequently compose will be more enjoyable to read. Hopefully, this process helps.

The PZ Sydney Network has achieved many of its goals in the past five years. Most importantly the network has been able to provide high-quality professional development to many educators through free events large and small and both face-to-face and online. The PZ Sydney Network has been able to expand its reach and in recognition of this is transforming to become the PZ Australia Network.