Daily Education and Technology News for Schools 12/28/2011
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Fill Your New Kindle, iPad, iPhone with Free eBooks, Movies, Audio ...
Free free free learning. Cost: Your time. nice list of free ways to add ebooks, textbooks, courses, and language courses onto your ipad or Kindle.
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Improve Your Learning and Memory.: Your Kid May Be Smart. Just Don’t Tell Him So Too Often
Every kd isn't smart but every kid (and adult) needs a "growth mindset." Please read this article. "Research by Carol Dweck and colleagues at Stanford demonstrated that the students who are most likely to learn from their mistakes are those who don’t think of themselves as smart as such but smart enough to get smarter. They have a “growth mindset,” a belief system that they can get better if they will just invest the time and effort."
"In one of the group’s experiments, half of the students were repeatedly praised for “being smart,” and these students were not good at learning from mistakes. It is not clear why. Maybe they thought the problem was in the learning material, not in them. The other half of students were praised for effort and improvement and these students got better and made fewer mistakes. Several months later, all students repeated a standardized test, and the “smart” students’ scores dropped 20%, while the “growth mindset” students scored 30% higher." Praise students for effort not for being smart. bottom line. everyone is not a genius -
China’s Parallel Online Universe | The Diplomat
Social media with censorship. take a peek inside the Great Firewall of China. as the people connect "the party" keeps a firm grip on acceptable conversation, perhaps eliciting more control than ever by blocking conversations and the resulting connections that could happen.
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Pinterest: A Beginner's Guide to the Hot New Social Network
Beginner's guide to pinterest, the new social network that manynteachers are gaga over. from recipes to craft ideas and lesson plans, teachers are all over this site.
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Articles: A World without Schoolteachers
eBooks make it possible to eliminate teachers? the fact isnthat if kids could learn just bybreading,mtheynwould be learning in most schools. The ubiquity of books is a point but this article is an example of how it is easy to jump to incorrect conclusions, especially if you have never taught. I think that in a few years that schools and unions will reverse course and beg their teachers to blog. If you dont joinnthe conversation, the comversation moves on without you and goes to places you nor the world (once it sees the impact) do not wish to go. There are good points here. Never be afraid to read views different from your own. the fact remains that the barrier for homeschoolimg is getting less expensive by the day.
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Graphic Artists Guild Changes Mind: Withdraws SOPA Support | Techdirt
Graphic artists guild pulls support for SOPA. Now, I am wondering, where do educational organizations, ISTE for example, stand on SOPA? Has anyone bothered to ask?
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Google Will Release Their Own iPad 3 Competitor Within Six Months
Google releasing ipad 3 competing tablet in 6 months.
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How SOPA Would Kill Art & Creativity Online
SOPA and the impact on online art. if this is really the case, SOPA is looking worse all the time. It is time to use the old fashioned phne call and call our Congressmen and Senators. Time tomlet our voices be heard on this one. the fact is tha phone calls tend to carry more weight than email. As someone whonused to answer phones for a US Senator in DC, I know this to be true. Phone calls get attention because they tie up staff. i will call in the morning. will you?
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Ask Slashdot: Tools For Teaching High School Kids How To Make Games? - Slashdot
This 189+ question on Slashdot is a great example of how comments become the post. if you eant to teach game peogramming and want the pros and cons and lots of choices, head here for a great, though time consuming, read.
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Tinderizer - Sending articles to your Kindle, one click at a time!
If you have a Kindle fire or kindle and want to send articles, there are many ways to send articles there. Tinderizer is one of them. My favorite iPad RSS reader Mr. Reeder will send to Tinderizer ( and Diigo and Tumblr which is why I use it.)
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5 Tech Trends to Watch in 2012
Mashable's tech trends to watch. where i think they are wrong: the ultrabook. I think the ultrabook will sort of go the way of the netbook, all i hear are tablets and voice activation. I think emerging personal assistant technology will dommoremthan the ultrabook. Ultrabook is really just a set of specs.
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5 Reasons Why Our Students Are Writing Blogs and Creating ePortfolios | Powerful Learning Practice
Jenny Luca writes a powerful post about why her school has students blogging and creating efolios.
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Microsoft: Five things to look for in 2012 | Microsoft - CNET News
Analysis of Microsoft's moves coming in 2012 including the move into the living room through further inroads intomthe live tv experience started with the recent rollout of Kinect's voice activated tv. i do admit our new preferred way to stream music onto tv is no longer Pandora but the fm service through Kinect.
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Educational publishers supporting sopa
Pearson Education, Cengage Learning, McGraw-Hill Education, Macmillan, Scholastic, etc are among the educationall publishers supporting SOPA. this bill has many of us cringing just because it puts the power to shut down just about any website in the hands of the copyright holder in a pretty "guilty until proven innocent" type method that won't consider fair use until your site is already down. Perhaps I am oversimplifying but as one who had a Ning used for the digiteen project operated by our nonprofit almost pulled because the coyright holder and !Ning had no way to "let us" claim fair use, this is a very bad idea or at best case, a very bad implementation of a somewhat decent idea.
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If you are a compiter Science teacher or advocate for Computer S ience education, you should read Slfred Thompson. he works for Microsoft covering computer science but has a great personality and the kind of genuineness that all companies shoudl wish for in their bloggers. he will tell you what he thinks and I think he has done a great service to computer science educatiion. here, he lists his most popular posts of the year including "Why programming is for girls." Take time to read these posts.
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The Big G & Business » Top 10 Google+ Plus Tips
Nice overview of how to get the most outvote Google+. The 10th item is to be proposed by readers with the selected winner being included in hs book.
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Ignoring What Works in Education, The Umbrella Man, and The Challenge of Framing
Prepare to be challenged as you read Ewan McIntosh's thought provokingnpost on formative assessment and why it is being ignored or misrepresented. i have some reading to do with the links he gives. this is one of those must reads for thought leaders.
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BBC News - Man sued for keeping company Twitter followers
This company is suing @phonedog (name since changed) since he left the company and changed his userid keeping the twitter followers (some 17k he had accumulated.) Expect increasing scrutiny and debates on who owns the followers of people tweeting on behalf of companies.
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Rahilla Zafar: Raising the Next Nobel Laureate
A common trait of Nobel Laureates: an inspirational teacher or two in Middle school. This is a great article for middle school principals to share with staff but also for any educator to read.
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Ellen Siminoff: All Classes Great and Small
On one thing I totally agree with this article: students should have pre- high school graduation experience collaborating with humdreds (eventually thousands) of other students. This article argues against needing small class sizes in schools. Where it falls short is the fact that if we truly want to reach each child, large class sizes are an anathema to personalized learning environments like mine where i have each student doing their own Freshan project, for example.
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End of an Era: The Golden Age of Tech Blogging is Over
Never mistake the discussions that the "golden age of tech blogging is over" with blogs are dead. Blogging is changing. many have noticed people are more likely to respond with a retweet or comment on facebook and googke currents but it isnt dead. with every shift comes opportunity. it is a matter of understanding the audience you write for and how to share in a way that is insanely helpful to them.
