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Image by woodleywonderworks via Flickr Listen up Educators: Excellence in education is not what you're keeping out, it's about what are you letting in! The Speak up 2010 results are in and out in the US Congress. The biggest obstacles to educational advancement: Overly aggressive Internet filters Banning mobile phone technologies No surprises there. The key findings as quoted on the homepage of the study : "67 percent of parents said they would purchase a mobile device for their child to use for schoolwork if the school allowed it, and 61 percent said they liked the idea of students using mobile devices to access online textbooks. 53 percent of middle and high school students reported that the inability to use cell phones, smart phones or MP3 players was the largest obstacle when using technology in school. Additionally, 71 percent of high school students and 62 percent of middle school students said that the number one way schools could make it easie...

Image by woodleywonderworks via Flickr I've been reading about the "second screen experience" in mainstream media. This is where one can watch the show on there television and chat or communicate on their handheld device like an iTouch, cell phone, iPad, etc. I know that I've done this before while watching a voting show like American Idol to "see" what people are saying as I follow the hashtag or search. But it is moving mainstream with websites like HBO (used a Twitter microsite to connect True Blood fans ), the 2009 Miss Universe pageant , and TiVo releasing an app to make the iPad a second screen experience. In fact, if we look at the teens and what they do EVERY day they are texting and using their cell phones. With Smartphones front and center in some research (more research needs to be done by NON-cell phone companies one might add) these handhelds are going to be increasingly important. Companies like Discovery are already syndicating...

Image via Wikipedia Image via Wikipedia Popular Mechanics has a great article on the brilliant ideas. In this month's issue, they feature a new cellphone microscope that can: "diagnose disease cheaply and effectively anywhere in the world." I love how the originator of this technology, Aydogan Ozcan, University of California, Los Angeles ,  says: "“The key to everything is the cellphone,” Ozcan says. In 1990, fewer than 12.5 million people worldwide had them; today, 4.6 billion do. While conventional lens-based microscopy has essentially plateaued, fierce competition causes cellphone-camera technology to advance rapidly even as prices plummet. Eventually, Ozcan believes, point-of-care facilities in the U.S. will begin replacing expensive and time-consuming lab procedures with cellphone-based diagnostic tools. “Once insurance companies start to accept this,” he says, “we will have better, more affordable healthcare and better quality of life.” I seem to also thi...

My husband and BFF, Kip, has been with me on the last leg of my trip to the amazingly incredible CUE conference in Palm Springs ( NCTIES before that.) We're now in Salt Lake City for a two hour layover and he's TRYING to read the latest Tom Clancy book. He is director of engineering of a manufacturing plant and has a genius mind for efficiency, managing people, AND making technology UNDERSTANDABLE to the average person.  So, I asked him, "What is the most important point that you heard at the CUE conference?"  (Mind you - he sat in on 4 of my sessions Friday - so this is his take on it.) His answer: He is incredulous that we punish the tools and not the person.  That he can't take a pair of scissors on an airplane and yet, scissors are a standard item in every classroom in schools.   And yet he can take a cell phone and use it openly and freely anywhere and yet  the cell phone is what is banned in most schools. He is an efficiency expert, mind you, on s...

In this gcast podcast , I discuss what my son told me about his friends "sleeping with their cell phones" under their pillow and texting through the night. I've talked to three different groups of students and all of them report that over half of their friends will cell phones sleep with them under their pillow on vibrate and text through the night. I ponder the issue of connection addiction -- it is not internet addiction -- it is connection addiction and how we're working with this on the digiteen project - http://digiteen.wikispaces.com . Danah Boyd really opened my eyes to the cell phone phenomenon. Many schools haven't come to grip w/ Web 2.0 -- Web 3.0 may be the cell phone connection? Maybe we're wrapped up in geekiness and missing what is REALLY going on. (Wouldn't be the first time!) tag: education , teaching , cell phone , youth , trends , observations , insights , podcast , teacher , Danah Boyd

Just came across happy happy apple's post on the new Google Android platform for cell phones. This new operating system for cellular telephones seems fascinating. Right now I'm pondering this for two reasons: I'm stuck in Chicago airport -- I arrived at 1:15 pm -- my plane is now delayed and not due to depart until around 4:30 pm CST (this blog post is on EST) My cell phone is MIA (missing in action). Stolen, lost -- who knows. I figured it out last night and my husband called the carrier this morning. As a former General manager in the cell phone business, I've NEVER lost my cell phone. (That doesn't count the time I flushed a pager down the toilet... it was my first job and I kept getting underwater pager noises and toilet flush messages left on my voice mail for months. That is the last time I joked, "I hate this pager, I wish I could flush it down the toilet!" -- because I did it!) So, I cannot live without a cell phone and since I let my contrac...

Cell phones as "pay" phones Oh, the bar codes. The payment management. The headaches that are often caused by lunchroom payment processing issues. Well, now the school's number one "A list enemy" may eventually become a friend to the lady (or gent) behind the lunch counter. I think that those who continue to fight the cell phone are running into a tidal wave that will overwhelm them. Several companies are moving furiously into turning cell phones into payment processing centers for you (and your students.) The April 9th version of Information Week has an article: Your Phone as Financial Central where they say: "AT&T is using Firethorn Holdings' software to enable the mobile banking app. The software sits on a mobile device and connects with Firethorn's servers, which communicate with the banks' systems. AT&T has plans for similar preloaded apps for BancorpSouth, Regions Financial, and SunTrust Banks. Verizon Wireless also is using...