20 Must-See Teaching Tools Coming To Your Classroom Very Soon (Edudemic)

Why waste time? -- click here to check them out!

Microsoft Security PowerPoint Presentations

"Download one of our presentation templates to help explain the fundamentals of protecting yourself, family, or employees when you go online with your personal computer or other devices."

Visit the full site here...

Building library with online public domain works: "Austrian city builds public library with nothing but QR codes, NFC and stickers"

Alexis Santos on Engadget writes:

"Strangely, the Austrian city of Klagenfurt doesn't have a public library, even though it hosts the Festival of German-Language Literature. However, an initiative dubbed Project Ingeborg is turning the municipality into a book repository of sorts with 70 QR code and NFC chip-equipped stickers. Plastered throughout town, they direct users to web pages where they can download public domain works, largely from Project Gutenberg. Oftentimes, e-books will be located in relevant locations -- so you'll be sure to find Arthur Schnitzler's The Killer near the police station, for example. Come August, the team behind the effort will partner with local talent to distribute books, music and other digital content too. In an effort to build a stronger bond to the location, the organizers have prevented search engines from indexing the links, so you'll have to visit Klagenfurt to access the curated goods."

To read more click here for the full article... 

Digital Directions

Education Week Digital Directions "Smart Strategies for Ed Tech Leaders"

Click here to access the landing/subscription page...

Tip: You can click on a topic area of the cover image to access that page/article.

"The Massive Open Online Professor" (Carson & Schmidt)

"The challenges faced by higher education around the world are daunting and cannot be met by the traditional institution-based education system. For the current model to meet the needs of future generations, we would need to build and fund thousands of new universities. And yet the past ten years have demonstrated that there is another way. Scalable education on the web is increasingly possible, largely through the use of commodity software that is easy to use and available freely or at low cost to anyone.

"Consider: Stanford and MIT recently started offering free online courses, and both universities enrolled more than 100,000 users. In one Stanford course, on artificial intelligence, 25,000 users completed all required homework assignments and received a certificate for their participation."

Read the full article by Stephen Carson and Jan Philipp Schmidt on Academic matters here...

Online Collaboration Tools (Robin Good)

Check out Robin Good's cool Scoop.it on this topic...

"Letting Go of Boolean Operators: Rethinking How Research Is Taught in Schools" (Sarah Ludwig)

Sarah Ludwig on ALA TechSource writes: 

I am constantly struggling with the sense that I’m doing a lot of talking for nothing. I painstakingly teach kids how to use a database and they go straight back to Wikipedia as soon as I turn them loose. I show them how to use keywords and operators and they always fall back on their “ask Google a question” method.
I get frustrated. I’ve considered asking their teachers to require the use of databases. But lately I’ve been admitting to myself the deep, dark truth: I’ve got it backwards. I’m forcing students to use tools and search methods that are more cumbersome, more frustrating, and less successful simply because I, the librarian, think it’s the best thing to do. 

She concludes the introduction:

Obviously, it’s our job to teach students how to find the best information they can. But I think there is a better way.

And then goes on to share some valuable ideas.  Click here to read her full piece, followed by some interesting comments...   

50,000 (And Counting) Education Apps Worth Knowing About

A tantalizing post from Edudemic.  You can check out the post here...
A partnership between Edudemic and FindTheBest results in a robust directory of "about 56,000 education apps."

The Edudemic post explains How It Works: 

• Head over to apps.edudemic.com and start exploring
• Use the powerful search engine to find new and exciting education apps
• Narrow down your results by age and content rating
• Sort results based on which product you have (iPad 1, iPod Touch 3rd Generation, etc)
• Adjust results based on price with the simple slider
• Filter results based on the size of each app download
• Write a review and read other reviews
• Add a listing! You don’t need to be the creator of an app if you see it’s missing. Just add it in so others can see and hear about it.
• View related apps you may also like.
• Login with Facebook to get personalized results (sorta like Apple’s Genius tool)
• Embed the directory in your own blog or website with a simple embed code
• More features coming soon!

Note: there are literally tens of thousands of apps in this directory and some are better than others. Be sure to use the filtering tools to find what you’re looking for!

40 Open Education Resources You Should Know About

From Edudemic. Check out this article...

http://edudemic.com/2012/07/40-open-education-
resources-you-should-know-about/

Check out 'The Future of Education' (dot com)

Brought to you by Steve Hargadon (creator of the wonderful 'Library 2.0' community site /via Ning).

As Steve notes on the welcome page --

This interview series and the community are devoted to providing an opportunity for those who care about education to share their voices and ideas with others. It's a place for thoughtful discussion on an incredibly important topic.
By joining this site, you'll automatically receive notification of events.  Because of spammers, we have to approve all memberships here (it makes it easier if you fill out your profile). While your membership is pending you are still welcome to peruse the site or attend any events! 

You can check it out here...