November+11,+2010

In this Worthy of Note ...
Mobile Technology Online Learning U. S. National Ed-Tech Action Plan Technology Plan (final version) Professional Development Tools and Resources More about eBooks News from Creative Commons Best Practices Privacy Issues The Market Place Recognitions

Mobile Technology
Welcoming Mobile Technology //T.H.E. Journal, Bridget McCrea, October 28, 2010// To ban or not to ban ― a high school in Ohio welcomes students to bring their devices on campus to take advantage of the institution's new WiFi service, both in and out of the classroom.

Why Mobile Won’t Matter //Next Generation, blog post by Dr. Michael M. Grant// Mobile devices, like cell phones, smart phones, and tablet computers, stand to make significant changes in the ways in which teaching and learning can happen. But there are some significant obstacles that have the potential to make mobile learning's impact nearly nil. The writer presents five reasons that mobile won't matter.

**Online Learning**
[|Ohio District to Test Calamity-Day Alternative] //Ed Week, Josh Jarman, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio, October 25, 2010// About 700 students in a rural school district in western Ohio will be guinea pigs for the rest of the state this winter when they use the Internet to connect to their classes during inclement weather.

Online Universities: Retention Rate Data //U. S. News, Brian Burnsed, October 22, 2010// These figures highlight the largest online institutions' ability to retain students.

Tomorrow’s College //The Chronicle, Marc Parry, October 31, 2010// The classroom of the future features face-to-face, online, and hybrid learning. And the future is here.

U. S. National Ed-Tech Action Plan Technology Plan (final version)
U.S. Releases National Ed-Tech Action Plan //Education Week, Ian Quillen, November 9, 2010// The U.S. Department of Education intends to pay for research to study online professional-collaboration communities for teachers and other educators. It also pledges to finance development of open-source educational resources and launch an initiative dedicated to defining and increasing educational productivity. Expect creation of a national online-learning registry. Download the report

Professional Development
Ed Week Open House November 10-14, and a Special Report on Teacher Learning //Education Week, November 10, 2010//

**Tools and Resources**
The FINAL:Top 100 Tools for Learning 2010 List //Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies (UK)// Compiled on 17 October 2010 from 545 contributions from learning professionals worldwide. Since 2007 the Centre has been building an annual //Top 100 Tools for Learning list// based on the contributions of learning professionals worldwide. Check out the accompanying article, Top Tools for Learning: Emerging Trends. And you can participate in selecting the 2011 list.

SAS® Curriculum Pathways //SAS Curriculum Pathways is designed to enhance student achievement and teacher// effectiveness by providing Web-based curriculum resources in all the core disciplines: English, math, science, social studies/history and Spanish, to educators and students in grades 8-14 in virtual schools, home schools, high schools and community colleges. Explore all the benefits and features of these free resources.

CLRN California Learning Resource Network Of course CLRN is aligned with California standards, but the resources are applicable to all states. SREB used to feature this quality site on EvaluTech. I decided to check it out again and discovered they are keeping up with current technology very well. Check out free [|Digital Textbook Reviews].

HippoCampus HippoCampus is a project of the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education (MITE). The goal of HippoCampus is to provide high-quality, multimedia content on general education subjects to high school and college students free of charge. Read about this free one-stop educational resource here. Be sure to check out HippoCampus on Facebook. HippoCampus will soon feature additional multimedia resources from Khan Academy, which we featured in this posting on November 1. (HippoCampus is an old friend, here.)

EDUCAUSE 2010 Resources //Converge, Tanya Roscorla, October 18, 2010// Features sessions, links and conversations from higher education EDUCAUSE IT conference.

Web 2.0 Tools for Math Educators //Digital Learning Environment // This is a continuing series on Web2.0 and other web-based tools for educators. This information is specific to math educators, but there is some crossover into science. Math educators will find a large number of useable interactive companion web sites for the teaching of math concepts and skills.

New Online Tool Helps Teachers Use Primary-source Documents ― Docs Teach eSchool News, October 18, 2010 The National Archives has created a new web site to help educators teach with primary-source documents. The site, called DocsTeach, not only lets teachers explore thousands of documents in a variety of media from the National Archives holdings, but it also includes online tools to help teachers combine these materials and create engaging history activities that students can access over the internet.

Five Lessons from the Nation’s Best Online Teacher //eSchool News, September 13, 2010// Teresa Dove of Florida Virtual School, 2010 Online Teacher of the Year (iNACOL and SREB sponsors) shares some of her successful practices that helps make her an effective teacher. Her first suggestion: //Keep the student at the center of every decision that needs to be made.//

This presentation focuses on the issues related to using social media in instruction. Attention, and Other 21st-Century Social Media Literacies //Howard Rheingold. EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 45, no. 5 (Sep/Oct 2010): 14–24 // The author focuses on five social media literacies: attention, participation, collaboration, network awareness, and critical consumption.

7 Fantastic Free Social Media Tools for Teachers //Mashable, October 31, 2010// Even when people say they want to incorporate social media, they don’t always know the best ways to do so. //Mashable// has collected seven of the best classroom tools for incorporating social media into your lesson plans. Accompanying videos are included on each one: Edu2.0; SymbalooEDU; Collaborize Classroom; Edublogs; Kidblog; Edmodo and Teacher Tube, School Tube and You Tube.

Education Week (Archived Webinars) Education Week (Chat Transcripts)

**More about eBooks**
CLRN California Learning Resource Network Check out Digital Textbook Reviews at CLRN.

The Masie’s Center Learning Perspectives 2010 (This is an eBook.) //Edited by Nigel Paine and Elliot Masie, The Masie Center, 2010.// The published by MASIE Center as an Open Source eBook, cover the wide range of viewpoints and perspectives on the changing nature of Learning. It includes articles from Masie Center’s 30 Under 30 Learning Leaders. Contributors are from Google, Intel, Lockheed Martin, Accenture, Alliance Pipeline, Farmers Insurance, Veterans Administration, Cleveland Clinic, CNN, Liberty Mutual, CIA, Luxottica and many other organizations.

The Alternative Media Access Center (AMAC) In 2010 AMAC was selected by the U.S. Department of Education to implement a Pilot Program for Course Material Rental. The program is named Student E-rent Pilot Project (STEPP). The AccessText Network, a national online database of alternative college materials, makes it quicker and easier to get the alternative electronic textbooks to students with disabilities such as blindness, dyslexia, or physical impairments that prevent the use of traditional hardcopy textbooks. The AccessText Network is operated by the Alternative Media Access Center (AMAC) in Atlanta and is a unit of Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute. The Network has more than 500 colleges and universities in 49 states enrolled to participate in the system. There are more than 360,000 textbook titles available through the Network.

Florida College Looks to Become eBook Pioneer Daytona State is among the first to commit to slashing textbook costs entirely with electronic alternatives. This 35,000-student institution and a former community college, has been moving toward a “100 percent” eBook campus since 2009, using electronic texts in English, computer science, and economics courses.

Washington's 2-year Colleges Out to Beat High Cost ofTextbooks //Seattle Times, Katherine Long, November 7, 2010// The state's community and technical colleges are leading the way with an ambitious new initiative: They're assembling previously published "open-source" textbooks and course materials for the 81 most popular classes at state two-year colleges. They use state and federal grant money to pay faculty members to assemble a top-notch textbook on the subject. Sell a digital version of the book for $30. Read more how this works.

**News from Creative Commons**
Public Domain Mark 1.0 Creative Commons has announced the release of its Public Domain Mark, a tool that enables works free of known copyright restrictions to be labeled in a way that allows them to be easily discovered over the Internet. It complements Creative Commons’ CC0 public domain dedication, which enables authors to relinquish their rights prior to the expiration of copyright.

Do Open Educational Resources Increase Efficiency? // Creative Commons, Timothy Vollmer, September 9th, 2010 // One of the questions people often ask about Open Educational Resources is “do they really increase efficiency?” Creative Commons has worked with many OER innovators, and their stories indicate that it does. Provide your comments.

**Best Practices**
School of One Boosts Individual Learning // eSchool News, Jenna Zwang, October 13, 2010 // Each middle school math student receives an individual learning plan and personalized instruction. Although an innovative school model in New York City called the School of One has just started its first full year of implementation, it already has garnered national attention for its middle school math program, which is being hailed as a pioneer for a new method of education based on each student’s individual learning experience.

Best Robotics Competition Announces Fall Workshops, New Partnership

The BEST ("Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology") Middle and High School Robotics Competition has released its schedule of workshops for fall 2010, which are aimed at welcoming more districts and schools worldwide into the 2011 competition. These take place later in November and in December.

**Privacy Issues**
State Data Systems Present Privacy Concerns // eSchool News, Jenna Zwang, October 29, 2010 // Creators of state data systems are trying to find the right balance between obtaining useful information and respecting data privacy.

**The Market Place**
Embanet and Compass Knowledge Group Announce Merger to Create the Premier Provider of Online Learning Services for Higher Education

**Recognitions**
Digital Community Colleges Survey; 2009 Winners //Converge Magazine, October 8, 2010//

Digital School District Survey; 2010 Winners //Converge Magazine, October 19, 2010//

Best of the Web and Digital Education Achievement Awards //Converge and the Center for Digital Education, September 7, 2010//