October+12,+2011



=Worthy of Note: October 12, 2011=

SREB new //Policy on Point// report
The SREB region continues to make strides in creating strong, statewide education data systems that can help state leaders make more informed policy decisions and drive improvement in public education. SREB states have led the nation in implementing the 10 essential elements of effective data systems identified by the Data Quality Campaign (DQC), a national collaborative effort to boost data collection.

By 2010, 10 of the 16 SREB states had implemented all of the elements, and all SREB states report that they will have the 10 elements in place by the end of 2011.

In late September, SREB partnered with Data Quality Campaign to bring key leaders from SREB states together at an interactive forum in Atlanta to discuss challenges and next steps in boosting the capacity of their systems. SREB’s new //Policy on Point// report also looks at the region’s efforts to gather better information and describes barriers and actions states can take to maximize data use. Read it [|here] .

Raising Student Achievement
[|Project Will Pay for 8 States to Test and Improve Gauges of Student Learning] //Sara Hebel, The Chronicle, October 3, 2011 // The Association of American Colleges and Universities announced on Monday, October 3 a three-year, $2.2-million project that will help eight states test how well they are improving student learning and how they assess it.

The [|Quality Collaboratives] project, which is financed by the Lumina Foundation for Education, aims to help the states chart a path by which they can raise—and document—students' level of achievement while also improving college-completion rates. The eight states participating in the project are California, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Oregon, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

eBooks: Digital Tools
[|Not Sold (Yet) on Ebooks] //Barbara Fister, Inside Higher Ed, // //September 22, 2011 // The author says: I’m getting ready to be a panelist for Library Journal’s second virtual summit on ebooks. I have ten minutes to present some thoughts on marketing ebook collections in academic libraries. My fellow panelists will have //lots// to say in their ten minutes. One of the panelists is from a library that offers over a million ebooks, and we’re not talking free public domain titles. The other panelist will discuss how to cope with the various formats and digital rights management hurdles. When these panelists speak, they'll provide a lot of useful information, and I predict the audience will be furiously taking notes. I think with me, they’ll merely be furious. **Find out why.**

[|New Digital Tools Let Professors Tailor Their Own Textbooks for Under $20] //Alex Campbell, The Chronicle, October 9, 2011 // For his marketing course at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Daniel Flint wanted his students to read a white paper on public relations, a couple of case studies, an industry report, and a chapter of a forthcoming book.

So he created a textbook with just that—more than 100 pages of material in one customized package for his students. Find out how he did it.

Online Learning -- Distance Learning -- Web Access
//<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Articles in this New York Times series will look at the intersection of education, technology and business as schools embrace digital learning, //
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Grading the Digital School; The High-Tech Gamble **

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">First article in the series: [|In Classroom of Future, Stagnant Scores] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Matt Richtel, New York Times, September 4, 2011 // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">In Chandler, Arizona, a middle school English class, and the [|Kyrene School District] as a whole, offer what some see as a utopian vision of education’s future. Classrooms are decked out with laptops, big interactive screens and software that drill students on every basic subject. Under a ballot initiative approved in 2005, the district has invested roughly $33 million in such technologies. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Hope and enthusiasm are soaring here. But not test scores.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Since 2005, scores in reading and math have stagnated in Kyrene, even as statewide scores have risen.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">[|Is Technology in Class the Answer?] <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">These are letters in response to the above article.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Second article in the series: [|Inflating the Software Report Card] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Trip Gabriel and Matt Richtel, New York Times, October 8, 2011 // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Amid a classroom-based software boom estimated at $2.2 billion a year, debate continues to rage over the effectiveness of technology on learning and how best to measure it. But it is hard to tell that from technology companies’ promotional materials. The authors discuss Carnegie Learning’s flagship software, Cognitive Tutor, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Destination Reading, Pearson’s Waterford Early Learning, plus more….

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">[|“Learning at a Distance: Undergraduate Enrollment in Distance Education Courses and Degree Programs”] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">U. S. Department of Education, October 2011 // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">The U.S. Department of Education on Wednesday released an analysis of online education among U.S. undergraduates between 2000 and 2008, based on data from the National Center for Education Statistics. The study noted that the percentage of undergraduates taking at least one online course increased from 8 percent to 20 percent over that time, while the proportion enrolled in full distance programs rose from 2 percent to 4 percent. The rates among students studying computer science and business were higher in both cases (27 and 24 percent for individual courses; 8 and 6 percent for full programs). Adults with jobs and dependents also enrolled in online courses at a slightly higher-than-average rate, as did students with disabilities.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">[|The Coming Expansion of K12 Online Learning] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">John Sowash, EdReach, September 19, 2011 // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">K-12 online education has grown at a rate of 30% annually. Hybrid classrooms (a blend of online and face-to-face instruction) have also begun to gain traction in mainstream K-12 education. Despite these indicators, two factors continue to hold back the growth of online learning at the K-12 level……

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">[|Matters Issue Briefs] <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">An (Updated) Primer on Virtual Charter Schools: Mapping the Electronic Frontier, //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">National Association of Charter School Authorizers, September 2011 // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">Online and blended learning have grown dramatically in K-12 education in the past dozen years, creating countless new opportunities for students and educators. With more and more of these schools entering the charter sector, the need for guidance on how to authorize online charter schools is high. To address this, the NACSA is embarking upon a series of resources to assist authorizers, policymakers, and the charter community in addressing the challenges and opportunities for online and blended-learning charter schools. The first publication in this series is An (Updated) Primer on Virtual Charter Schools: Mapping the Electronic Frontier. Originally written by Gregg Vanourek and updated by the Evergreen Education Group, this Issue Brief defines concepts in online learning, including full-time and blended learning. It also discusses recent trends in growth and governance of various types of online learning and virtual charter schools.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">[|Lawmakers Call for Crackdown on Student-Aid Fraud in Online Programs] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Kelly Field, The Chronicle, September 28, 2011 // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">The top Democrats on the U.S. House of Representatives education committee are urging the Education Department to crack down on "criminals" who exploit the federal student-aid system, following the release of a report by the department's inspector general that detailed a sharp increase in fraud in distance-education programs.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">[|Lectures Are Homework in Schools Following Khan Academy Lead] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Sarah D. Sparks, Education Week, September 27, 2011 // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">The “flip” model—in which teachers introduce lectures online for students to access at home and then use class time for group practice and projects normally relegated to homework—is not unique to Khan Academy, however. Advocates of the approach say it allows students to work through meat-and-potatoes background on their own, giving teachers more time to go in depth through discussions, projects and other activities in class. This article takes a look at how this is happening in a 10th grade biology class in Lawrenceville, GA, at the [|Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science, and Technology].

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Read about another Khan pilot program in [|Los Altos School District], California.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">[|A Call for Opening Up Web Access at Schools] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Winnie Hu, New York Times, September 28, 2011 // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">The Internet has “made cooperation and collaboration inside and outside of class much better and faster; It’s really has become an integral part of education.” Debates are being generated to “fix” access to the Internet. This year there was the first [|Banned Websites Awareness Day], organized by the American Association of School Librarians as an offshoot of [|Banned Books Week].

Some Thoughts on Higher Ed
<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">[|What should colleges teach their students?] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Perla Trevizo, Chattanooga Times Free Press, October 1, 2011 // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">What every college graduate needs to know was the topic of Pulitzer Prize-winning author, professor and critic Louis Menand's talk at Sewanee: The University of the South recently. Menand was the speaker at the Sewanee's "How, Then, Shall We Live?" lecture series, which brings guests to explore the issues and questions in life that should be part of the discussion.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">If the more than 200 attendees thought the hour-long speech would provide an answer, they were wrong. Instead, he offered historical background about the current higher education system in the United States, including the development of general education programs, which he said is essential to move forward.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">"Answering the question is complicated because [the] history of higher education is complicated, that's the main point," he said. "Things happened 100 years ago we still live with that make it hard for us to answer the question." Most disciplines were created about 100 years ago, and faculty have not been taught to think about what subjects every student needs to know about.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">"What subjects are really important in the world today?" he asked. For every school it may be different, but there needs to be a conversation about it, he said.


 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">A personal note here: **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">I spend a lot of time on the bluff just two miles from the Sewanee campus, so I get to hear speakers of many varieties and statue. Yesterday I joined others to listen to environmental leader, Bill McKibben (Middlebury College and founder of []) who is on the campus for Founder’s Day. Inspirational. Enjoyed a few beautiful fall days up here; fog covers the mountain today.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">[|Cheap, Maybe Even Free, Higher Education] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Richard Vedder, The Chronicle, September 27, 2011 // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">The way to low-cost higher education lies largely outside the current establishment. We need new approaches, utilizing new technologies. American ingenuity is responding, and we now have several promising ways that Americans can learn cheaply at a “higher” level than what passes for knowledge and wisdom in today’s secondary schools. He outlines four innovations: [|The Saylor Foundation] courses, [|Straighter Line], [|The Great Courses] (The Teaching Company) and Twenty Million Minds Foundation (Dean Florez, [|The Twenty Million Minds Foundation].

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">[|Can Higher Education Be Fixed? The Innovative University] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">Steve Denning, Forbes, September 23, 2011 // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">This discussion is based on Clayton Christensen and Henry J. Eyring’s book, [|The Innovative University: Changing the DNA of Higher Education from the Inside Out]. It is the story of the two very different universities—Harvard and BYU-Idaho—and how they are addressing innovation in higher education.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">The two universities have an interesting link in that in 2005 the highly successful Dean of Harvard Business School, Kim Clark, surprised everyone by leaving his position at Harvard to become the president of [|BYU-Idaho]. BYU-Idaho? Most of his colleagues had never heard of it. The book tells how Clark went about reforming a traditional university, showing his successes as well as the roadblocks he ran into.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">[|The University of Wherever] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">Bill Keller, New York Times, October 2, 2011 // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">More discussion on disruptive higher education. It may be prestige universities opening branches completely across the U.S., as in Stanford in NY. What about Cornell? Or it may be making online courses available for free. Sebastian Thrun from Stanford has offered his course, //Introduction to Artificial Intelligence// course online and free of charge. Now he has 130,000 enrollees. The traditional university, in his view, serves a fortunate few, inefficiently, with a business model built on exclusivity. Thrun acknowledges that there are still serious quality-control problems to be licked. How do you keep an invisible student from cheating? How do you even know who is sitting at that remote keyboard? Will the education really be as compelling — and will it last? Thrun believes there are technological answers to all of these questions, and some of them are being worked out already by other online frontiersmen.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">“If we can solve this,” he said, “I think it will disrupt all of higher education.”

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">[|Episode 88: Why Universities Should Experiment With ‘Massive Open Courses’] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Jeffrey R. Young, The Chronicle, October 6, 2011 // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">George Siemens, who leads Athabasca University’s Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute, makes the case for why colleges should experiment with inviting tens of thousands of students to participate in their courses free online. The model poses challenges to traditional education models, but will it work for teaching Chaucer?

Information Literacy
<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">[|National Information Literacy Awareness Month] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">National Forum on Information Literacy // <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; text-decoration: none;"><span class="wiki_link_ext">October is National Information Literacy Awareness month. In today’s digital world, people who are information literate know how to find, access, and critically evaluate information to improve their health, their environment, their education and workplace performance.

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; text-decoration: none;">Find numerous <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">[|NIFL resources] <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; text-decoration: none;"> on Information Literacy. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Check out this [|21st Century Skills graphic].

Social Media
<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">[|Twitter, Facebook and Co. – good for teens and the First Amendment?] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Knight Foundation, September 15, 2011 // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">While social media have been blamed for teen ills from narcissism to cyberbullying, a new study offers an inspiring perspective: as social media use has grown in the United States, so has students’ appreciation for the First Amendment. The national study was released today to coincide with the celebration of Constitution Day. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation funded it. Read about the findings.

New Initiatives from DC
<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">[|New Initiatives Signal Shift in U.S. Ed-Tech Leadership] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Ian Quillen, Education Week, September 26, 2011 // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">In what appears to be the latest moves in a shift of emphasis from financing to facilitating education technology, the U.S. Department of Education and the Federal Communications Commission this month both have helped launch initiatives that were billed as major breakthroughs but involved the two organizations as agents of collaboration, not primary funders. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski attended as Philadelphia-based Comcast Corp. officially announced its [|Internet Essentials]program, which will give families of students who receive free school lunches access to broadband Internet service for $9.95 a month, before taxes.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">The week before, at a Sept.16 White House briefing, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan launched the Digital Promise center, a congressionally authorized clearinghouse dedicated to identifying, supporting, and publicizing the most effective education technology innovations.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">The Education Department will provide about $500,000 in startup funding for the center, with additional money coming from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">“Digital Promise will serve as convener or facilitator, and as potential funder of advanced and/or directed development,” Karen Cator, the director of the department’s office of educational technology, said in an email. “In the circumstances that learning technologies are effective for improving outcomes, they should be an allowable purchase under a variety of federal funding streams.”

Education Statistics
<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">[|Projections of Education Statistics to 2020] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">NCES, U. S. Department of Education // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">This edition of //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Projections of Education Statistics // provides projections for key education statistics, including enrollment, graduates, teachers, and expenditures in elementary and secondary public and private schools, as well as enrollment and degrees conferred at postsecondary degree-granting institutions. Included are national data on enrollment and graduates for the past 15 years and projections to the year 2020. Also included are state-level data on enrollment in public elementary and secondary schools and public high schools from 2002, with projections to 2020. This report is organized by the level of schooling with sections 1, 2, 3, and 4 covering aspects of elementary and secondary education and sections 5 and 6 covering aspects of postsecondary education.

Accessibility
<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">[|Online Accessibility Resources Roundup] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Eric Stoller, Inside Higher Ed, // //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">October 9, 2011 // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">The post (originally prepared by Kathryn Magura) includes a link to an ADA resource page, information about the seven principles of universal design, and a link to MIT's resource guide on web accessibility.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">[|8 Simple Tips To Improve Accessibility] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Dian Schaffhauser, THE Journal, September 22, 2011 // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Adding a few simple accessibility features to your school's Web site will transform the experience for those with vision or hearing impairment--and everyone else as well.

Common Core -- K-12 and Higher Ed Together
<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">[|College and K-12 Leaders in 7 States to Collaborate on Common Standards] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Inside Higher Ed, September 23, 2011 // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">College and school leaders in seven states have been chosen to work together in teams to ensure that the Common Core State Standards in mathematics and English are implemented in the most effective ways. The states -- Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, Oregon, Tennessee and Wisconsin -- were chosen by the three groups that make up the College Readiness Partnership: the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and the State Higher Education Executive Officers. The partnership hopes that the strategies identified by the seven state groups will serve as models for other states.

Just Articles of Interest
<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">[|India announces $35 tablet computer for rural poor] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">eSchool News, Staff, October 5, 2011 // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">The nation's goal is eventually to see every student have a low-cost device for learning. Following through on a promise made last year, India introduced an inexpensive tablet computer on Oct. 5, saying the device would deliver modern technology to the countryside to help lift villagers out of poverty. Developer Datawind says it can make about 100,000 units a month at the moment, not nearly enough to meet India’s hope of getting its 220 million children online.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">[|Fifteen education documentaries that need to be made] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">Meris Stansbury, eSchool News, October 7, 2011 // //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">eSchool News //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;"> recently asked readers: “If you could choose a topic to be the focus of a movie/documentary about education, what would it be and why?”

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">After receiving an overwhelming response, suggesting there’s incredible demand for other documentaries about U.S. public education, we’ve chosen the top 15 ideas proposed by readers—based on the number of responses each topic garnered, the pertinence of the subject, and the creativity of the response.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">Your comments on the list are welcome.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">[|The Library on a Massive Scale] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">Bridget McCrea, Campus Technology, October 5, 2011 // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">This article caught my eye because of the stunning numbers here.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">What do you get when you combine the collections from 60 major research institutions into a single, digitized library? A comprehensive collection, of course, but also a major headache for the people who have to collect, organize, preserve, and publish the information in a user-friendly manner for students, professors, and the general public.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">That's the headache that John Wilkin, associate university librarian for the [|University of Michigan's] Library Information Technology (LIT) department and executive director of [|HathiTrust]at U-M has had. At press time, HathiTrust's digitized collection included 9.71 million total volumes, more than 5.15 million book titles, 256,000 serial titles, 3.4 billion pages, and 435 TB of information.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">[|Colleges struggle with students' data demand] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Tim Barker, stlToday.com, St. Louis, September 26, 2011 // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">The incidents described here are a reminder of the challenges faced by campuses nationwide striving to keep up with the needs of increasingly mobile students and faculty.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">[|George Lucas On The Best Fix For K-12 Education] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Luisa Kroll, Forbes Magazine, September 21, 2011 // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">More than 1.2 million students drop out of school every year in the U.S. American children rank 31st in math among 65 industrialized countries. Sixty-eight percent of eighth graders can't read at grade level, and most will never catch up. We asked billionaires on The Forbes 400 list, as well as our own contributors, for their best ideas for fixing K-12 education in the U.S.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Hollywood director [|George Lucas], who says his own experience in public schools was “quite frustrating,” calls education the foundation of our democracy and says that as a father, “I’ve felt the imperative to transform schooling even more urgently.”


 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">Q **//<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">: What is your best idea for reforming K-12 education right now? //
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">A **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">: Project-based learning.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">He cites three examples and to see video profiles of these schools and more, you can visit [|Edutopia.org]. Read other [|Best Ideas For Fixing K-12 Education]

More on QR Codes
<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">[|QR Codes Explained by Common Craft] <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">An introduction to QR Code technology which makes the real world clickable like a website.

Comparisons
<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">[|How the iPhone 4S Stacks Up Against the Smartphone Competition [CHART]] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Christina Warren, Mashable, October 7, 2011 // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Compare with [|iPhone 4], the [|Droid Bionic], the [|Samsung Galaxy S II] and the [|BlackBerry Torch 9850].

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">[|Compare Kindle Fire with Apple iPAD] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">New York Times, September 28, 2011 //

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">[|How Is The Kindle Fire So Cheap?] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">Matthew Yglesias, Think Progress, September 29, 2011 // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Think of it as a loss-leader?

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">[|Amazon's New Kindles and Higher Ed: 5 Questions] <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed, September 28, 2011
 * 1) <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Will Devices and Content Merge?
 * 2) <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Will Course Pack Providers Play?
 * 3) <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">The Academic Library Question
 * 4) <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">The Underwhelming Media Content Question
 * 5) <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">The Learning Management System Question

Webinar Next Week
<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">[|The Pros & Cons of BYOD and School-Supplied] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">Tech&Learning, September 1, 2011 //

<span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">NEXT WEEK! <span style="color: #000066; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;"> Tuesday October 18, 2011 | 10 am PST / 1 pm EST <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">There will be an opportunity for questions following the presentation.
 * <span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">The pros and cons of both mobile learning programs **

Resources
<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">[|This Is The New Delicious] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Edudemic // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Delicious has always been a popular bookmarking service for teachers. However, Yahoo did not want to keep supporting the site so it essentially sold it to YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen in April. Chad and Steve have done a total refresh of the site and, well, it looks beautiful.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">I have a personal interest in Delicious. It makes preparation for these Worthy of Note reports easy to manage. [|Evernote] would work but not as easily as I have constructed Delicious to work.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">[|The 35 Best Web 2.0 Classroom Tools Chosen By You] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">Edudemic // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">If you’re not an avid follower of #edchat on Twitter, you may be missing out on a great opportunity to learn about some new Web 2.0 tools that are currently being used in classrooms around the world. That’s because @ chickensaltash posed a simple question to the PLN and there has been a huge swell of support as hundreds of people have jumped in to answer the question about which 5 Web 2.0 tools teachers are using in classrooms. See the [|Top 10 Lists] in Edudemic.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">[|How Stuff Works] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">Minnesota Learning Commons // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">The HowStuffWorks free app gives you instant access to an extensive collection of articles and podcasts right on your iPhone or iPod Touch. It also you gives you direct access to famous podcasters and HowStuffWorks experts! You can Tweet with the HowStuffWorks crew while you listen. This information is being shared with the understanding MnLC does not endorse any specific product.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">[|International Children’s Digital Library] <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">The mission of the International Children's Digital Library Foundation (ICDL Foundation) is to support the world's children in becoming effective members of the global community - who exhibit tolerance and respect for diverse cultures, languages and ideas -- by making the best in children's literature available online free of charge. The Foundation pursues its vision by building a digital library of outstanding children's books from around the world and supporting communities of children and adults in exploring and using this literature through innovative technology designed in close partnership with children for children. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">The [|ICDL Foundation] is a non-profit corporation.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Need to cite a source; try [|Easy Bib]

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">[|SLIME School Library Media Kids] <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">A great resource for kids. There are lots about books, authors, games, reference, search engines and more.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">[|Paper.li - Turn Your Twitter, Facebook, and RSS Feeds Into Online Newspapers] //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">Oklahoma Career Tech Testing Center, October 6, 2011 // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">[|Paper.li], the product of Swiss startup SmallRivers, allows you to easily scan the hundreds of valuable articles shared daily by the people you follow on [|Twitter], [|Facebook], and through RSS feeds. Articles are organized into topics, summarized, the multimedia is extracted and tweets are re-integrated into context. Paper.li could have great applications for classrooms and also for businesses as a way of sharing information without blogging. Read more…