Students Mobile | Image Source : Mashable.com

The modern American school faces rough challenges. Budget cuts have caused ballooning class sizes,  many teachers struggle with poorly motivated students, and in many schools a war is being waged on distracting technologies. In response, innovative educators are embracing social media to fight back against the onslaught of problems. Technologies such as Twitter and Skype offer ideal solutions as inexpensive tools of team-based education.

Why force students to yawn over a textbook when a real-life native speaker is only a Skype call away? At Marquette University, Spanish students hone their foreign language skills with frequent webcam chats with their English-learning counterparts in South America.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of using Skype is the radical increase in motivation. A whopping 85.3% of Janet’s students kept in touch with their digital pen-pals outside of the classroom through Facebook.

While many schools around the country have declared all-out war on mobile devices, Wiregrass High School took a decidedly different approach, integrating cell phones into the entire educational experience. Students exchange questions and answers with their teachers via SMS and browse classroom blogs for additional instruction. Moreover, as an efficient collaborative tool, students can quickly trade notes or take a snapshot of the blackboard for later studying.

Many universities have internal e-mail systems and message boards. But getting students to routinely check these systems for updates can be a chore. As a college teacher myself, my students have been required to participate in group message boards, which is a poor substitute for genuine intellectual curiosity. As a solution, Leicester University in the UK turned to Twitter, hoping that the popular micro-blogging technology would encourage collaboration outside of class. Read more ……

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Apple Netbook | Image Source : Gizmodo.com

BAYBORO — Pamlico County Primary School students will have some of the latest technology at their fingertips when iPod touch devices from Apple Inc. are delivered to the school.

The Pamlico County Board of Education unanimously approved an informal bid on Saturday to purchase the devices and other Apple technology using part of a $1.25 million grant that came from Enhancing Education Though Technology and American Recovery and Reinvestment Act program dollars. Read more ……

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Image Source : Interawesome.com

TED Talks provide viewers with insightful and thought-provoking commentary and ideas. The contents of many TED Talks can be directly or indirectly applied to your classroom practices. While you’re on holiday break, you may want to watch one or all of these TED Talks. If you’re interested in learning more about using TED Talks in your classroom, check out Teaching With TED.

TED Talks directly about education.

• John Wooden on Winning vs. Success.
• Clifford Stoll Teaches Physics to Eighth Graders.
• Don’t Eat the Marshmallow
• Bill Gates Talks About Mosquitoes, Malaria, and Education.
• David Merrill Introduces Siftables
• Tom Wujec – 3 Ways the Brain Creates Meaning.
• Jimmy Wales – The Birth of Wikipedia.
• Julian Treasure – 4 Ways Sound Affects Us.

• How Cell Phones, Twitter, and Facebook Can Make History
• Matthew White Gives the Euphonium a New Voice
• Pranav Mistry – The Thrilling Potential of Sixth Sense Technology
• Benjamin Zander – On Music and Passion
• Dan Pink – The Surprising Science of Motivation
• David Pogue on the Music Wars

Read more ……

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Source : eSchoolNews.com

The automobile, moving pictures, personal computers, cell phones, and social networks—all of these technologies, once considered frivolous, have made such a huge impact on our culture that our daily lives would change dramatically without them.

Could 3-D video be next?

It’s a question made relevant by new improvements (and falling costs) that soon could make 3-D video commonplace in theaters, homes, and even schools.

Owing to rapid advances in technology, 3-D video already is taking cinema by storm—and mainstream use of 3-D video in the home and elsewhere isn’t far off. What’s more, advocates of 3-D video say it has the potential to revolutionize the way students learn.  Read more ……

How Shockwave 3-D Technology Works

In the past year or so, you may have heard about a new technology that lets you manipulate 3-D images over the Internet. Many Web sites have been using this sort of software for a while, but it has mostly remained a niche market due to a lack of universal 3-D viewer programs.

Macromedia, in conjunction with Intel, NxView and others, hopes to bring this technology to many more Web users with the newest versions of the Shockwave player and the Shockwave authoring program Director. Read more ……

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Invitation will be sent to non-developers to its much-anticipated real-time communication platform.

It’s not even released and it’s generating more hype than almost any other web product in recent memory. The reason stems from its game-changing features and their potential applications on business, education, customer service, email, social networking, and more.

So with Wave on the way, we wanted to explore some of the potential of Google’s upcoming product. We have a few of our own ideas and included some from Google Wave developers, but more than anything, we want your ideas, so be sure to leave your great Google Wave invention in the comments! Who knows, maybe we’ll feature them in the future!

Ways Google Wave Could Change the Web World !!!

1. Wave-Powered Forums
2. Wave-powered Commenting System
3. Wave-Based Content Management System
4. Wave for Customer Support
5. Wave for Education

Source : Google Wave

Based on the Video  above;

• By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network
• Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
• 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media

• 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
• 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum

• 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?

• Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen

• 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
• 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands

• 25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video…on their phone

• According to Jeff Bezos 35% of book sales on Amazon are for the Kindle when available

• 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.

The future of education is online. The old idea that the local expert on physics (the physics teacher) should teach physics is exactly that — an old idea. The best and the brightest can now teach physics to everybody.

The old idea that teaching means standing up and talking while students take notes is another antiquated idea. All courses at all levels, from elementary school through college, can and will be converted into “learn by doing” courses that take true advantage of the simulation capacity of computers to provide life like “doing” scenarios mentored by the world’s experts.

Naturally, this will cause a big change in what goes on in the schools. We won’t want children staying home, taking courses on computers, and never having real, live contact with other people. They need to learn how to communicate with each other, how to deal with real people problems, and how to grow as people. So, while the more academic subjects are learned online, we’ll need teachers to help guide students in the more human areas. The introduction and acceptance of the new online courses will not come overnight. In five years, students may only be taking a few of their courses online, but within 20 years the change will be dramatic. Nearly all of today’s academic subjects will be taught in this way because such courses will be more interesting, more engaging, more individualized, and more diverse.

Teachers will no longer be content providers. Rather, they will be discussion leaders, advisors, tutors, field trip leaders — always helping their students build interpersonal skills while they pursue their academic subjects.

Schools will become more like summer camps, teaching kids what they need to know about functioning in society, dealing with issues like teamwork, handling stress, getting people to like you, and other subjects critical to adolescents. School will be fun and interesting.

Roger C. Schank is director of the Institute for the Learning Sciences at Northwestern University and a leader in the field of artificial intelligence and multimedia-based interactive training. He is also chairman and chief technology officer of Cognitive Arts Corp. Read more ……

Note:

Why good information and intellectual service is needed in organisation. Think !!!