Informative Reading: Web in infancy, says Berners-Lee

Web in infancy, says Berners-Lee. Darren Waters. BBC. Online April 2007. (Tim Berners-Lee developed the web while working at Cern) … There are now 165 million different websites around the world … Making the web free to use had a vital role in spreading its use worldwide. … "What's exciting is that people are building new social systems, new systems of review, new systems of governance. My hope is that those will produce... new ways of working together effectively and fairly which we can use globally to manage ourselves as a planet." …

ICT Support: Gaming helps students hone 21st-century skills.

Gaming helps students hone 21st-century skills. Laura Devaney. eSchool News. Online April 2008. Environments such as Second Life can both stimulate and educate, experts say. …Online gaming can help students develop many of the skills they'll be required to use upon leaving school, such as critical thinking, problem solving, and creativity… Studies of the brain have pointed to data suggesting that repeated exposure to video games reinforces the ability to create mental maps, inductive discovery such as formulating hypotheses, and the ability to focus on several things at once and respond faster to unexpected stimuli. …

ICT Support: VoiceThreads: Extending the Classroom with Interactive Multimedia Albums

VoiceThreads: Extending the Classroom with Interactive Multimedia Albums. Edutopia.com. Online April 2008. Encourage student participation with accessible and engaging digital discussions. … VoiceThreads might best be described as interactive media albums. …online slide shows of images, documents, or videos that enable viewers to comment on any slide (or at any point in the video) by typing, recording an audio or video comment, or drawing on the image itself. Teachers have been early adopters of the easy-to-learn technology, which has led the company to launch Ed.VoiceThread.com, a secure site just for educators and their students. … more students participate more actively in digital discussions than in the classroom. "You don't have to be the loud one or the popular one. …

ICT Support for Learning: Bringing open resources to textbooks and teaching.

Bringing open resources to textbooks and teaching. Jimmy Wales and Rich Baraniuk. Online April 2008. … We want to infect you with the dream that anyone can become part of a new movement with the potential to change the world of education: A movement that can redefine forever how knowledge is created and used. Imagine a world where textbooks and other learning materials are available to everyone for free over the Web and at low-cost in print. … Late last year in Cape Town, we joined delegates from around the world as we reached a consensus on both the ideals and approaches to Open Education and committed them in the Cape Town Open Education Declaration … To read about the Cape Town Open Education Declaration, a statement of principle and strategy to promote open resources and teaching practices in education, go to: www.capetowndeclaration.org

Update from Industry: Adobe launches free web version of Photoshop

Adobe launches free web version of Photoshop. eSchool News. Online April 2008. Adobe Systems Inc., maker of the popular photo-editing software Photoshop, has launched a basic version of the program available free of charge online. … Photoshop Express… is easier to learn. Photoshop Express is completely web-based, so consumers can use it with any type of computer, operating system, and browser. … users can upload their photos and then edit them with Adobe’s simplified set of point-and-click controls for removing “red eye,” cropping, adjusting the brightness and color saturation, and other functions. Users can group photos into online albums and can post them to popular social-networking sites, all from within the web-based program.