Odd article in the Chronicle about Michael Wesch, who apparently just discovered that technology alone is not enough to make a great class: "Mr. Wesch is not swearing off technology—he still believes you can teach well with YouTube and Twitter. But at a time when using more interactive tools to replace the lecture appears to be gaining widespread acceptance, he has a new message. It doesn't matter what method you use if you do not first focus on one intangible factor: the bond between professor and student."

Audrey Watters, in Inside Higher Ed: "But it's not just the Nineties that we need to think about. It's the Eighties, the Seventies, and the Sixties. See, education technology is hardly new. The idea of having technology change teaching and learning isn't some sort of revolutionary insight that folks have suddenly stumbled upon."

Nice post by Kyle Stedman on new media literacies. Bottom line for teachers: "[I]lliterate people need training and practice in literacy to become effective in contexts where those literacies matter. And just as traditional text literacy can be taught, so can these other literacies, both through immersion in contexts where those literacies are used effectively (like a U.S. citizen moving to Japan to learn the language, or a seventy-five-year-old woman who spends hours online every day to learn the conventions used by effective websites) and through instruction from experts."

Three undergraduate students reimagine the learning management system and create something that looks nothing like Blackboard. (Hooray!) It's only available at Penn right now, but it will be interesting to see where this goes.

Another NY Times piece by Matt Richtel that chronicles the evils of technology: "Students have always faced distractions and time-wasters. But computers and cellphones, and the constant stream of stimuli they offer, pose a profound new challenge to focusing and learning."

Interesting screencast from FunnyMonkey, complete with technical notes, links to modules, etc.

A bold claim from Anna Debenham, via Matt Thompson: "[W]eb education in too many schools—both at the high school and university level—is out of date, lousy, and losing students. So much so that it's threatening our countries' digital and economic futures."

"Kay says the education system has squandered 30 years of technology in classrooms. He likens the modern factory educatory system to a monkey with a microscope. The monkey looks at its reflection in the microscope’s barrel but doesn’t look through the eyepiece — it utterly misses the point."

"Educators should constantly be experimenting with new technologies and pedagogies, refining their learning approach to constantly changing contexts."

Purdue's new "social learning environment centered on the classroom."