Thursday, January 10, 2013

Dispelling Myths, Whither the E-Book Price War?. . . . .and More!


Dispelling the Myths About 1:1 Environments
Many talking heads, whether on Twitter or at conferences, feel the need to validate technology integration by deeming it necessary for the next phase of students' lives.  . . . . For many students, they will travel off to college, sit in a giant auditorium and listen to lectures. Most of their assessments will be done on Scantron forms and offer no project-based alternative. The most technology that students will encounter in college will be email, word processing . . . and social media outlets for socializing.

Little Sign of a Predicted E-Book Price War
“A lot of these e-book consumers aren’t behaving like lab rats at a feeder bar,” the analyst said. “We have found that at any given time about a third of e-book users haven’t bought a single title in the last 12 months. I have a feeling it is the digital equivalent of the ‘overloaded night stand’ effect; someone isn’t going to buy any more books until they make a dent in reading the ones they have already acquired.”

Creative Commons Photo by NASA
Student Research: The Right Information at the Right Time
If you can learn the art of the keyword search, along with a handful of other Google tricks and tips, you can usually find what you need, or at least where to look next. But the whole "universe at your fingertips" is unhelpful in this sense: what you'll actually find when you look is strangely limited.

6 Must-Download iPad Apps for Tutors
There are a lot of teaching tools out there you could use during your tutoring sessions, but none is as portable, as powerful and useful as the iPad. Here are a few must-download iPad apps for tutors that you can use to make your tutoring sessions more stimulating for your student without losing site of the traditionalist inside you.

5 Reasons Why BYOD is a Bad Idea
When I first read about the idea of BYOD programs in schools, my initial reaction was that it is certainly one way to get technology in the hands of all students in a school or class without having to find lots of budgetary funds to do it. . . . While the financial incentive is an attractive upside to this idea, it doesn’t take long for a technologist to start to realize that the drawbacks inherent in this approach make it highly questionable.

NASA Earth As Art 
In 1960 the United States put its first Earth-observing environmental satellite into orbit around the planet. Over the decades these satellites have provided invaluable information, and the vantage point of space has provided new perspectives on Earth. This app celebrates Earth’s aesthetic beauty in the patterns, shapes, colors, and textures of the land, oceans, ice, and atmosphere.

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