education & tech

I am writing on this blog for more than four years and I've read many blogs, surprisingly I've never felt the necessity to write on these events that are created to support those bloggers, educators and writers, who stepped forward on determined issues, as in our case the Education.

Today, while reading on Disrupting Class by Clayton Christensen, I happened to check out his links and what I've discovered was an excellent blog written by NYC Educator. After this long period, writing and reading blogs on education and technology, I thought no more blogs needed to be find. How wrong I was.

An interesting aspect of Carnivals of Education we came across, while reading NYC Educator, was the number of carnivals these blogs had patronized during month of July. All three pages we will refer to, are getting close to the two hundreds of voiced links and post on education, in a particular sequence! And I even wrote a single post on these matters. Why do you think is important to subscribe to this kind of events? Or, is it irrelevant that you might to skip it and keep moving?

Carnival of Education, July 2008

Carnival of Education, 178 Edition. Held by Educator Blog.

Carnival of Education, 179th Edition. Held by Scheiss Weekly; and,

Carnival of Education, 180th Edition. Held by Steve Spangler.


There are some precious jewels to grab among these carnivals. Surely you will benefit from at least one of them.

If you want to receive my future posts regularly for FREE, please subscribe in a reader or by e-mail. If you have concerns, Contact Me at anytime.

Some Not So-Good News About U.S. Education - Survey shows tendency from fair to poor

I am pretty sure this is not science and shows only an statistical inference but, obviously, something is happening,( no just now) with the U.S. Education. How come half of Americans may think, educational system is doing only a fair to poor job of preparing students for college and the workplace, even though education ranks behind only the economy and gas prices as a top issue for Americans.

The other half? They think education system is falling behind that of other countries, and six in 10 said the quality of American schools has declined in the past 20 years.

Science or Technology...?.

It seems extrange we still have to discuss these things today. At the same time, it's impossible to just skip it and just...move on.

Help David to complete his post and help educational community to clarify such a philosophical dilema: "I am not certain that Computing can ever be a science in that it does not have a body of fundamental knowledge independent of other sciences. It is a very important technology, perhaps the most important at the present time and thus deserves academic study."

The human brain is arguably God’s greatest creation – it has the ability to continue growing in intelligence and sponging up knowledge for as long as you live. All you need are the catalysts called enthusiasm and a willingness to learn. Though we are inundated with phrases, nuances, pronunciations and words from one or more languages from the time we’re born, there’s no doubt that if we up and moved to a different country where a totally new tongue is spoken, we’d learn the local lingo in just a couple of months.

Being a linguist offers various advantages – at work, you can interact with people from other cultures more freely, on vacation you can fit right in if you speak the language of the locals, and of course, generally speaking, you can show off your multiple tongues in the presence of the opposite sex.

The best way to pick up a new language is to be surrounded by people who speak only in that tongue at all times – desperation and a sense of survival force you to learn the lingo or be left out. But there’s no need to move to Rome in order to be able to speak fluent Italian, not with Second Life around. The virtual world has made headlines for various things, one of them being the ease with which foreign languages are taught and picked up by interested students.

The advantages to learning a new tongue on Second Life are many:

- The courses are more cost-effective than those offered in the real world. Some of them are even free of cost.
- There are instructional videos which teach you the right pronunciation and diction, things you would find hard to pick up from a book of phrases.
- Voice chat options allow you to correct your pronunciation.
- You can interact with other students and probably set up a study group so you can practice what you’ve learned using other members.
- And best of all, there are virtual cities that communicate entirely in foreign languages. So if you’re learning French, hang around a French community and practice what you’ve learned. It’s the next best thing to (and much more economical than) moving to France!

That Second Life has 5,000 language students and 1,000 instructors, numbers which are growing by the day, is itself a testimonial to how this application which began life as a virtual game, morphed into one of the best online, interactive educational tools of our time.

(*)Sarah Scrafford is an industry critic, as well as a regular contributor on the subject of Capella University review. She invites your questions, comments and freelancing job inquiries at her email address: sarah.scrafford25@gmail.com.

The author of the post we are going to quote, ask us for a link. We went to his blog and checked out his contents and what we've found was the chronicle of a certain private school in Sydney (and anywhere else where we've got teens or schoolers):

Difference between Teacher and Educator

"A number of 12-year-old girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the bathroom.

After they put on their lipstick they would press their lips to the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints.

Every night the maintenance man would remove them and the next day the girls would put them back.

Finally the principal decided that something had to be done .

She called all the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the maintenance man.

She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian who had to clean the mirrors every night - ( you can just imagine the yawns from the little princesses).

To demonstrate how difficult it had been to clean the mirrors, she asked the maintenance man to show the girls how much effort was required.

He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it.

Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror ..."

This post is written for someone who really loves photography and we teachers might have a lift from it. Now that all kids, teens and even baby boomers what to play around with photography.

Title say all: 60 Photography Links You Can't Live Without.

There is a great tool which help us analyzes RSS/blog feeds. AideRSS, allows you to determine the popularity of each of your posts according to the number of comments, Diggs, Del.icio.us bookmarks, backlinks and clickthroughs. Although, as for us, one of the most useful features of AideRSS for bloggers is the ability to analyze the popularity of items in your own blog feed!

Here are our top 20 posts all times.(Thanks to bloggerbuster.com)

1. Please, your Majesty don't get angry. [link]
2. Holly Jobe: The changing expectations of learning. [Link]
3. Comics: Friends 2.0 [Link]
4. Steve Jobs: Following his Macworld watchers. [Link]
5. The future in technology is here. [Link]
6. Merry Christmas to all of you. [Link]
7. Dealing with cellphones in our classrooms. [Link]
8. Academic Social Networks, academics are wary people. [Link]
9. Why the so popular Scoble isn't getting comments on his blog as before. [Link]
10. Social filtering, the new great challenge. [Link]
11. Find out who's the one that couldn't finish college and is rich and famous![Link]
12. Firefox, downloading Free Access Plus. [Link]
13. HC: MacCain will 'Gut Obama like fish'. [Link]
14. Jump onto Technorati train. [Link]
15. Support Freddom of Speech. [Link]
16. Best Flickr Photo during 2007. [Link]
17. Edublogs.org is a great place to start a classroom blog. [Link]
18. Why Technorati ranking is also important. [Link]
19. Experiences: An online continuig education case. [Link]
20. How to cheat schools under Internet filters. [link]

Technorati: education&tech, education+tech, top20

Twingly.com automatically lets you view what blogs are talking about and every article that is published by them it's pinged back to newspapers; in this approach Publico (a Portuguese newspaper) compiles the trackbacks to all blogs linking to its website.

People in charge of edition of Publico are happy with the use of Twingly because they've seen their comments to come up. Portuguese and Spanish media are following the website in hope to get the reward. Check out for example what's going on with ciberjornalismo.com or ecuaderno.com

Buzz that Publico has generated it's because of the results. A quick and easy way to connect the blogosphere to traditional media and benefit mutually from traffic and the possibility of increasing interactivity and conversation to the traditional media on the Internet that give credit to weblogs.

Can be this implemented in globalvoices?

Technorati: publico, newspapers, portuguese

I've reading lots lately and no time to publish on this beautiful place, our blog. The american politics is becoming so interesting as to see who's going to compete for the White House position, next to McCain. It seems to me the political machinery from Clinton's family is lost. At this point, is Obama who's the front runner; I might be wrong but let's see what happens after March 4th.

In the mean time why not give it a try. Entrecard allowed to meet very interesting bloggers at the same time we've got some visibility on the net.

I won't provide detailed information here about all the Photoshop Brushes but I would like to introduce to you a very resourceful blog and webpage where you can find all (or almost all) information about graphics and illustration explained in a easy way in tutorial and how-to explanations that even the inexperienced can catch it in a fly.

Photoshop is so far, the most popular graphics editing program. Produced by Adobe, its latest version is CS3. Having hundreds of plug-ins, brushes and gradient packs, Photoshop is increasing in utility every day.

Why am I writing about graphics-illustrations.com? The answer is the picture below.

Silvia is the person behind all this work, she's Croatian and before establishing graphic-illustrations. com she was writing for blogspot hosting blogs but even when she's concentrated in her page she also holds two more pages Blogffiliate, Squidoo Photoshop Brushes and BSilvia.com where she continues working with Photoshop graphics (over 600 dollars you might need to get it) and where tallking about her home country, she points out:

...for many Croatians it’s just not easy to go to Croatia, spend time to find the old roots. And even if you go there for a few days the weather is lousy, it rains or it’s too foggy to make a nice shot of your ancestors place.

Silvia was holding a contest for Entrecard Cards and still is offering for free some over here. And that's how we met Silvia and how she was able to design some Entrecards, as that on top right of our page.

She's all into business but we haven't paid a buck and we are not being paid for this review. It's the quality of her job and the social networking which compel us to write about Silvia. She's updating her page every Monday and Thursday, so stay tuned and in the mean time check out her newest Valentine Photo Contest!

Technorati: photoshop, brushes, graphics, graphic+illustrations, how-to, tutorials, blogging

It may sound hilarious but it's truth. We are open for feed exchange, just leave a note or email us your interest. I've found quite interesting what Kumowai has posted today and I think you might be interested in some exchange, as far as your content is good, related, and traffic are alike ours. Why not give it a try.

If you re-post it, please mention the name of the blog where you've found it. Let's make it viral. Yes, I know, nothing to be with education and technology but what about if we don't have readers? We don't collect money, our only single satisfactions id to be read or to be seen. Don't you?

Here, the transcription of Toast & Egg & Me:

Would you like to exchange feed?
Exchange feed please.
Do you want to exchange feed?
Come and exchange feed.
You subscribe my feed, I subscribe your feed.
Please exchange feed with me.
I hope to exchange feed with you.
Can you please subscribe to my feed?
Feel free to subscribe to my feed.
Subscribe to my feed if you like the post.
Let us exchange feed.

Small bloggers can also have a descent readership!! Don't just pile feeds as you can see in the right corner of this post. Share it, spread it, enjoy it.

Thanks to our dear RugJeff's Blog. it came to our knowledge a new program called Qassia. We all bloggers are looking for comments, links and maybe money for the professional or so called A-bloggers.

"Qassia is fantastic because you get credit for sharing your intelligence. The more credit you earn, the better your websites will rank. And you get a backlink to your website for every intel you add - only Qassia gives you unlimited quality backlinks."

So, why not give it a try. Sign up, validate your email and start sharing your vast knowledge right now. You can also visit our newly created profile at Qassia.com.

But I just remember something, blogosphere is about contents, it's about social networks; nothing to be with the lazysphere. If you still haven't word about what Steve Rubel is claiming, please head up to his page:

The Lazysphere... rather than create new ideas or pen thoughtful essays, they simply glom on to the latest news with another "me too" blog post. Their goal is largely to land on Techmeme and sometimes Digg - perhaps Google in an archival/Long Tail perspective. These sites - and Twitter too - have perpetuated a lot of lackadaisical writing. The Attention Crash is another factor at work here. People don't have as much time to think.

Will you keep up with the Lazzysphere? Will you please, start producing rather than consuming info? Rubel just spill the beans!

One thing almost all parents lack, is the great oportunity parents have to visit their son's schools and what a better opportunity to go and have meeting and chats with the teachers during the American Educacion Week scheduled to beging on November, 12th.

You should pay attention to this report: Childrens, Family, and Media: A Benchmark where the awarded Michael Cohen Group(Research & Consulting) arrive to interesting conclusions related to the Digital Divide in American Schools. A round of questions were answered during a chat-interview conducted by Janelle Callahan, associate of the EPE Research Center. What would it be you best answer for the following question:

Far too often teachers and school leaders assume that students have access to computers and the internet at home. Typically, homework and projects now require easy access to computers and the internet (even in the primary grades). Without it, low income students are "left behind." Not only do they earn poorer grades, they become "marginalized" early on...because they recognize that they are different. Can you suggest some realistic solutions, given the reality that income still dictates whether or not resources are available in homes and communities. -Annette Clayton, Lead School Social Worker, Newport News Public Schools

Everyone outside US thinks we here don't have poverty or social issues, that everything seen and taught in the American society should be imitated. Far from the real thing! The Cohen Group points: "this study serves as a benchmark, allowing us to measure change over time for years to come. Identifying change in dynamics such as media ownership, media use, and preferred content provides an invaluable tool for researchers, policy makers,educators, and others."

The results as they say, confirm mine/ours collective sense that media is increasingly integral to family and personal life. These are the five outstanding research conclusions:

1) A wide range of media and media technologies are owned and utilized by families
and young children.
2) Families and individuals at every economic level participate in media and
technology ownership and use.
3) There are differences in the incidence of ownership by income level for some
media, particularly in more expensive and emerging media technologies that are
less commonly found at lower income levels. Other technologies enjoy near
universal penetration.
4) Ownership and involvement in media and technology is about both affordability
and perceived value(s); not everyone necessarily wants all media.
5) The use of media—or the functions that media technologies serve—is similar
across the income spectrum. Once owned, there is little variation in how these
technologies are used.

We've never really looked for any form of recognition over this blog other than share and publish interesting stuff to a mixed and varied edtech and want to be edtech audience. Over the course of this weekend I had the chance to publish the logo Rose DesRochers awarded this blog, I actually wanted to say thank you to the readers who have helped get the blog to this point!

Personally I'm quite surprised that she even noticed us. I guess the reach of Education & Tech is starting to make it's mark across the globe rather than just on the US side of things. It's always lovely to read the comments from our readers and even lovelier to be thanked for it. I, me and myself are honoured that someone thinks we are worth being noticed. Kinda luv your Blog Award !

Technorati picked up a new site linking to our one. It happened to be Knit 1 Blog Too. It appears that they have been on the search for new up and coming blogs and they like our Blogger Betta Resources one!

Kudos for Jaloe who also picked our Blogger Templates and believed it's worth it to have it in his top left header.

Thanks to all!

I felt very nice after reading two posts from two fellow bloggers, Silvia who's picking one of our blogs as her favorite. Iwon't abide by rules in this Blog Day but I want to participate and let to know who are by now the blogs and people. Happy BlogDay 2007 to everyone.

Weblog-ed, Will Richardson is a professional who pursues and research the tendencies in technology applied to the classroom. He's the Learner in Chief
in topics, discussions and reflections on the use of Weblogs, wikis, RSS, audiocasts and other Read/Write Web related technologies in the K-12 realm.

Paul Stamatiou, he's a very young man with a tremendous potential and knowledge about technology and apple related stuff. He's a penchant for all things high-tech
as himself describes. We are subscribed to his page since the very first time we get to know him. Power to the people of Georgia Tech.

eLearnspace, is held by George Siemens and he's very passionate about learning technologies from he's also a teacher in the University of Manitoba. I'm enamored with the potential of technology to transform learning and society. And he certainly is. Every educator should be paying attention to what he has to say on a regular basis.

Hackosphere, has being blogging from a while and he's our gradfather because thanks to his deep knowledge
in Ajax and feed readers you can see a nice blog design in this blog. He has created bVibes which a prosperous feed sharing portal. Ramani will be in our sight forever.

BlogBloke, is the only way I know him because it's very hard to find out his real name. He's being creating blogs with tips and tools for the blogging community and loves to write about Blogger Tips and lately he's being thinking to switched to Wordpress(so sad, I might say). 'He was one of the earliest to make RSS feeds (by hand, not automated, mind you)' as one of another fellow blogger states.

Hope you all something special to say about your favorite blogs or bloggers. As for ourselves we want to join in the special celebration in our home city, Loxa and home country, Ecuador. Or more in Global Voices Online.

I am still struggling to stop the automated post in this blog, problem caused by genuine advice from some marketing ad. Does anyone already know how to deal with this plague? I've already change the email address for email posting but it seems it didn't work.

Until we find the solution to this Blogger scam I would like to thank Julianto Cahyadi for the Coke Idea. This comes just in hand to introduce to you a Wordpress hack very well know now as Buy me a beer! In this case, the hack is made for Blogger and Etienne Teo same as Amey Jah had posted about how to install such plugin in Blogspot.

By the way, please if you're a regular reader of our blog you shouldn't miss the chance to read one the most prominet bloggers, Sumesh. He's working hard to improve the quality of information in his blog and had prepared a very good post about the Greasemonkey Scripts for Gmail. Go visit him and say hi from TonNet.

I was reading about how to get your blog better positioned in Google and I had the chance to go and probe all features in MyPageRank which by the way recomends me to work out in a better metatag description and proper word descriptions, not to mention that the title of this page should be longer in order to keeo up with the ratings. You are an expert, what do you think? Sumesh, are you reading this? I would appreciate your input in this matter. The first step for installing the sitemap was found in an old friend's blog: Vivek but if you keep digging you might find of good use what is written by Sai Prasad or Manoj Sangani.

I want to thank our dear friend Jaloe Tjimahi who has found of interest our post about Blogger Templates. He's displaying our link in the top left corner of his blog. We should say that pays to link, if you give us a link you will also receive the reward or linking back. I love the proposal of this young girl, Nicole Chen. She says: "once I see that you’ve link me I’ll link ya back".

Global Voices is growing at speed many would love to grow, now they're looking for a video editor, if you happen to be interested you just have to contact Georgia Popplewell. Hold on second, that's not all I wanted to tell you. There is also an agreetment with the NY Times to start publishing the GVO feeds in the Topic pages of this newyorkean big mass media. Stay tunned!

Last night I had an argument with a female coworker, she' s a nice person a nice single girl. However, we just got into that kind of male-female conversation and sudently all turned a disaster. I am expceting to meet her today and try to clarify things. I really like her and I truly respect her. She's kind of my keepsake! Excuse the expression for now.

I am not a american native or so but I try to write in English and precisely I found interesting what in this blog, her author had to say about her experiences about the concept and definition of Avoid the Noid. I think we all should avoid the Noid when productivity is the key.

She also has an interesting idea. Did I mention her blog is Adsense Tracker? Well, she is into this project, called I Review, Do You?. I am not putting the button yet, sorry young girl but what I want to say is that this blog is new and the approach that it is taking is what makes it interesting. "Every blogger wants traffic. I spend tons of time doing things to try to generate visits to this site and you probably do the same for your blog." has being said in Adsense Tracker.

Do A I begging for a review? It's all up to you. But be known that our pourpose is to bring traffic to our blog through a cooperative community effort. Think of not only the great contacts you would make and the aditional visitors you would get but also all of those wonderful backlinks. I am not saying it, she is the girl!

I know many of you will be thinking why this blog goes into this game. Well, please allow me to say that something everyone loves is to be in head of everything that is good and even when I do accept that this is a bad idea, getting links is fine, just don’t plot to get them. Try to link naturally, not forced. Why is everyone always convinced that gaming the system is the key to success? I don't want to answer but maybe Google will do it for me. (Follow the Q & A section)

Here, two ways to built your very own back links game:

Here are the rules for FIRST TRY:

1. Copy this post from the point where it says “Start Copy Here” to the point where it says “End Copy Here”
2. Add yourself and 5 of your favorite bloggers to the end of the list.
3. Post this on your blog.

The Prize Blog | Enkay Blog | Ms. Danielle | Cash For Comments | BetShopBoy | JohnCow | Mr. Gary Lee | Jon Lee | Dosh Dosh | Some Make Money | The King Kong Blog | RomanDock | Michael Kwan | Ed Lau | Jane May | Sam Breadstone | Samanathon | Egg Donation | Free Blog Reviews | Rugjeff | 5 Star Affiliate Blog | Garry Conn | Nusuni | Adsense Goal | TonNet | Your Name Here.

Probably you're not happy with this first approach, then try this second one:

SAY NO TO PAGERANK, YES TO LIFE WEBMASTERS LIST***

All you have to do is copy the info below, and put it into your site/blog. Then email me at : contact@deanhunt.com and I will update the list with your website/blog link.

As this spreads your site will be mentioned on hundreds, perhaps even thousands of sites.

Step 1: Highlight the links below, right click, then click “View selection source”
Step 2: Paste the “Say No To Pagerank” list into your blog or site
Step 3: email me at: contact@deanhunt.com
Step 4: Get a mention and link here at DeanHunt.com and every other site that plays the game
Step 5: Update your list daily to reflect the new websites and blogs that join in

Buzz Marketing Blog
Young Entrepreneurs Blog
No Nonsense Business Advice
Sell your blog
CS Developer
Aplliance Journal
Madkane Humor Blog
Find New Leads
PHPied
UK SEO Directory
Bikinifigur: Abnehmen ohne Hunger
Bob Meets World
BlueJar Webmasters Guide
All Sux Dot Com
CodingPad
The Next Post
Tech Blog
Reality Wired
Tom Wilson Google Blog
Price Filter
a few loose screws
Clickon Web Design
Woody Maxim
Crystals Quest
What Simply Works
Affiliate profit center
Internet Marketing Blueprints
Cash 4 blogging
Hits USA
Wendy Haney
Sheterk Marketing
How To Build a website blog
The Block Party
Ezinet Global Marketing
Best Online Earning Strategies
Online Security Authority
1nf0rmat10n.com
Alternative Healing
That’s what i’m talking about
Web Urbanist Media and Art
Fundraising Ideas
Chatsquatch
Money Spinning
Blogging at Flixya
Blogging Tips
He Said What
Things That Are Fun
Wii Contests
Classic Rock News
Elee Marketing Guide
Viral and Buzz
Azzfan - Make Extra Money
Shadow Scope
The App
Travel Blog
Your favorite blogger
Master Resell Rights
Entrepreneur Wannabe
Adsense Track
TonNet
The Online Business Blog
Net Frontier Marketing
Jean Ghalo Blog
Dott Com
GadgetTastic
Design Creatology
Affiliate Master Tools
4mostTip
The Day of a Mum
MonoMom
InterSites
Homeschool Diva
CyberCa$hology
Conservatory TV
Get Ahead in business
Online eBiz
Hin’s Photo Blog
Hin’s Tech Blog
Cynthia D. Wilson Speaks
Gadget, Computer, and Electronic Blog
General Health Topics
MommyZabs.com
Life on the road
Paul Bradish
Skimbaco - The Lifestyle
4 fab moms
UC Web Host

I don't think many people tag me except Silvia a few months ago. I still owe you that one Silvia. But as for today I've been tagged by Angie. (Eight things about me that I haven’t revealed in this blog).

The rules:

- Each player must post these rules first.
- Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
- People who are tagged need to write about their eight facts on their blog.
- At the end of your blog post, choose eight people to get tagged, list their names, and link to them.
- Don’t forget to contact them telling them they’re tagged. Also, point them to your blog post so they know what to do.

Eight Things About Me (TonNet)

1. I don't really like to type very much.
2. I love to drink something while writing.
3. While sleeping my wife (I am not sure) says I snore!
4. I don't like to cheat but the nature is pretty, you know!
5. I love to read at least a book per week.
6. You know what? Don't mess with me, I am very bad temepered.
7. If you need help or advise, I am not the last person to reach!
8. My wife thinks I love more the computer that herself. (Red point)

These fellas I think should be tagged:
1. BlogBloke.
2. Aditya Mukherjee.
3. Claudia Penia.
4. B@b@.
5. Carmen UBH.
6. Sonia Tejada.
7. Carlos Jumbo.
8. Catuxa & Vanesa.