2015: Year of the Windows renaissance?

By Larry Seltzer, ZD Net

After largely avoiding Windows 8, I really got to like Windows 8.1. When Windows 10 comes along I’ll feel a lot better about it and so, I suspect, will everyone else. I’ve heard many people say the same thing I concluded not long after I spent some time with Windows 10: If only this is what Windows 8 had been, things would have been different.I think Windows 10 will accelerate the rehabilitation of Windows’ public image. If you follow the Technical Preview you can see clearly that Microsoft is trying to listen to the customers and make Windows 10 the OS you want to use. It has the best of Windows 7 mixed into the good parts of Windows 8, and it uses Microsoft’s cloud services, like OneDrive, extensively.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/2015-year-of-the-windows-renaissance/

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from Educational Technology http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uis/edtech/~3/REkRg6stxGg/

Internet Chess

By Author Stream

One of the best ways to learn chess online is to set up a chess training schedule with the trainer and then start the classes with the trainer. Some of the tactics the trainers usually use in the training process include puzzles, other mind games that help to refine the thinking process and all the moves and strategies that must be employed to win the chess game.

http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/mastervalerililov-2322355-chess-training-schedule/

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Why I Am Teaching a Course Called “Wasting Time on the Internet”

BY KENNETH GOLDSMITH, the New Yorker

Come January, fifteen University of Pennsylvania creative-writing students and I will sit silently in a room with nothing more than our devices and a Wi-Fi connection, for three hours a week, in a course called “Wasting Time on the Internet.” Although we’ll all be in the same room, our communication will happen exclusively through chat rooms and listservs, or over social media. Distraction and split attention will be mandatory. So will aimless drifting and intuitive surfing. The students will be encouraged to get lost on the Web, disappearing for three hours in a Situationist-inspired dérive, drowsily emerging from the digital haze only when class is over. We will enter a collective dreamspace, an experience out of which the students will be expected to render works of literature. To bolster their practice, they’ll explore the long history of the recuperation of boredom and time-wasting, through critical texts by thinkers such as Guy Debord, Mary Kelly, Erving Goffman, Raymond Williams, and John Cage.

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/wasting-time-on-the-internet

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Six tips for classroom technology success

by eSchool News

An industry advisory panel of educators shares strategies to help teachers – regardless of their tenure – implement education technology in the classroom. The LEGO Education Advisory Panel (LEAP) advises LEGO Education, the education division within the LEGO group, on how to meet the needs of educators and students. The panel consists of 50 educators, across all levels of education, who are experienced with the trials and triumphs of using unconventional teaching tools in the classroom. Drawing from our experience using a wide gamut of education technology, we compiled the following list of tips and tricks to help teachers —regardless of their tenure —implement education technology in their own classroom.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2014/11/11/lego-technology-classroom-329/

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Croatian island children connect with online learning

by Lajla Veselica, Phys.org

For Croatia, making sure the five children on the tiny island of Susak get good schooling is not only a civic responsibility, it’s a way of ensuring the viability of its sparsely populated Adriatic islands. “Schools give life to small islands,” said Olivela Franko, the elementary school principal on the larger Losinj island who coordinates an “e-learning” network that links island schools in the area. “There are not that many children but we will not allow them to disappear. We try everything so they don’t feel like they are living at the end of the world,” she said.

http://phys.org/news/2014-03-croatian-island-children-online.html

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HBCUs, Lumen Learning Team Up To Create An Online Education Center

By Jaleesa Baulkman, University Herald

Three Historically Black Colleges and Universities are working together to improve online education at HBCUs through the effective use of open education resources, Inside Higher Ed reported. Florida Memorial University, Oakwood University and Wiley College announced Tuesday the founding of the Center for Excellence in Distance Learning, which is aimed at helping HBCUs create distance learning programs.

http://www.universityherald.com/articles/8091/20140312/hbcus-lumen-learning-team-up-to-create-an-online-education-center.htm

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More teens using technology to study for, take tests

by Mary Stegmeir, The Des Moines Register

Put the pencils down. In a growing number of Iowa’s classrooms, teens are going online to study for — and even take — semester exams. The change reflects an increasing use of technology in classrooms. Want students to study for and ultimately ace their finals? Then meet them in the digital land where they live, educators say. “It’s our job as teachers to find the best ways to get information to the kids,” said Graham Lundt, a Gilbert High School health teacher, who provides online study guides and tests. “For my students, this works.”

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/01/13/iowa-teens-technology-classrooms-testing/4467785/

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