Follow me on Twitter

Hey, I've kind of moved to Twitter for instant news.  Today my two posts were:

HB 242 moved out of H. Education cmte; provides funding for technology equipment in schools

and

Fairclough says she will be offering amendments to increase funding for#UA advisory programs and #ANSEP

Follow me on Twitter for occasional breaking tidbits. Once in a while I will post something longer on the blog.  But really, you should subscribe to my reports if you want all the details!

https://twitter.com/#!/AKEDUPDATE

Khan Academy

Khan Academy is quickly becoming a popular site for helping students with specific topics.  Wired Magazine has an article on how one school district is using it to increase student mastery of math:
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/07/ff_khan/all/1

A link to Khan Academy:

http://www.khanacademy.org/

Chinese will be the dominant language on the internet in a few years

According to this chart (http://visual.ly/chinese-new-dominant-language-internet), Chinese will be the dominant language on the internet in about five years.  Will you be able to read your Google, Firefox, and Mozilla search results when they come up in Chinese?  No, I won't either. 

But, look on the bright side: with technological advances, Google Translate and other translating programs should make it possible for people speaking different languages to read webpages from around the world.

Also, check out visual.ly for making and exploring graphics: http://visual.ly/

Open Education - Free, Online, College Classes

Last week my mother called me.  She didn't have a current email address for someone, and hoped she could get it from me.  I said, "I don't know, just send him a message on Facebook.  He's one of your friends, isn't he?"  It hadn't even crossed her mind that Facebook is a way to contact people. 

Technology is changing the world so fast.  Those of us in middle age and older don't know half of what is possible with technology today, let alone what may be possible just five years down the road.  That goes for the education field as well.  I heard a lot of talk in legislative hearings this year.....