Update: Cookie Monster himself is appearing in today's doodle at Google.com.
Faculty Focus released some interesting findings from a survey about Twitter usage and trends among college faculty. They surveyed about 2,000 faculty members and found that about a third of the respondents say they use Twitter. Over half say they have never used Twitter at all.
An interesting study from none other than the US Department of Education says that students using online education actually perform better than those who just learn in the classroom. The findings are all the more intriguing, considering the source.
The study examined a number of other studies on the subject to reach its conclusions. Online education programs should be pleased with the results.
Some of the key findings from the study:
Research from Nielsen shows that time spent on Facebook is up 700% from a year ago (that's April '08 to April '09). Meanwhile, MySpace has experienced -31% year-over-year growth.
Microsoft is closing the door on its world-renowned Encarta encyclopedia. It's not exactly slamming the door. Online versions will still be available until October 31st, and in Japan, Encarta will still be available online until the end of the year.
The horrors of war and the odd perversions of the Victorian era might be a little much for an eight year old. But Twitter, blogging, podcasting, and Wikipedia might just be the 21st century ticket to learning.
Educators in Britain are mulling proposed changes to primary school curriculum that would require kids be taught modern Web-based communication and information retrieval skills instead of teaching them about World War II. War they can learn about in high school.
A new way of searching is on the way, and will come under the label Wolfram Alpha. This is a "knowledge engine" built by Stephen Wolfram, which allows users to ask questions and receive a single definitive answer rather than a page of results pointing to pages that may or may not have the answers they are looking for.
Intel recently began showing off its Learning Series, PCs designed specifically for educational purposes. The series includes the Clamshell Classmate PC and the Convertible Classmate PC, both of which were created with students, parents, teachers, and schools in mind. Mike McDonald spoke with Intel's Holly Bourne about the machines at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas earlier this month. She was kind enough to demonstrate them:
Google Apps for Education has had a big year, further emphasizing Google's push for cloud computing. A push that has included a recent guarantee of 99.9% uptime on certain Google Apps. Cloud computing with Google Apps has often been discussed in the business context, and it is clearly quite relevant to the education field as well.
Google Earth is doing some amazing things as highlighted with their announcement the other day of the Ancient Rome layer (shown in the video below).
iEntry 10th Anniversary
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