Hyperconnected Education – the human network

When people connect, they begin to share. This happens automatically, an expression of the instinctive human desire to communicate matters of importance. Sharing, driven by need, amplified by technology, reaches every one of us, through our network of connections. We both give and receive: from each according to their knowledge, to each, according to their need. Sharing has amplified the scope of our awareness. We can find and connect to others who share our interests, increasing our awareness of those interests.

We teach children to research, as if this were an activity distinct from the rest of our experience, when, in reality, research is the core activity of the 21st century. We need to think about the era, just a few years hence, when everyone has a very smart and very well connected mobile in hand from birth. We need to think about how that mobile becomes the lever which moves the child into knowledge. We need to think about our practice and how it is both undermined and amplified by the device and the network it represents.

Your students are not alone on their journey into knowledge and mastery. Beside them, educators blaze a new trail into a close connectivity, leveraging a depth of collective experience to accelerate the search for solutions. We must search and research and share and learn and put that learning into practice. We must do this continuously so we can stay in front of this transition, guiding it toward meaningful outcomes for both students and educators. We must reinvent education while hyperconnectivity reinvents us.

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Confessions of a Former Apple Fan

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The iPad is for show-offs. And the iPhone 4 makes it difficult to make a simple telephone call. Apple used to be hip, stylish and ahead of the curve. Now, though, it has become totally uncool — and not just since Steve Jobs stepped down.

Free Montessori Based iPhone Applications for Kids

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The Apple iTunes Store sells many applications, apps, to support children’s early education. Most recently, Apple introduced Montessori based apps that toddlers can use independently. There are many Montessori kids apps for sale and some downloadable for free. The kids’ free apps can be downloaded to an iPhone, iPod or iPad.

10 Education Apps for iPod and iPhone that Support Adult Learning

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After purchasing an iPhone or iPod Touch, maybe even both, you may be wondering what apps are available to support your learning in current or future adult education courses. Wonder no more! There are a number of free and low cost applications available for use in college education or continuing education courses.

These education apps are designed to take advantage of the digital capabilities of iPod Touches and iPhones. They also reduce or even eliminate the need for other digital devices, such as a Netbook computer. One example is an app which turns an iPod Touch into a graphing calculator. There are also several EBook applications which allow you to read books and documents in plain text, PDF, html, Kindle, or Nook formats. The following are 10 education programs suitable for adult education. These are a sample of what is available from the iTunes App store.

iPhone Case with a Flip-Out Keyboard

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If you’re an iPhone user who has looked on in envy at the physical keyboard attached to your friend’s BlackBerry or Motorola Droid, then you’re in luck. ThinkGeek, purveyors of stuff for smart masses, announced today an iPhone case with a compact flip-out keyboard.

The TK-421 is even smaller than the Jorno keyboard that we saw last week and is available in sizes compatible with the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS. The keyboard connects to your iPhone via the Bluetooth keyboard support built into the latest versions of iOS, making it incompatible with the iPhone 3G.