Links and Coffee

With the school year in full swing and the grind of my last grad class my post have been far and few between. Here are a few links that are worth a second looksy:

Tagul - create your own custom tag clouds
"Rules of Thumb" for Educational Innovation - a look at Alan Weber's book from American Cultures 2.0
Domo Animate - create animations - the Kids will love this!
Scholastic Vocab Quiz Maker - You add the words, they make the quiz
Spezify - a visual search engine including pictures, headlines, and twitter updates

The Texting Effect

I saw an excellent presentation at this year's NECC from the boys from the Committed Sardine on the influence of digital technologies on brain development and its effects on adolescent skill development. The presentation cited the research from the book IBrain by Gary Small who ironically will be part of Steve Hardogen's Elluminate Sessions Thursday. The purpose of the post is an article that caught me today, Texting May Rewire Young Brains that dealt with the negative effects of texting on adolecent brain development and also cites research from IBrain. It makes me wonder how research and publications like this affect the debate on the use of cell phones in education and whether increased errors will steadily become an overlooked side effect of speedy communication. As teachers we see these effects daily, but I look at them as lazy writing not a learned pattern. What do you think?