Google offers a way to get content you have from the Google servers. The most recent addition to this service allows a way to download YouTube content. Here is a ReadWriteWeb post on the service. I gave it a try and it worked perfectly – three gigs of content I immediately deleted. I understand the motive to have control over your own content, but when you get down to it, I trust Google storage over my own. You may have a reason other than backup to secure your material.
Chromebook advocates will likely enjoy this post of the reliability of the Chromebook in educational settings.
James Glanz from the NYTime tours a data center. Great video on the energy demands of a data center.
Time for some more wind farms.
I tend to pay attention to sites that offer data on trends in technology use. PEW offers new data on the popularity of video and photo sites.
This is an interesting resource – web based adventure games (How to Geek). Way back when I was a reading researcher, I conducted several studies on the use of text based adventure games as a useful reading instruction tool. If you have any experience with such games, the logic should make some sense. You must comprehend text in order to make good decisions about what actions to take. There is a type of built-in consequence for comprehending or not. The resource from How to Geek offers some specific suggestions for younger learners.
Tech Crunch author Gregory Ferenstein offers some comments on the complex connections between education and economic productivity.
The United States, they find, has among the highest percentage of top-performing students in the world. Whether the abundance of smart students is a product of U.S. culture, an artifact of the genetic lottery, or some unknown factor hidden in our education system is anyone’s guess.
The author notes that our openness fo students from other countries is also a significant contributor to the economic prosperity that can be derived from the productivity of the country.
