Education Blog Roundup

Interesting links on education publishing, education technology, and virtual worlds in education.

Research shows schools that fund Libraries have higher scores. Annie Teich at Crazy for Kids Books talks about some work that AASL is doing to shed light on this. I’m surprised this research hasn’t been done before.

Student blogger censored by Judge for disparaging administrators. Everyone agrees that the student used unfortunate language on her personal blog to describe school officials, but the Judge sided with the school in abrogating her free speech rights. This one will get appealed. See my article on the disconnect between new technology and schools.

Effects of videogames on spatial learning and awareness are long lasting (and even between the genders). Commercial Gaming guro Damien Schubert comments on some fascinating early results from research in this area.

Google gets into virtual worlds? Raph Koster and others are reporting that it looks like Google is partnering with ASU on a virtual world build on top of Google Earth. Does this have anything to do with James Gee moving down there recently?

Teachers excited about learning due to new technologies! Carolyn Foote at the excellent Not So Distant Future blog talks about how excited she and her peers are about learning and collaborating internationally and muses about how we can share that with the students. (Disclosure – my son attends her school).

Serious Games are not just for kids. John Rice over at Educational Games Research does a nice roundup of some of the recent news around Seniors and videogames. The cognitive benefits apply to all ages!
We need teachers more than ever with new technologies. I agree. There will be more on this in part 2 of my article in Technology & Learning.

Update on game engines for Education. Richard Carey does a nice job of updating his reporting on this critical topic.

The perfect marketing plan. Solid advice on making marketing plans mean something from John Jantsch at Duck Tape Marketing.

Hi-larious IBM video from the ’60’s about home shopping. Oh well – they did the best they could. They did see the basics – they just had no way to imagine the real breakthroughs and the many ways that society itself would change.