You may not have noticed, but a new era is quietly dawning on the training industry. It represents a change that is both profound and permanent. For the very first time, learners have the ability to take control of his or her own learning experience.

So what’s responsible for this shift in the learning landscape?  It’s the advent of new technologies, social platforms, and the search engine. The search engine has become a near ubiquitous tool of the 21st century. Surfing the Internet has become everyone’s favored solution for resolving information challenges large and small.

Read the whole article at: http://www.trainingindustry.com

Watch the video at: http://www.youtube.com

Tessa Falcetta, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, dysgraphia, and general anxiety disorder; and her mother Esther Falcetta, talk about why online learning is the best fit.

Tessa Falcetta is a rising 8th grader who lives in Grove City, Pa., she has taken online classes in the past and will be taking them again when she starts school in the fall.

Watch this video and many other related videos at: http://www.edweek.org

There is a raging debate about the effectiveness of the ‘digital classroom’ – with arguments solely focused on the $31.2 billion education technology market and whether the investment is delivering a return to cash-strapped school districts.

In the heated discussion over education technology, we are missing out on a crucial component of education – the ethos of how to work together. Collaborative technology is a valuable aid in teaching students to engage in meaningful discussion, take responsibility for their own learning and become critical thinkers in a rapidly-shifting world – skills necessary for success in the 21^st century workforce.

Read the whole article at: http://www.forbes.com

Sir Ken Robinson, PhD is an internationally recognized leader in the development of education, creativity and innovation. He is also one of the world’s leading speakers with a profound impact on audiences everywhere. The videos of his famous 2006 and 2010 talks to the prestigious TED Conference have been seen by an estimated 200 million people in over 150 countries.

Watch the video at: http://www.youtube.com

The Year in EdTech, instead of giving you the Best 100 Education Apps, let’s do something different: let’s look forward.

We all have some idea of what’s out there. Here are my predictions for the next few years in edtech. What will the classroom of the future look like? What’s the Next Big Thing in education?Have a look at what classrooms currently look like, where technology currently stands, and you’ll get a better idea of what could easily be adapted to help make such a class of the future a reality

Read the whole article at: http://www.technologyintegrationineducation.com

… Enter the edtech entrepreneur or edupreneur. The edupreneur is a new breed of motivated hero-genius. She is the TFA alum who spent just enough time in a classroom within a school that was more like a prison than a Utopian city on a hill to be inspired to change a system that would do that to children. He is a former Paypal, Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn, and Zynga engineer/executive who called in rich and wants to be a part of a growing movement of like-minded individuals applying the same collaborative/competitive energy to solving a problem whose solution truly has the potential to save the world.

They are seasoned nonprofit executives who have joined forces with others and found a way to fund making quality educational content free to everyone. All of them come to the wire-frames with at least two things in common: they have all been to school, and they all want to make it better…

Read the entire blog post at: http://jackcwest.wordpress.com

Is corporate philanthropy a part of your grant-seeking efforts? If not, here’s some basic information to get you started in examining this potential source of support for your school or district.

According to the book Everybody’s Business: Managing Risks and Opportunities in Today’s Global Society, by David Grayson and Adrian Hodges, corporations provide support with a variety of words beginning with “p”—profits, people, product, power, purchasing, and promotion. Corporations have a variety of different models they use to provide this support.

Read the whole article at: http://www.eschoolnews.com

Survey results indicate several specific technologies as those that we should be investing in and focusing on if we want to effectively leverage technology in education.

Tough economic times have more people questioning what we are getting out of technology spending in our schools. Unfortunately, results are often being sought in overly broad terms, like improved grades and graduation rates, without trying to more directly relate technology program goals to specific outcomes.

Read the survey results at: http://www.emergingedtech.com

Related Video Blog:

This video blog entry is a companion to the article above, available on EmergingEdTech.com

Watch the video at: http://www.youtube.com

CHANDLER, Ariz. — Amy Furman, a seventh-grade English teacher here, roams among 31 students sitting at their desks or in clumps on the floor. They’re studying Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” — but not in any traditional way.

In this technology-centric classroom, students are bent over laptops, some blogging or building Facebook pages from the perspective of Shakespeare’s characters. One student compiles a song list from the Internet, picking a tune by the rapper Kanye West to express the emotions of Shakespeare’s lovelorn Silvius.

Read the whole article at: http://www.nytimes.com

The third PSA in a series created by Pearson Foundation and the Consortium for School Networking, focusing on the challenges and opportunities of integrating technology into teaching practice around the world. Students discuss the ways in which they use technology at school, at home, or in their everyday lives.

Watch the video at: http://www.the21stcenturyteacher.com