MIT and Harvard team up on edX to put classes online for free

MIT and Harvard are teaming up on edX to offer free, online, interactive courses. edX will have online discussion groups, collaborative course wikis and other interactive tools to take it beyond just watching a video. Students who compete courses will get a certificate from edX.

About edX

EdX is a joint partnership between The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University to offer online learning to millions of people around the world. EdX will offer Harvard and MIT classes online for free. Through this partnership, the institutions aim to extend their collective reach to build a global community of online learners and to improve education for everyone.

MIT’s Director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Anant Agarwal serves as the first president of edX, and Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Michael D. Smith leads faculty in developing courses. Along with offering online courses, the institutions will use edX to research how students learn and how technology can facilitate teaching—both on-campus and online.

An open-source online learning platform that will feature teaching designed specifically for the web. Features will include: self-paced learning, online discussion groups, wiki-based collaborative learning, assessment of learning as a student progresses through a course, and online laboratories. The platform will also serve as a laboratory from which data will be gathered to better understand how students learn. Because it is open source, the platform will be continuously improved.

edX will be run on an open-source learning platform with self-paced learning, discussions groups, wiki's, learning assessments and online labs.

More information will be coming in the future, including course offerings.


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MIT to Offer Certificates to Students taking free online courses

Google Search Education - teach your students to search better

Google Search Education is another great educational resource from Google. The site has lesson plans and even live training to help students, and teachers, learn how to search for academic sources, as well as develop critical and independent thinking skills. Students will be able to become skilled searchers and be able to analyze and critique the search results.

The lesson plans are a great resource for teachers to use in their classroom to help their students search better. The live training sessions are also archived so that you can watch them at any time.

Effective internet searching is a critical skill for our students to have.

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10 Tech Skills Every Student Should Have

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10 Important Skills Students need for the Future

Google Docs updates - 450 new fonts, 60 new templates, image insert options, and more

Google is constantly updating and refreshing their products. The recently launched Google Drive, which is an online file sync and storage service that is integrated with other Google products like Docs, and they just announced a bunch of new features and upgrades.

Google Docs, the online office suite of apps, now has over 450 new fonts in it. You do have to add them to your Docs though. Go to font menu, click "Add fonts" at bottom, go to the menu of web fonts available, select the new fonts you want, and they will be in your Docs font menu.

Google has also added more options for inserting images in Docs. You can insert them from Google Drive, search for images in the LIFE photo archive, or even use a picture taking with your webcam. 

There are new gridline and axis format options in Charts in Spreadsheets, more accessibility in Docs, the ability to set the default page size for new documents, over 60 new templates in the template gallery and an increase in the size of docs files from 2MB to 50MB. 

You can also convert CSV files directly in Google Docs to be able to read them. If you try to open a CSV file in Docs, you get a "No Preview Available" page. Click File>Export to Google Spreadsheet and you will be able to view it in Docs. 

Read more about all the new features and options on the Official Google Docs Blog. (source)

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Google Drive - file sync, storage, share - integrated with Docs and Google+

Google Resources for Education

Presentation on Google for Educators

Why I use Google's Products as an Educator (and how)

Google+ - more reasons it's great for educators

Google Plus - tips for using in education, facts and data infographic