10 Proven Strategies to Break the Ban and Build Opportunities for Student Learning with Cell Phones
George Engel, Rob Griffith, Scott Newcomb, Lisa Nielsen, Jason Suter, and Willyn Webb, The Innovative Educator, November 3, 2010.

This is a very practical post detailing how to map out a cell (mobile) phone implementation strategy and have it accepted in a school environment. I would imagine the same general approach would be applicable to learning technologies in general. In particular, the authors detail:
- building of relationships with key constituents
- providing evidence that the work is aligned to research and standards
- create and develop a plan, lessons, and activities
- start small, demonstrate success and work from there
- ensure access for all
- gain parent or guardian permission
- work with students to establish acceptable use policies
- general discussion around behavior and etiquette
- have classroom management procedures in place

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John Seely Brown on The Power of Pull
Inge de Waard, Ignatia, November 3, 2010.

With the concept of 'pull' making its way through the pop-tech book circuit, it is in danger of becoming more complicated than necessary. The principle behind 'pull' is really very simple: it is easier to select for what you want than to filter out what you don't want. That is all.

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Developments to the Lanyrd Service
Brian Kelly, UK Web Focus, November 3, 2010.

The Lanyard conference scheduling service is looking better and better. It supports a social network around conferences and, as described by Zeldman, "You can add and track events, and soon you'll be able to export your events as iCal or into your Google calendar (the site is powered by microformats). Soon, too, you'll be able to add sessions, slides, and videos." The only login I can find is through Twitter, which actually delayed my registering on the site by a couple months (I do not want all my separate activities rolled up under my Twitter, Facebook, or Google accounts) but I decided - as Brian Kelly did - that I wanted "to monitor how this service develops and to claim my preferred username on the service." Especially the latter.

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Understanding the Tools of the Social Learning Landscape
Sumeet Moghe, Free as in Freedom, November 3, 2010.

Really interesting summary of a day-long seminar by Mark Oehlert on social learning and games. Some good stuff here, including a link to the game-building community Kongregate, the set of Twitter apps at oneforty and this useful diagram on designing social interfaces. But also useful is the discussion. Like, "The main barriers for social media implementations are around Fear, Control and Trust, not cost, technology or anything else you'll imagine." And, The opposite of imposed structure is not chaos... the opposite of an imposed structure is an emergent structure, one that forms over a time based on the interactions of a lot of people." And "People's time is a zero-sum game. If you're adding social media, it's got to make something else easier." And "You can't learn to swim by sitting on the shore. You need to be in social media to understand the phenomenon."

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Why Bare URLs are a problem
Jenny Luca, Lucacept – intercepting the Web, November 3, 2010.

One of the realities of the web is link rot. When web pages link to other pages, those links sometimes go dead, possibly because the resource URL has changed, possibly because the resource has been removed, or possibly because the entire website has closed. Bare URLs - like this - are a particular problem, writes Jenny Luca, because readers have no way to recover the original content. What about citing links with academic style, as Doug Peterson suggests? This would help in some cases, but my experiences is that resources tend to disappear completely rather than merely move, so a search doesn't really help, and a citation doesn't improve matters. Or,you could always use a service like Xenu to check your links. But in the end, accepting that the web is a dynamic entity means letting go. Things change, links rot.

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Why Re-invent the Vaka – Use OERs
Various Authors, YouTube, November 3, 2010.

Alanieta Lesuma-Fatiaki writes to the OER list: "In light of the very fruitful discussions that have been occurring to date in this forum. I thought I'd just send this recently added video on OERs. This is a debate on the topic, Why Re-invent the Vaka – Use OERs which was part of the Final Dissemination Event of the EDULINK-SideCAP Project which was held at the University of the South Pacific, Laucala Campus, Fiji Islands in February this year. The project has just ended and this is one of the many deliverables that came out of it. Feel free to subscribe to the TheSidecap YouTube channel which will release many more videos from this finale event." The web page for the Final Dissemination Event unfortunately contains no dissemination (except for a few photos) - maybe they'll consider listing the videos and adding papers to the site. In the meantime, there is the YouTube channel.

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