I have played with the Windows 8 system and am definitely installing it on my touch screen at home. The integration with social media is fantastic. Perhaps what I like best is what live.edu can do — of course the struggle is now I’m committed to Google Apps for Domains. I do think that people should take a serious look at the collaborative features in the system. They are powerful but are also very new and different and basically require relearning in some ways.

“Only 0.33 percent — or 33 out of every 10,000 PCs — currently run a Preview version or RTM trial of Windows 8, Computerworld reports, citing statistics from metrics firm Net Applications. At the same point to the release of Windows 7, 1.64 percent of all Windows PCs were running the upcoming operating system. That’s a full five times more than Windows 8 adoptees — and the gap between early Windows 7 adoption and early Windows 8 adoption is actually increasing as Oct. 26 draws closer.”

Top 10 tools for business brainstorming according to the nextweb include producteev, Google Docs, Skype, Basecamp, Facebook member pages, Teambox, Google Docs, Join.me, Zoho, Asana and Yammer. I think one of the most useful tools missing from this list is Trello. Trello is a fantastic tool that allows for collaboration between teams.

This is an example of why students need to learn to collaborate now - this is something they’ll be doing the rest of their lives. What tools do you use to collaborate in teams? I think that education is lagging behind in this area.

In this example, the Mayor’s Participation, Action and Communication Team in Richmond Virginia won a 2011 award from the US government for a citizen to government relating website. Here, citizens can put pins on a map and note what issues need to be addressed in the local area. There is also a mobile app. What a great way to involve citizens in their local area.

“The Goldcorp Challenge was launched in March 2000 and 400 megabytes worth of data about the 55,000 acre site was placed on the company’s website. Everything that the company new about the Red Lake mine was a mouse click away. Word spread fast around the Internet and within a few weeks submissions came in from all over the world as more than 1,000 virtual prospectors chewed over the data.”

There were 100 sites identified, 50% of them unknown to the company based upon this data. Goldcorp became one of the most profitable in the industry. This is an example of open data and collaboration. This type of challenge is being used increasingly as people “crowdsource” as they outsource their problem solving and R&D through the use of challenges. Challenges are also a way for the great, but unnoticed and unrecognized, to rise to the top. What if we opened up data that we collect on students for problem solving?

I love this comment from teacher Kyle Dunbar about what happened in her classroom. This is very typical of what I see - harnessing the power of peer pressure for good.

This was shouted across the room at him in a none-too-patient voice from a friend across the room. It was clear that when Student X went to give reluctant writer Student Y some feedback in his wiki, the piece was filled with too many errors. It was after this across-the-room exchange that reluctant writer Student Y quietly asked Teacher Wiki where the spell check function was in the wiki tool. Quietly, surreptitiously, reluctant writer Student Y went back and began to revise and edit his piece. That quick exchange with his peer made more of an impression on him than repeated attempts by his teacher. And I question whether or not the scenario would have unfolded the same way if the students had just exchanged papers. Instead, this is a perfect example of what can happen when students are encouraged to write from the beginning in a digital format.  Editing and revising is so much easier in the digital format but, more importantly, when adolescents get feedback from their peers, they are much more interested in revising than when they get the same feedback from their teacher.

I just downloaded this report into my Dropbox (which means I can open as an ebook on my ipad) From PEW. So far it is a great read and focuses on the skills that are needed in the year 2020 to succeed.