What I would like to see is a school district take this personalized Google page and provide XML data or modules that would tie into its student information system. For example as a principal I would like to create a page that pulled in content such as our average daily attendance, a listing of absent students, tardy students, GPS routing information for school busses, a list of the most current reading assessment scores.

With Google Transit you can easily access schedules, routes, and plan trips using their local public transportation options. The first release covers my city, Portland, Oregon and the TriMet system, but they plan to expand to more systems soon, and are actively seeking out other transit organizations to partner with.

This got me thinking of something I read of in September when a post by Cory Doctrow on BoingBoing lamenting the fact that the items in the Library of Congress' American Memory project were locked in a Web .5 interface that made navigation and retrieval of information cumbersome. Simon Willison read the post and quickly came up with a Greasemonkey script that renderered the American Memory pages in a much more visualizing appealing manner.

Contributors first find their location on a Google Map, then they contribute their story, picture or other file (am thinking this could be an audio recording, size is limited to 5 mgs, but if you have a larger file you can send them an email and make arrangements for upload...), then they provide some general information about themselves and upload the information.... This is a project of The Center for History and New Media (CHNM) at George Mason University and the University of New Orleans in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History and the Louisiana State Museum.

Gizmo -Advanced Features - Call Recording: Gizmo is a voice over IP application that is similar to Skype, but that has a few interesting features that look attractive...... Callers can dial one of these access numbers from a conventional phone and connect to your Gizmo account free of charge...

TextMarker allows you to highlight various sections of text on a web page and then copy the various pieces of text to the clipboard for pasting into another document.... A student reading an article can highlight selected paragraphs while reading the article and then when finished, copy the highlighted sections with one action.

Google has introduced Reader, a web based RSS reader.... You can search Google for content and if the content you find also has an RSS feed you can subscribe to the feed.

Google Talk: Google's entry into the voice over IP world...

The Focus on Effectiveness web site brings together research about effective instructional practices, and carefully selected technology tools and recommendations for their use. Created by the Northwest Educational Technology Consortium and the Learning Innovation & Technology Consortium, the site builds on the work of educational researchers Robert J.

Citation Machine is an interactive Web tool designed to assist teachers in modeling the proper use of information property.... David indicates that he plans on making the code available so that schools can host the Citation Machine on their own servers if they like...