We're proud to announce that we've just released a new e-book called The Myth of the Garage and Other Minor Surprises. It's a collection of our favorite columns for Fast Company magazine.

And it's free.

Here's how you can get it:

1. Get it for the Kindle or  the Nook or the iPad.
2. For readers outside the U.S. or without ebook readers, download the PDF version of Myth by going to our Resources page and signing in using your email address (the same one this note was sent to).

We'd appreciate it if you'd forward this email to any friends who might be interested - everybody loves to get something for nothing.

Thanks!

-Dan & Chip

I love their book Switch, and can only imagine that this is worth reading. It's certainly worth more than $0.00. Enjoy!

inspired by Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown comes Goodnight iPad, a video by Ann Droyd (note the joke author). Almost hard to watch, but apropos to modern life!

via @fredbartels

Coming out of a Kickstarter campaign, Teaguduino looks like a great way to get kids (or adults) started with real programming and robot building. It seems a lot easier to get started that Arduino, but easier isn't always better. Just different. I'm pretty compelled by their work, though. Will you or your school be an early investor? They have a great price points for a 5 piece set - $650.

Mendley, a powerful resource for academics. Upload your papers into the software and it extracts relevant data like journal, title, authors, and more. Use others work to help you connect to other related research. Powerful, and worth looking into if you are doing research or reading a lot of research.

Chancellor Joel Klein and Sir Ken Robinson discuss where schools should and are heading in the near future. It feels good to hear them as I work on designing a new high school in New York City - we're focused on helping kids find their passions.

I can't say that I agree with all of the judgements/categorizations made in this infographic, but I can say that I enjoyed it and it made me think!

The team at Evernote just announced a new app utilizing iPad 2's new smart covers. This is an elegant idea, and intersects learning institutions pretty obviously. I am still totally unsold on iPad's for schools, but this could be pretty useful for me personally. Read more on Evernote's blog.

In wonderful news YouTube announces a partnership with Creative Commons to let people use Creative Commons licensed music easily in any uploaded videos. They have an online editor to let you do so. This is great for teachers and students creating video projects. I often find myself helping students and teachers walking about of copyright traps when they just slap an iTunes song on a video and want to upload them to the web. People can also elect to share their end-product videos back into the commons allowing others to use their work. Talk about creating a useful video!

Microsoft previews the highly touch-centric Windows 8 operating system. I like the idea of tiles, but wonder if that is the ideal interface metaphor for the next shift. I'm already victim of app fatigue, I wonder if tile fatigue is next. I don't mean to be a doubter, this looks quite beautiful. Just keeping up with the change right now seems to be overwhelming for technologists, let alone users.

via @rcuza

Customers will be able to borrow Kindle books from over 11,000 local libraries to read on Kindle and free Kindle reading apps

Whispersyncing of notes, highlights and last page read to work for Kindle library books

Wow, in an incredible marketplace move, Amazon announced that later this year over 11,000 libraries will offer the ability to take out books on any Kindle (the actual device, iPad, iPhone, Android phone, etc). You will be able to highlight and annotate in the books. Then, if you check that book out again, or buy it, it preserves your annotations. It is definitely worth thinking about as schools watch e-reader developments.

I personally have read 10 books via the Kindle app on my Android phone. I have loved it, but have some critiques. That is for another post, I suppose.

Here is the article on Amazon's website, although via an odd URL that they seem to use for news releases.

The title of this post is certainly meant as a joke, but I thought it was catchy. I do worry about the future of books, but that is for another post...

This is as much a note to myself as to any of my readers, but ed tech folks need to be careful about promising too much to leaders who agree to blog 'n' tweet. John Maeda, President of RISD, via MIT Media Lab, gets it. He uses social media in excellent ways. But, being an individual user does not lead to school-wide adoption or school-wide change. You need to bring people along in the sharing game, help them see how social media makes them better at their jobs. He should be able to struggle through this, but it will take more than tweets and blog posts...

More on his struggles via the Fast Company article

Rigid, narrow codes of tradition masculinity and femininity drive poorer reproductive health outcomes, homophobia and gender-based violence. This is especially true among at-risk youth, like those who are of color or LGBT.

To improve outcomes, there has been an increased focus and commitment on "gender transformative” interventions and policies. Gender Transformative approaches question, challenge and change rigid gender norms and inequities. Major international donors–like PEPFAR, UNAIDS, USAID and WHO–have already endorsed Gender Transformative interventions.

Truechild.org is a wonderful resource for grappling with the issue of combating traditional gender norms for young people. This is essential reading/understanding for all educators. Use TrueChild's "learn the facts" section to get yourself up to speed, fast. Our kids need us on this issue as much as any other.