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"Fifty years ago, the ratio was a million to one. For every person on the news or on primetime, there were a million viewers. The explosion of magazines brought the ratio to 100,000:1. If you wrote for a major magazine, you were going to impact a lot of people. Most of us were consumers, not creators."

Interesting to contemplate.....

"Here are some web-based papers and articles you might read if you are interested in learning more about Dr. Seymour Papert's theory of constructionism."

A Potpourri of tips ideas and videos related to Web 2.0 from Jeff Thomas

"Kevin Buran teaches 6th and 8th grade science to students at Carmel Middle School. I use Evernote, Everywhere: Mac, iPhone, Web Clipper I love…ScanSnap Scanner for scanning in worksheets and student work JotNot for taking snapshots of my daily itinerary and saving them instantly to Evernote I use Evernote for.. I first heard about Evernote about a year ago, but have become an avid user much more recently. Here are just a few of the ways that I use Evernote for teaching:"

"As the school doors swing open to welcome the start of another year, both teachers and students will have goals: to inspire a class, to learn new things, to get good grades. What probably won't be on that list is to make a mistake -- in fact many. But it should be. Why? Because we're raising a generation of children -- primarily in affluent, high-achieving districts -- who are terrified of blundering. Of failing. Of even sitting with the discomfort of not knowing something for a few minutes. If students are afraid of mistakes, then they're afraid of trying something new, of being creative, of thinking in a different way. They're scared to raise their hands when they don't know the answer and their response to a difficult problem is to ask the teacher rather than try different solutions that might, gasp, be wrong. They're as one teacher told me, "victims of excellence." "

"Teachers around the world are gearing up for the new school year -- but the experience is going to be vastly different for new teachers. Where an experienced teacher has the knowledge of what worked and what didn't, a new teacher is going to be bombarded with tons of new info and the need to process it! Not to mention, they will be preparing for the most important piece of all: their classroom instruction. In no way, do I want to add to the burden of the already-filled-to-the-brim, new teacher stress bucket. I do however, want to share just 20 tidbits which I hope will help ease new teachers into a fun, successful school year. Some of these will be in the form of social media tools, which I think are awesome, and wish I had had as a newbie. And each little tidbit is linked to a resource which I hope you will find supportive. "

Some tips for beginning teachers from Edutopia

Andy Affleck is debating whether to allow his 11-year-old son, Jack, to have a Facebook account. Director of engineering at a small tech company near Providence, R.I., Affleck says he feels very strongly "that children need to be socialized in the online world just as much as they do in the real world."

This infographic from Online Universities takes a look at the pros and cons of social media in education.

"Gamification - the use of game play mechanics for non-game applications - promises much: an engaging, dynamic, memorable and rewarding learning experience. But it can be very difficult to know where to start. Most of us know and enjoy games, but how do those experiences relate to the elearning course that you're working on right now? I'm a developer at Saffron with a background in games and app design, and so to help, I've compiled a list of my top five gamified elements that can help to improve 'traditional' elearning."