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"Ask a question, make a hypothesis, and observe what happens in this Sesame Street interactive science experiment! Help renowned scientists, Cookie Monster and Emma, investigate what sinks in water and what floats in water! Experiment with a rubber band ball, a lime and lemon, Ernie's rubber duckie, and a coconut. Start the experiment here! Will Bert's underpants sink or float? Go to http://www.sesamestreet.org/sinkorfloat for the full interactive experiment and find out."

Check out this really neat use of hot spots in YouTube movies to make interactive movies

"As the web becomes more and more inundated with blogs, videos, tweets, status updates, news, articles, and countless other forms of content, "information overload" is something we all seem to suffer. It is becoming more difficult to weed through all the "stuff" out there and pluck out the best, most share-worthy tidbits of information, especially if your topic is niche. Let's face it, Google definitely has its shortcomings when it comes to content curation and the more it tries to cater to all audiences, the less useful it becomes. The demand for timely, relevant content that is specific to our unique interests and perspectives has given rise to a new generation of tools that aim to help individuals and companies curate content from the web and deliver it in a meaningful way. These new tools range from simple, application-specific types such as social media aggregators and discovery engines, to more complex, full-blown publishing solutions for organizations."

Just when you thought you were getting a handle on all this stuff eh?

"We all love infographics. Why? Well, they help us grasp information in a quick and fun way that appeals to our visual senses. In fact, there's an infographic here explaining that. Below you'll find 10 infographics that discuss learning in many different capacities - online, blended, mobile, etc."

"Google has made it possible for us to have instant information gratification. Just start typing the first letters of your search word and the site intuits your question and offers you the smartest choice of answers. Seems simple enough. But as quick and facile as the process is, there are ways to be even more efficient, more search-savvy. And it's our responsibility to teach kids how to find and research information, how to judge its veracity, and when it's time to ask for a grownup's help. I spoke to Daniel Russell, Google's "search anthropologist" in charge of Search Quality and User Happiness (yes, really), who brought to light some important tips you may not have known."

If you use Google to search you need to check this out

The Exploratree web resource has been developed by Futurelab and emerged out of our work on the Enquiring Minds project. It provides a series of ready-made interactive 'thinking guides' or 'frameworks' which can support students' projects and research. Thinking guides support the thinking or working through of an issue, topic or question and help to shape, define and focus an idea and also support the planning required to investigate it further. Exploratree guides can be used as a basis for whole class discussion, or emailed to individuals or groups to complete. They can also be used as a presentation tool to share your findings and thinking with others. As well as providing a set of ready to use thinking guides, which are completely customisable and shareable, Exploratree also enables teachers and students to create their own simply and easily.

"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

"In the digital age, kids need to have an understanding of what it means to be a responsible digital citizen. They need to learn the technical how-to's, as well as a more global comprehension of how to navigate the online world. To that end, Melbourne educator Jenny Luca made a commitment to help her students start blogging and to create ePortfolios. Here are five reasons why, at her school, these skills are now a high priority."

"Google Alert allows you to create alerts around topics you are interested in and start receiving emails with updates about your search query. For instance as a doctoral student with a research interest in emerging literacies , I have created an alert with the name " emerging literacies" and each time something new published online with those key words in it I get an email with a link to it. This keeps me abreast of the latest releases in my area of research. I also use Google Alert to track down authors and scholars whose works are related to my research areas. I simply create a Google Alert with their names as the alert titles and next time they publish something I get it first. Another way to use Google Alert is to create an alert about yourself by using your full name and anytime somebody mentions you somewhere online you will instantly receive an email with a link to it. Here is how to create a Google Alert"

"Technology is increasingly pervasive in the classroom and in the lives of educators as a whole. There are myriad tools designed specifically for teachers, to help you reach students, monitor results and tailor lesson plans. But what about popular social networks like Twitter? As an educator, is it worth the time to integrate Twitter into your already packed schedule? We asked a few of our more active "twitterati" Milken Educators for their thoughts, then added a handy resource guide to get you on your way."

At our Digital Technologies Curriculum Summit in 2013 we announced a partnership with the University of Adelaide to create a free open online course for primary school teachers to help prepare them for the implementation of the new digital technologies curriculum in Australia which will have compulsory computational thinking & coding from K-8.

"I guess given its title this blog post could come under some criticism but it's not really about that. These are just some things that I think help. I hope you concur."

This chart was created by Richard Byrne to help teachers quickly identify the blogging service that meets their needs.

"I bought Minecraft for my 7 year old son and asked him if he needed help with it. "No, I just looked it up on YouTube." We all know that YouTube is a great source for tutorial videos. Did you know that YouTube is the #2 search engine? Students are very likely to look up information on YouTube, it has become part of their culture. Here are 5 things you can do with YouTube:"

"You can pull your About.me profile information, and a small screenshot of it, in your sidebar using embed code from About.me in a text widget ."

"Did you know that the fastest and easiest way to add new features to your blog is by adding widgets into the sidebar?  Widgets are also a great way to personalize your blog and help it stand out from all of the others. Here is a list of the 42 most popular and most useful widgets used on class blogs, student blogs and personal educator blogs. We've set up a Widget Demo blog so you can check out most of these widgets in one handy location to see how they look in action!"

"One of the things I have been writing about and have tried to make clear over the past few months is that work as we know it is dead and that the only way forward is to challenge convention around how we work, how we lead, and how we build our companies. Employees which were once thought of expendable cogs are the most valuable asset that any organization has. However, the employee from a decade ago isn't the same as the employee who we are starting to see today. To help show that I wanted to share an image from my upcoming book which depicts how employees are evolving. It's an easy way to see the past vs the future."

"In a fascinating article in Scientific American, teachers Jody Passanisi and Shara Peters make the case that, while kids today have a seemingly innate facility with technology, they are quick to become impatient and discouraged when faced with complex tasks involving digital tools:"

"So it's mid-August and for many teachers the new school year has begun and for others it's not too far away. Some of you will be starting at new schools and with that there's a chance that you'll be coming to terms with a new interactive whiteboard. You may already be familiar with whiteboards already, and are just starting at a school with a different brand. Either way, here's a summary of blogposts I've written in the past that hopefully will prove useful to you."

This could be a useful reference for some of you heading to schools.