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"This formula has been proven in my class over the last 6 months. PBL is my favourite thing at the moment, and if you've read my personal blog you'd think I had the words edmodo and PBL tattooed onto my brain. (I don't, I promise!) PBL is a tough nut to crack when you're working for a public school with limited resources and the pressure of external standardised tests breathing down your neck. PBL is hard because it requires quite a lot of planning as well as quite a lot of guts - you need to have faith in yourself as an educator and faith that your students will 'go with' your radicalised view of teaching and learning. Getting your students to work in small groups to complete a project that will be shared with a real-world audience is pretty daunting. But it is made so much easier, and made so much better, thanks to edmodo."

Check out how this Aussie teacher works with her class in Edmodo, especially step 5 the reflections.

Joyce Valenza has created this wikispace list of all manner of copyright free searches and portals. As well as images and music their are pages related to avatar makers, concept mapping and clipart.

An article from the Age related to the iPad trial in DEECD schools.

Well on one random post, I grabbed one random picture off of google and then a few weeks later I got contacted by the photographer who owned that photo. He sent me a takedown notice, which I responded to immediately because I felt awful that I had unknowingly used a copyrighted pic. The pic was down within minutes. But that wasn't going to cut it. He wanted compensation for the pic. A significant chunk of money that I couldn't afford. I'm not going to go into the details but know that it was a lot of stress, lawyers had to get involved, and I had to pay money that I didn't have for a use of a photo I didn't need.

"Below is an awesome infographic shedding more light on the use of iPad in education.It provides some amazing facts about the potential of this mobile device in learning and reviews the reasons behind this growing popularity of iPad in the educational circles. "

Another infographic from BestCollegesOnline this time looking at how social media might be used in the classroom

"Welcome to the ultimate guide to YouTube. Unless you've been living under rock throughout the 'Noughties' YouTube is quite simply the world's largest collection of video content and as an educator it is an amazing resource that you SHOULD NOT be without. I say should because I appreciate that not all teachers can access YouTube at your school for either political or technical reasons. If this is you then please do not give up on this post as much of the information included will apply to using any similar video service such as the now terrible and ridiculously over advertised teachertube. "

I've spent the past few months with GCSE and A-level classes doing absolutely no writing at all beyond sample tests and student blogs. Students realise how high the bar of public domain writing is. This can be initially intimidating, but that removes all apathy or sense of the humdrum. Asking all students to write blogs as learning unfolds and interlinks empowers the teacher to be more supportive because they're less tied to the bureaucracy; it raises challenge levels; it enables IT-skilling; it lets students see their own progress and differentiates well; it means more productive and accelerating learning-talk over rote-writing.

"A new research project by the Open University explores the much-debated concept of "the digital native". The university does this by making full use of the rich resource which is its own highly diverse student body. It concludes that while there are clear differences between older people and younger in their use of technology, there's no evidence of a clear break between two separate populations."

This is important research that all educators need to take account of.

"With budgets tight, many schools are hoping to bring technology into the classroom without having to shell out for a device for each student. A solution for many has been to make classes BYOD (short for "bring your own device"), which allows students to bring laptops, tablets, and smartphones from home and to use them in the classroom and share them with other students. It's a promising idea, especially for schools that don't have big tech budgets, but it has met with some criticism from those who don't think that it's a viable long-term or truly budget-conscious decision. Whether that's the case is yet to be seen, but these stories of schools that have tried out BYOD programs seem to be largely positive, allowing educators and students to embrace technology in learning regardless of the limited resources they may have at hand."

"Two awesome courses in one awesome channel: John Green teaches you world history and Hank Green teaches you biology."

"During its education event in January, Apple unveiled its plans to revolutionize the K-12 classroom with the iPad, electronic textbooks, a revamped version of iTunes U that supports content for K-12 schools as well as higher education, and tools for educators to create their own digital content using iBooks Author and iTunes U. In the intervening months, schools and districts around the country have made significant investments in iPads, including the San Diego Unified School District, which invested $15 million in 26,000 iPads for its students. Those sales created a record quarter for Apple in the K-12 education market. With the back to school season upon us, it's clear that the massive iPad deployments will give Apple the opportunity to disrupt the classroom in the ways it has whole industries and, in many ways, that's a good thing."

"Search engines such as Google and popular cloud computing services may have been "sued out of existence" if they started in Australia, while consumers who make remixes or mash-ups of copyright songs and videos are also breaching the law. These are just some of the glaring issues with the Copyright Act that have been raised today by the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) and copyright experts. The ALRC has released a new issues paper for its inquiry into whether Australia's copyright laws have kept up with the digital age."

"Edmodo educators gathered online across the globe for a remarkable day of professional development. Teachers shared, inspired, and showcased ways they are using Edmodo and other digital tools in the classroom." These are the videos

Sure, I can see the positives and negatives to handwriting but as a Kindergarten teacher I see great merit in developing fine motor skills, spelling skills (without spell check) and being able to write legibly. I remember back to my HCS and those exams where all you did was write was laborious but I think we need a balance of both.

"YouTube for Schools provides schools access to hundreds of thousands of free educational videos from YouTube EDU. These videos come from well-known organizations like Stanford, PBS and TED as well as from up-and-coming YouTube partners with millions of views, like Khan Academy, Steve Spangler Science and Numberphile."

"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

"At first Snozerr looks like most audio recorders, until you notice the button for the camera. This app gives you the ability to take photos while recording audio; each picture is timestamped to the point in the recording where the photo was taken, and you can easily synchronize the images with the audio for later playback. This combination of features makes Snozerr an ideal app for students recording lectures and workers recording presentations with lots of infographics. You can use the timestamped photos to target the interesting parts of the lecture and ignore the non-relevant parts. All of the voice and photo files created in one session are linked together, so it is easy to share content with your peers. The app also supports nested hierarchical organization, dual cameras, and sending files by email."

All K-12 and Higher Ed Teachers, Administrators, IT Directors, and Tech Coordinators! Have you heard about the New Zealand Summit? Are you interested in how Google Apps in Education can promote student learning and motivation? The program features Google Certified Teachers, Google Apps for Education Certified Trainers, practicing administrators, solution providers, Google engineers, and representatives from the Google Apps for Education team. Register now to send teachers, administrators, tech directors, library media specialists, tech support staff, CTOs, and anyone who is interested in finding out more about leveraging Google Apps for Education to support student learning.

"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."