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Research that says clearly IWBs used by experienced confident teachers achieves a significant increase in students understanding.

Great link for an activity on new literacies

"Where is it? In a middleclass neighborhood; I'm not sure yet where it is.\nWhen is it? Wintertime in the evening, during an era when it was still common to see driving horses-maybe the late 1800s.\nWhat is the weather like? Cold, and the night falls early.\nWhat are the social conditions? In this neighborhood it seems people mostly stay inside in the evening; the narrator is aware of "rough tribes from the cottages" nearby-probably members of a lower social class.\nWhat is the landscape or environment like? Dark and quiet, with a sense of heaviness that contrasts with the narrator's shouting and playing.\nWhat special details make the setting vivid? Sensory details: the violet color of the sky, the dim lanterns, the stinging cold, the ashpits' odors, the music of the horse's harness."

Jog the Web is a web-based tool that allows anyone to create a synchronous guide to a series of web sites. Its step by step approach of taking viewers through web sites allowing the author to annotate and ask guiding questions for each page is unique.

"The power is in taking audio content - in podcast form or not - and creating something useful, a soundscape of the things you like or you think others would - and then using the ubiquitous RSS format to distribute that information." - http://portagemedia.com/socialcommentary/2009/12/21/what-the-heck-is-huffduffer/

Reflective Protocols for Literary Artifacts "# What do you see here? Describe the document/artifact in terms of content, without being interpretive. # What do you think you know about this document based on reading it and any previous knowledge? # What do you think the document reveals about its era/ What kinds of information can be learned from the document? (There might be more than one kind of information). # What don't you know about the document? What questions would you ask about it? # If you were going to do further research on this document on the World Wide Web or in the library, how would you go about it? # What knowledge or skills are you bringing to this course from other learning experiences you've had that help you make sense of these documents?"

"Journal Submission Guidelines NCTE publishes twelve professional journals, including at least one for each membership section. Volunteer editors ensure that the peer-reviewed content is of the highest quality and is relevant to the lives of NCTE members and subscribers. Because these journals are all published through different volunteer editors, the submission guidelines vary for each: * Classroom Notes Plus * College Composition and Communication * English Education * College English * English Journal * English Leadership Quarterly * Language Arts * Research in the Teaching of English * School Talk * Talking Points * Teaching English in the Two-Year College * Voices from the Middle"

Spell with flickr is a neat app that allows you to create banners or other text with flickr images. Perfect for embedding in wikis or using on blogs or other Web sites.

Annual contest: write a letter to the author of a poem or book that changed your life. Great writing assignment.

"The keys to understanding this new perspective on writing and reading lie in notions of collaboration and being social. More specifically, it's believing that collaboration and increased socialization around activities like reading and writing is a good idea."

Neat video that discusses rhyme in the context of pop songs and culture. Internal rhyme, family rhyme, masculine/feminine rhyme, etc.

Handy guide to English verb tenses that shows a progression in time from the past to the future.

standards for assessment of reading and writing that include a focus on digital literacies

The problem with 40 students is that there is no way to read (much less comment upon) every post if every student is posting every week. I am toying then with a rotation model (inspired by Randy Bass), in which students are divided into five groups of eight students, cycling through these five roles: * Role 1 - Students are "first readers," posting initial questions and insights about the reading to the class blog by Monday morning * Role 2 - Students are "respondents," building upon, disagreeing with, or clarifying the first readers' posts by class time on Tuesday * Role 3 - Students are "synthesizers," mediating and synthesizing the dialogue between first readers and respondents by Thursday * Role 4 - Students are responsible for the week's class notes (see next section on Wikis) * Role 5 - Students have this week "off" in terms of blogging and the wiki I like the rotation model because each group of students is reading for and reacting to something different. The shifting positionality affords them greater traction, offers greater variety, and guarantees a dialogue without comments from myself.

Adopt a word that is going out of use!

We all know Google will do searches, mail, calendars, images and tons more stuff, but I got really excited when I came across a list on Twitter with all the Google Tools and Apps, listed A-Z. There are so many great resources for educators and students. It was so helpful, I have done several workshops for our district on the lesser known Google tools that can play big roles in the classroom and plan to do several more. Check out this video of all this video presentation of my favorite cool tools!

Not entirely sure how I could put this to use in an English class just yet, but I'm thinking it could be a good opening activity for a discussion of symbolism somehow; it's supposed to test something pre-lingual about ourselves, so I think one could connect the idea of such associations with the idea that symbols are associations made over time...