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Have you ever felt that your online students needed more direction on how to approach a discussion board? Have you thought that with just a bit more assistance students would really engage in the forum and take it to the next level, rather than just do the minimum required to get points?

"Your classroom probably has a bulletin board. It's the perfect spot to organize information and show off great work. Increasingly, learning is happening online, and so it's no surprise that the bulletin board has moved online. Enter Pinterest. Teachers of young students are using the online application to find lesson ideas and stay organized, while middle and high school teachers are getting their students to use the app themselves for planning projects or collecting materials for class discussions. And librarians are running reading programs and creating book lists with that handy little Pinterest button. If you're wondering whether you should join Pinterest, read on. We'll show you how to get your account set up, how other educators are using Pinterest, and where to find inspiration on the app."

"BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is not only about students bringing their own devices to class and using them for educational purposes. It is much more than just a problem of hardware but is rather a question of what "learningware" students need to install and use with their devices. Most of the discussions on BYOD center around the accessibility and availability of devices together with the fact that students are experts of their own devices. Sounds good but not enough! Students need to be provided powerful educational apps to galvanize the learning gen inside of them. They need to be shown what apps work with which. Below is a Symbalo board featuring a wide variety of powerful web tools and apps perfect for BYOD classrooms. Click on the image below to access the interactive version of this board where you can access the links of each of these apps."

"When Jennifer Lanier began working as a media specialist at Summit Parkway Middle School in South Carolina's Richland School District Two, the school library looked like one most of us remember from our own school days. "There were large heavy tables and chairs with shelves lining all walls," she says.  "It was a very fixed space."  After a period of intensive research, she was ready to make some major changes. "My library is now split into two main sections," Lanier explains, "with the circulation desk as the dividing point.  I focused on renovating the back half first.  This would become the Creative Commons area.  I removed the shelves from the corner, purchased six tall mobile tables, a few stools, six white boards, and twenty beanbag cubes." The idea, Lanier explains, was not to set up the tables, stools and cubes ahead of time but, rather, to leave the furniture out of the way and let users (both students and staff members) grab it and reconfigure the space to meet their needs.  "The arrangement of the space does not dictate the way collaboration is carried out; instead the collaboration can freely flow in the direction it takes.  Users can gather around on the cubes to discuss an idea.  They can break out to a project table and visualize it on a white board.  The simple act of moving allows the brain to be more creative." "

"In early 2012, the Raspberry Pi Foundation released a $35 computer and the internet went wild (ok, a very small, mostly tech bloggy part). This was the Raspberry Pi 1, Model B. Originally only for the educational market in the U.K., it quickly became a must-have, DIY device around the world. Was it the first, tiny single board computer? Far from it. Could you use it out of the box? Nope. For any of its shortcomings, the Raspberry Pi has thrived not only due to its affordability but also because of a global community of passionate teachers, tinkerers and professionals who've taken the time to support and share their knowledge-and love-for this little board. In this article, I'll discuss the Raspberry Pi basics so you can start your own DIY computing journey. What is the Raspberry Pi? An electronic tool that you can play with, so let's get to playing."

"I've adopted a few different tech integration models over the years, discussed the ideas with administrators for use as a starting point for tech integration, and kept the ideas front of mind as I invent and discover new ways for using technology as a tool for learning. Discussing the stages of tech integration has led to some thought provoking and inspiring conversations, but the ideas have not gained a lot of momentum in my face-to-face teaching environment until now. As many districts jump on board with 1:1 implementation, Apple's use of the SAMR model as a framework for tech integration presents a consistent, clear and powerful message that is spreading!"

"Recently, I saw a post on a discussion board that asked, "Whatever happened to iBooks?" I found that a really entertaining concept, because my EdTechTeacher colleague - Greg Kulowiec - and I have spent hours on iBooks this summer in our workshops. In fact, iBooks is one of the first apps that we discuss, and one of the last ones that we reference. However, our use of this tool follows along a path from consumption to creation"

"While critical thinking is a foundation rather than a brick, how you build that foundation depends on the learning process itself: exposing students to new thinking and promoting interaction with that thinking in a gradual release of responsibility approach. Question stems can be a powerful part of that process no matter where the learner is. Assessment (pre-assessment, self-assessment, formative and summative assessment), prompting and cueing during discussion, etc. In that light, the following 25+ question stems (we found on Kris McElroy's pinterest board) framed around the early, non-revised Bloom's Taxonomy are worth a gander."

"Below is a wonderful classroom poster I came across in Edutopia's Pinterest board.The poster outlines 5 things students should pay heed to when engaged in writing tasks. You can print and use this poster in your class with your students. It can be used as a self assessment checklist that students draw on when working on their writings. It can also be a good way to initiate discussions around areas that pose real difficulties to students writings."

"The flipped classroom model is here to stay. This model, although not a golden bullet, puts the student firmly into the educational process. Think back over the last few years that you have been teaching or learning about teaching. What did you do when you came across a new idea? Did you investigate on your own? Did you seek others who had experiences they could share? This is what the flipped classroom is all about: Putting students in charge of their learning process and allowing them to wrestle with ideas and topics before coming back to class with their own specific questions and seek guidance from the teacher. Often (but not always) there is some sort of online activity outside of the school day that students are responsible for. This could be a video lesson, a video about a lab set up, a discussion board inside of a learning management system (LMS), or any other vehicle that communicates the topic of the lesson outside of the normal class time instruction. "

Twine's features presented in bullets: 1. Social bookmarking service, 2. Central storage for documents, images, videos and other data (from your machine or from the web, 3. Media viewable inside Twine, bookmarked or uploaded. (videos, images, etc.), 4. Collaborative platform with wiki-like editing/built in text editor, 5. User-created groups with discussion boards, 6. Intelligent analysis of added content (more on this below), 7. A recommendation engine to help discover information & people relevant to you and your interests Do note that this list is not complete

"Welcome to AncientWorlds where history comes alive! This online community for lovers of ancient history is free for many features and activities such as reading and posting on the discussion boards as well as touring member Homesites. Extended features are available by a monthly or annual subscription. To begin building your Homesite for free, register now or click one of the links below to begin exploring the site. If you are already a member login here!"

"To counter common misconceptions and bring clarity to discussions about "Flipped Learning," the governing board and key leaders of the Flipped Learning Network (FLN) announced a formal definition of the term. They also released the Four Pillars of F-L-I-P™ and a checklist of eleven indicators that educators must incorporate into their practice. The group of experienced flipped educators also draws a distinction between Flipped Learning and a Flipped Classroom.  "

"The arts have always had a secondary place in K-12 learning. If you doubt that statement, think of the first programs to go whenever budget cuts are implemented - music, fine arts and even physical fitness which includes dance. I've yet to hear of a school board or administrators discussing the way cutting math programs could help the school's bottom line. There is a hierarchy of academics in America, and arts education tends to fall pretty low on the totem pole."

"FEBRUARY 22, 2018 -From the instant replay that decides a game to the bodycam footage that clinches a conviction, people tend to trust video evidence as an arbiter of truth. But that faith could soon become quaint, as machine learning is enabling ordinary users to create fabricated videos of just about anyone doing just about anything. Earlier this month, the popular online forum Reddit shut down r/deepfakes, a subreddit discussion board devoted to using open-source machine-learning tools to insert famous faces into pornographic videos. Observers say this episode represents just one of the many ways that the this technology could fuel social problems, particularly in an age of political polarization. Combating the negative effects of fabricated video will require a shift among both news outlets and news consumers, say experts.  "Misinformation has been prevalent in our politics historically," says Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., who specializes in political misperceptions. "But it is true that technology can facilitate new forms of rumors and other kinds of misinformation and help them spread more rapidly than ever before." So-called fake news has been around long before Macedonian teenagers began enriching themselves by feeding false stories to social media users. In 1782, Benjamin Franklin printed a falsified supplement to the Boston Independent Chronicle maligning Seneca Indians in an attempt to influence public opinion during peace negotiations with Britain."

Very nice discussion about storyboarding.