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"If you're new to the K-12 Online Conference, please read our About page as well as as our Goals and Core Values. Since 2006, K-12 Online has hosted a free, all-volunteer online conference with 40+ free videos each year featuring some of the most creative and innovative teachers sharing their best ideas for engaging students with digital tools and effective learning strategies. All past keynote addresses are now available on our YouTube channel, and we're in the process of migrating all past presentations there too. Shannon Miller will kick off our 2013 conference with a pre-conference keynote on Monday, October 14th. During week 1 of the conference which starts October 21st, Steve Hargadon & Audrey Watters will keynote the "Open Learning" strand, while Kathy Cassidy will keynote "Outside Learning." During week 2, starting October 28th, Larry Ferlazzo will keynote "Leading Learning" while Sylvia Martinez & Gary Stager will keynote "Building Learning." Please forward and share this post on social media to get the word out about our fantastic keynoters for this year's conference!"

Journey North:

Google Reader is shutting down in two days and it is therefore important that you migrate your existing RSS feed subscriptions elsewhere. There are quite a few Reader alternatives to choose from though I have finally picked Feedly as the new home for my beloved feeds.

"It's always revealing to watch learners research. When trying to understand complex questions often as part of multi-step projects, they often simply "Google it." Why do people migrate? Google it. Where does inspiration come from? Google it. How do different cultures view humanity differently? Google it. Literally Google it. Type those questions word-for-word into the Google search box and hope for answers. Educators cringe, but to the students it makes sense. And if you think about it, this is actually helpful-a rare opportunity for transparency into the mind of a student. When your formative years are spent working your fingers through apps and iPads, smartphones and YouTube, the digital world and its habits can bend and shape not just how you access information, but how you conceptualize it entirely. And among the most powerful forces here is the Google.com search engine."

"If interdisciplinary project-based learning is a goal for you and your students this school year, you might want to start with questions that put a premium on place. For example: Where are bicycle accidents most likely to happen in your community? Where's the best spot to watch for migrating Monarch butterflies? What's the safest evacuation route in the event of a natural disaster? How have the neighborhoods of New Orleans changed after Hurricane Katrina? To investigate such questions, students would need to gather and analyze data, look for patterns, think critically, and communicate their understanding with maps and other visual aids. In the process, they would also make connections across content areas and deepen their geo-literacy skills."

"Two years ago when Erick Hanson migrated from history teacher to media specialist he had one big goal in mind: to make the library cool again. "If kids weren't coming into the library to check out books because they need the information or they just want to read for leisure, where are they going instead?" says Hanson, who works at Pennsylvania's East Pennsboro School District, near Harrisburg. In a mobile age, books and desktops weren't much of a draw to the library, and foot traffic had seen better days. So he began wondering where kids were going instead and how he could meet them halfway. "It didn't take long for me to boil that down to YouTube as the major place where they're consuming content," says Hanson. "So the idea came about to turn our student consumers into creators." That year he began EP Media, an after-school YouTube club for both middle and high school students that has blossomed into one of the district's most hands-on, student-driven initiatives."

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