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"Welcome to the social media revolution. An 11-year-old can ask the Prime Minister about education policy in the time it would take to lick a stamp. ''It's fun because you get to tell the world what you've learned,'' Campbell says. According to the American author and international speaker on digital media, Erik Qualman, social media has become the number one activity on the web."

"Last week, Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, announced more than 400,000 high-resolution digital images of public domain works in the Museum's world-renowned collection may be downloaded directly from the Museum's website for non-commercial use-including in scholarly publications in any media-without permission from the Museum and without a fee. The number of available images will increase as new digital files are added on a regular basis."

Handing Assessment Over to Students I have been giving a lot of thought about how to give my students more of a voice in their learning and in our classroom. Initially, I was focused on increasing their presence on our classroom blog through podcasts, videos, and blog posts. I even gave thought to asking my district IT to unblock Twitter so that we could create a class account (which I am still going to do). But never would assessment have crossed my mind. Fortunately, I took my thoughts to my PLN. Janine Campbell (@campbellartsoup) responded to my tweet about amplifying students' voices with rich insights and a couple articles that got the cerebral wheels turning. If you like what you read here, be sure to follow Janine on Twitter. Assessment for learning is a pedagogical golden nugget. No one ever said that the teacher had to do it alone. Why not give your students a voice in how they are assessed? It might tell you more about where they are at than assessing your class conventionally. Rubrics are my favorite way to assess student projects. I'm even pretty good at creating them. By doing so, I completely understand the assignment and learning outcomes for any given project. But do my students? Is there a way to better utilize rubrics as assessment of learning where students' voices are intensified. Yes! Allowing students to create the criteria for assessment does just that. It doesn't just serve the purpose of better summative assessment. Student-created rubrics also provides a medium for formative assessment as well. If my assignment is for students to analyze the effects of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln on post-war America, I will be able to formatively assess the class' understanding of the main points of this event by the criteria that they suggest this assignment should be graded on. I will know that I need to reteach aspects of this event in American history if students believe that including a description of John Wilkes Booth's escape from Ford's The