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Share your desktop on either/or a PC or Mac

The challenge is to connect your students with 80 schools from around the world via Skype (a free video conferencing tool). Once completed, you will be inducted into the Hall of Fame of "Skyping Certified Educator" :) So make sure you keep documentation of your connections.

provides teens with the opportunity to explore, engage, and create through activities and projects. FreshBrain takes advantage of the latest technologies, such as web conferencing and social networking, to provide a very progressive environment where teens can complete activities and work together on projects. This experience is enhanced with Advisors, available to support and mentor teens who are working on projects, with the intention of increasing the likelihood of success. In addition, FreshBrain provides teens with tools and training in the latest technologies to complete these projects.

RealPresence Mobile free videoconferencing app for tablets released

"When you are lucky enough to travel and visit with librarians all over the world, you realize the power and the talents of our community. One thing is clear to me: as librarians, we haven't yet leveraged our true power as global connectors.  Lately I've been thinking about our yet-to-be-realized opportunities and how we might realize them. You see, I see convergence. Never before have we had truly effective tools for synchronous conferencing and media-rich asynchronous group discussion. Never before have we been able to leverage our emerging online communities of practice.   Never before has participation been so possible.  Never before has our world been so flat. Never before has it be more obvious that the prefix geo might amplify themes in any curriculum. One of the titles in Heidi Hayes Jacobs' recent Contemporary Perspectives on Literacy series is Global Literacy.  This video introduction describes how the author/editor sees the intersection of three critical literacies: digital literacy, media literacy and global literacy"

"As a school librarian, I always thought of the notion of collection as expansive. Collections might include any of the experiences we discover, as well as any of the people we meet who might enhance learning for our communities. Among those experiences are virtual field trips. Opportunities now abound for connections to curriculum and student interests. And easier strategies for video conferencing, combined with new types of interactions, make virtual field trips even more affordable and engaging. You don't risk weather conditions or losing any wandering kiddos who can't find their way back to the bus. You can ignore issues of distance relating to both space and time. And these escapes from daily classroom routine can result in very sticky learning."

"Regardless of whether you think every infant needs an iPad, I think we can all agree that technology has changed education for the better. Today's learners now enjoy easier, more efficient access to information; opportunities for extended and mobile learning; the ability to give and receive immediate feedback; and greater motivation to learn and engage. We now have programs and platforms that can transform learners into globally active citizens, opening up countless avenues for communication and impact. Thousands of educational apps have been designed to enhance interest and participation. Course management systems and learning analytics have streamlined the education process and allowed for quality online delivery. But if we had to pick the top ten, most influential ways technology has transformed education, what would the list look like? The following things have been identified by educational researchers and teachers alike as the most powerful uses of technology for learning. Take a look. 1. Critical Thinking In Meaningful Learning With Technology, David H. Jonassen and his co-authors argue that students do not learn from teachers or from technologies. Rather, students learn from thinking-thinking about what they are doing or what they did, thinking about what they believe, thinking about what others have done and believe, thinking about the thinking processes they use-just thinking and reasoning. Thinking mediates learning. Learning results from thinking. So what kinds of thinking are fostered when learning with technologies? Analogical If you distill cognitive psychology into a single principle, it would be to use analogies to convey and understand new ideas. That is, understanding a new idea is best accomplished by comparing and contrasting it to an idea that is already understood. In an analogy, the properties or attributes of one idea (the analogue) are mapped or transferred to another (the source or target). Single analogies are also known as sy

"Google Plus is gaining such a huge momentum within educational circles. More and more teachers and educators are flocking to it and this is probably just the beginning. I have been using this platform since its early days and I have learned a great deal about it. I personally view it as a mixture of Twitter, Facebook and Skype all in one place. From sharing resources and links to posting updates to video conferencing, Google Plus has all the features to render it a powerful educational tool."

"After-school clubs offer both students and teachers the freedom to explore alternative approaches to learning."

ollaboration Tools Collaborative learning is essentially people working together to solve a problem, create a product, or derive meaning from a body of material. A central question or problem serves to organize and drive activities, and encourage application, analysis, and synthesis of course material. While the landscape of technology that can be used to support central activities of collaborative learning is vast and varied, it is often lumped together under a single label: "collaboration tools." Given this vast and distributed landscape of tools, the difficulty of finding one or a set of tools to meet your goals can be time intensive. We are here to help. For faculty who are interested in learning more, want to explore, or try out a tool, contact us to talk with an Eberly colleague in person.