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Mahara is an open source e-portfolio system with a flexible display framework. Mahara, meaning 'think' or 'thought' in Te Reo Māori, is user centred environment with a permissions framework that enables different views of an e-portfolio to be easily managed. Mahara also features a weblog, resume builder and social networking system, connecting users and creating online learner communities.

PHOTO OP (Shockwave, 7 MB) is a two-part interactive activity that introduces you to digital photography and digital photo editing. Use the virtual camera to create snapshots and explore lighting, focus, shutter speed, and compositional effects. After you've taken some photos, switch to the Photo Op editor and transform your pictures into something completely different. This Art Zone interactive is suitable for all ages. Young children will find it easy to take simple snapshots and transform or recolor their virtual photos. More advanced users can create complex artistic compositions by layering, applying filters, and experimenting with various special effects, lighting, and blends. If you need help, scroll down for some hints about how to use the program.  If your Internet connection is slow, allow the program to load fully, then come back to play.

Maybe good teaching and good use of the web is about all about crafting the way we live our verbs and our adjectives. It’s about paying attention to what kids are doing: where they can engage and how they can connect. Maybe our job is simply to study them in action, determine which of those skills need further support, provide feedback, and shift our position and the support we provide in response. Teachers who wonder how the web can revolutionize teaching and learning might appreciate this Common Craft-style video by Leigh Murrell and Heidi Beezley:

An alternative-certification program that recruits math teachers believes educators could learn a thing or two about classroom management from stand-up comics.

To help its teachers develop that knack, Math for America is offering its New York City fellows after-school improv comedy classes taught by Rachel Hamilton, an alum of Second City, the Chicago-based troupe that launched the careers of Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Amy Poehler, among others.

"The drive behind all of our PD, whether it's the driest high-level math presentation or improv comedy, is to emphasize how this is going to be applied in the classroom so that your students are successful in the classroom and in the workforce,' Umphrey said.

The greatest challenge is moving beyond the glitz and pizzazz of the flashy technology to teach true literacy in this new milieu. Using the same skills used for centuries—analysis, synthesis, and evaluation—we must look at digital literacy as another realm within which to apply elements of critical thinking.

Literacy includes the ability to read and interpret media (text, sound, images), to reproduce data and images through digital manipulation, and to evaluate and apply new knowledge gained from digital environments. According to Gilster,5 the most critical of these is the ability to make educated judgments about what we find online.