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"The two web tools I m sharing with you today are ideal for creating and sharing mapped stories. Students can use them in class to organize, narrate and present information through the means of geography. Both of these tools are easy to use and are also student friendly. Have a look and share with your students."

"Have you ever seen a movie in which a superhero flies through the sky? You can see all the skyscrapers whizzing by in the background, and it looks so cool. Have you ever WONDERed how movie makers film such shots? Well, we're here to tell you the secret. And the secret is: there are really superheroes and you just have to catch them in action! OK, not really, but the special effects professionals who work on movies are like superheroes, because they have invented some incredible ways to create special effects shots that will knock your socks off! You don't have to watch a superhero movie to see special effects in action, though. All you need to do is turn on the news and watch the local weather forecast. Have you ever noticed how the meteorologist sometimes stands in front of a map with moving graphics? Those scenes are created in much the same way that those cool movie special effects are created."

"History in Motion is a promising service that allows teachers and students to build multimedia history stories. On History in Motion you can build animated timelines that can move in conjunction with movements on a map. At each stop along your timeline and map you can include descriptions of events, display images, and display videos. "

"Getting Started with Minecraft Improving Minecraft Performance on Old and New Computers Meet the Biomes of Minecraft Exploring Minecraft's Structures Meet the Mobs of Minecraft Exploring Minecraft Game Modes Surviving Your First Night In Survival Mode Your First Mine, Armor, and Further Exploration Advanced Mining and the Magic of Enchanting I'm a Farmer, You're a Farmer, We are Farmers All Engineering with Redstone Creating Custom Minecraft Maps Downloading and Installing Custom Maps Setting Up Local Multiplayer and Custom Player Skins Exploring Minecraft Multiplayer Servers"

"To document and share these 103 apps I chose to include on my STEM iPad cart this year, I created screenshots of each iPad folder and uploaded them to a Flickr album. I also created a linked List.ly list of the apps, which I've embedded below. The creative apps I've included, which support creating and sharing multimedia artifacts for digital portfolios, are also included within my "Mapping Media" digital literacy framework. For additional app lists, check out the "App Recommendations for Mobile Devices" list complied by EdTechTeacher. Hat tip to Beth Holland (@brholland) for sharing that link earlier today."

"Stickyboard2 is a very good iPad app for creating sticky notes and mind maps. Actually, Stickyboard2 turns your iPad into a giant whiteboard with a never-ending stack of sticky notes. The regular price of the app is $9.99 but it is on sale today for free, at least here in Canada and also in the States. Not sure if it's free in other places. Taking notes and creating sticky notes on Stickyboard2 is super easy.The app supports a number of coloured markers you can use to write your notes. Arranging and organizing notes is also another powerful feature provided by this app. You can easily select a bunch of notes, then swipe with 3 fingers to instantly arrange them into neat piles or fan them out into a grid, columns, or rows. And the best thing of all is that you can export and share your stickies in text or PDF format."

"Green screen is a cinematographic technique that allows video editors to add a variety of visual effects to their videos. These effects include : adding virtual backgrounds, superimposing subjects over animated backdrops, placing a subject on another shot and many more. Green screen technology has been widely used in weather and movie industry. But now with the emergence of apps such as the ones below, everyone can use this technology to create engaging clips and presentations. As Do Ink explained " Green screen technology is used in the movies to make it look like the actors have landed on an alien planet, and it's used on TV to make it look like your local news announcer is standing in front of an animated weather map. The green screen effect works by combining images from multiple sources into a single video. These images can come from photos or videos in your camera roll, or from the live video camera. ""

"What exactly is digital literacy, and how can we ensure that students are learning the digital skills they need in school? MediaSmarts classifies competencies for digital literacy according to three main principles: use, understand and create. These principles form the basis for our digital literacy framework. Young Canadians need to be able to make good choices about privacy, ethics, safety and verifying information when they're using digital media, and they need to be prepared to be active and engaged digital citizens. Based on our research on digital literacy education in Canada, USE, UNDERSTAND & CREATE provides a road map for teaching these skills in Canadian schools. The framework draws on six key aspects of digital literacy (listed in the grid below) and provides teachers with supporting lessons and interactive resources that are linked to curriculum outcomes for every province and territory. The home and school connection is supported by parent tip sheets that are linked to from each resource."

"This evening I taught the sixth of seven classes for K-12 teachers in Montana on "Mapping Media to the Common Core: Part 1." I love teaching this class over H.323 videoconferencing from my house! Tonight we focused primarily on creating narrated slideshows and screencasts. Following class, I used the iPad apps Haiku Deck, Mail, Explain Everything, PhotoSync, and YouTube Capture to create and publish a seven minute narrated slideshow I titled, "MinecraftEDU Tips (Jan 2014.)" I provided some additional background about how I made this in my post tonight on our class blog."

"ThingLink is a popular tool for collaboratively creating interactive images. Now, you can use ThingLink to create interactive videos too. ThingLink Video (still in beta, but you can register for early access here) allows you to select any public video on YouTube and add interactive pinmarks to it. Each pinmark can contain embeds of other videos, maps, text, and links to other pages of information. Learn more about the ThingLink video in the video below."

"Google Earth is a great tool for students to use to explore the world. Building tours in Google Earth and Google Maps is one of my favorite activities for students to do to tell a story. It can take a while to understand all of the nuances of creating tours in Google Earth. Fortunately, Google recently introduced Tour Builder which makes it easier than ever to create tours in Google Earth"

"GE Teach Tour is a free tool that you and your students can use to create tours to play in the new web version of Google Earth. To get started head to geteach.com/tour/ then enter a title for your tour. The next step is to give your first placemark a title and to enter a description of the location you're featuring with that placemark. To place your placemarks in your tour you can either manually enter latitude and longitude coordinates or you can click on the map to insert your placemarks. Finally, to add images to your placemarks you will have to link to publicly available images that are in your Google Drive account or on another image hosting service like Flickr (by the way, linking to images found on sites that prevent hotlinking won't work)."

"Graphic organizers are fantastic for helping students brainstorm ideas for a personal narrative or collect information for a research report.  Kids can create mind maps, sequence events, make connections, and more.  Popplet is a terrific app for iOS devices that is also available on web browsers.  Students can create their own graphic organizers combining text and multimedia.  They even have the option to customize colors and layout."

This is an amazing illustration of Sir Kenneth Robinson's presentation on schooling in the 21st century.  It's fascinating to watch an illustrator create a visual map of Robinson's ideas as they are spoken.  The content of the presentation is enormously important to any educator struggling to change the system.  It's even more important to those who've been subdued and mislead by old ideas into thinking they can't learn or create.

OneGeology is an international initiative of the geological surveys of the world and a flagship project of the 'International Year of Planet Earth'. Its aim is to create dynamic geological map data of the world available via the web.

"A new wave of e-textbooks is giving students more than just words and a few hotlinks on a digital page. Publishers over the last few years have been adding video, interactive maps and gamified quizzes designed to engage students more deeply in their learning. "Think of it as making the textbook a hands-on activity," says Andrew Miller, an ASCD faculty member and technology expert. "It's making the content come to life in a way that meets the needs of different learners-auditory learners, visual leaders, text-based learners." The latest e-textbooks, developed by traditional publishers as well as new players like Discovery Education, are powered by a host of adaptive features, such as adjustable levels of difficulty and instant translation into other languages. And in some districts, teachers are using platforms like Apple's iBooks to create their own digital course materials."

"Along with our Director of Admissions I have been working on an iBook guide for our school. One thing she asked me to do was incorporate a virtual tour of the campus. I told her that I didn't know how to do that, I thought it was beyond my ability level (after all, I'm no programmer, those people are like wizards to me). She wouldn't let it go so I spent some time trying to figure it out."