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A listing of social networks used in educational environments or for educational purposes. Please add to this list (alphabetical by category and within categories).

A listing of social networks used in educational environments or for educational purposes. Please add to this list (alphabetical by category and within categories).

"Technology in and of itself cannot make school practice innovative, and will not produce educational change, but technology, in the hands of pedagogically skilled educators it can enable innovative practice and facilitate educational change."

"A few days ago I shared here PBS Kids Video app that provides a wide variety of educational videos for kids. Today I am adding another wonderful iPad app in this direction. Brainfeed is one of the top ranked apps in the iTunes store. Designed to inform, entertain and inspire, Brainfeed provides children 7+, tweens, teens and even inquisitive adults with a safe corner of the web to explore a universe of educational videos. Each video in Brainfeed  is handpicked by a team of enthusiastic educators from around the globe who are tasked with finding short (under 10 minutes) and documentary style videos that meet the following criteria:Curriculum-based, entertaining & engaging, visually stimulating, high quality content, age-appropriate , and child-friendly."

"Many teachers and schools have already 'gone Google' so what better way to figure out how to actually get started with the powerful tools than from an effective checklist that lets you quickly discover and check off new ways to use Google Apps For Education in your classroom, school, or district. We're working on building a powerful interactive guide to Google education tools as well as many other useful products so check back soon for the launch of Genius Guides. In the meantime, use this below visual as a means to start experimenting and implementing Google-built education apps in ways you may not have considered before reading this post on Daily Genius."

"I love end of year "best of" lists.  My own list is what I found to be the most powerful education related videos of 2014. They all, in some way, address the mind, heart, and spirit of education.  Each touched me in some way to help illuminate the purpose and core of education. Let me know of any others that you found of value during 2014!"

"4). Stop thinking it's your school or district's responsibility to provide professional development learning opportunities. We all expect our kids to be self-autonomous learners who take some ownership of their learning; educators should be no different considering all the avenues and paths that exist."

"ll ludicrous jokes aside, isn't this how some educational institutions operate? Totally unaware of students' opinions about the very aspect of their own lives that will impact them the most? What might the educators excuses be? Too little time? Too many papers to grade? Unwillingness to learn something new? Fear of being knocked off the sage-on-the-stage pedestal? An allegiance to out-dated and inflexible lesson plans? Fear of facilitating a class full of learning noise and having it mistaken by administrators as chaos? Or, plain ole professional stagnation due to a detachment from the ever-burgeoning world of the connected, 21st Century Educator? But please excuse my lack of manners. I should not be treating readers like participants in a twenty questions session. Instead, I got an idea. Let's just ask the students some questions. Got time to listen? The Questions If you could improve public education, what three changes would you make? If you were a school principal, what types of teachers would you hire? If you were a school principal, what types of teachers would you fire? Do you believe smartphones should be allowed in school? How can all teachers integrate students' passions/talents/interests into their curricula? What are your passions/talents/interests? Please describe your future plans."

"The educator's role has or should change in this age of information abundance or Education 2.0-3.0.  The educator's role has always been to model and demonstrate effective learning, but  somewhere along the line, the major role of the educator became that of content and knowledge disseminater.   Now in this information age content is freely and abundantly available, it is more important than ever to assist learners in the process of how to learn."

"Figuring out what the future of education is going to look like is downright impossible. Startups have a very difficult time cracking into the education world because many schools either don't have the money or the time to devote to integrating the best edtech tools into the classroom. So what kind of future are we all in store for? While we may not know the future of online learning, we do know that innovation is a constant. Education is a bit resistant to change when it comes to technology and large-scale adoption of innovative products. However, there are some key trends that you should know about as a student or teacher looking to be ahead of the curve."

The educator, as a growth mindset facilitator and coach, has a different, often unique, set of beliefs about students learning and growth. The following infographic shows (1) the common beliefs of an educator who promotes a growth mindset, and (2) some reflection questions about instructional practices that reinforce the growth mindset:

"The Maker Movement has proved itself to be a valuable component of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education ecosystem. The underlying philosophy of this movement involves open-ended creativity, development of critical thinking and intellectual flexibility, as well as instill confidence and a sense of accomplishment. The blueprints for building a makerspace are fairly straightforward, and usually incorporates a few key items like 3D printers, sewing machines, power tools, soldering gear, and maybe a laser cutter. But is it as simple as "build it and they will come?" To help answer the question of "So you have a makerspace, now what?" Jaymes Dec, middle school technology teacher and founder of NYC Makery, served up some valuable advice at our recent SOWING Circle Meetup (SOWING stands for Science Outreach Working to Inspire the Next Generation, and is a gathering for anyone who works as a STEM educator to share resources and brainstorm ideas). In his talk, Jaymes outlined a series of questions to help educators maximize the impact of making in STEM."

"Kathy Perez has decades of experience as a classroom educator, with training in special education and teaching English language learners. She also has a dynamic style. Sitting through her workshop presentation with like being a student in her classroom. She presents on how to make the classroom engaging and motivating to all students, even the most reluctant learners, while modeling for her audience exactly how she would do it. The experience is a bit jarring because it's so different from the lectures that dominate big education conferences, but it's also refreshing and way more fun. Perez says when students are engaged, predicting answers, talking with one another and sharing with the class in ways that follow safe routines and practices, they not only achieve more but they also act out less. And everyone, including the teacher, has more fun. "If we don't have their attention, what's the point?" Perez asked an audience at a Learning and the Brain conference on mindsets. She's a big proponent of brain breaks and getting kids moving around frequently during the day. She reminded educators that most kids' attention spans are about as long in minutes as their age. So a third-grader can concentrate for about eight minutes before losing interest. It's a teacher's job to make sure there are lots of quick, effective brain breaks built into the lesson to give children a moment to recalibrate. Perez says teachers must be prepared for a diverse cross section of learners with a large toolkit of strategies for teaching in multiple modalities, with many entry points to participation and content."

"What happens when you gather 14 of the world's brightest teenagers at Singularity University and ask them to design the future of education? During last summer's Exponential Youth Camp  (XYC) pilot here at SU, we found out. Here are the teens' six tips for entrepreneurs and educators building future of education."

"Make: held an education forum at the New York Hall of Science, which consisted of a series of five panels, plus a talk with Carmen Fariña, chancellor of the New York City Department of Education. We can't tell you everything that the panels discussed, (though you can see it for yourself - on our YouTube stream of the event at the bottom of this post) but we picked a selection of quotable ideas that could help you educate someone close to you, whether you're a teacher, a parent, run a makerspace, or just like to tell you friends what to do. Come learn with us!"

"There's a new book available it's packed with practical ideas for teachers from teachers: Meaningful Making: Projects and Inspirations for FabLabs and Makerspaces. And even better it's available as a free download. You can't beat that for a bargain. The book is an initiative from the FabLearn Fellows who are part of a larger project sponsored by the National Science Foundation entitled "Infusing Learning Sciences Research into Digital Fabrication in Education and the Makers' Movement". The FabLearn Fellows initiative brings together experienced educators from all over the world to create an open-source library of curriculum and contribute to research about the "makers" culture and digital fabrication in education."

"Through Twitter discussions, teachers can follow the latest in education, whether it's educational technology or new ways to teach math. These 20 hashtags offer teachers a convenient way to become part of chats and discussions that share the absolute latest in education news, resources, and ideas."

"The Artificial Intelligence is quickly changing education and eLearning and chatbots are becoming incredibly useful learning tools. This article summarizes the Artificial Intelligence trends in education by using some of the most popular educational chatbots as an example."

"Higher education leaders and decision makers use the annual Issues, Technologies, and Trends resources to know what's important and where to focus in their IT planning and management activities. When viewed together the resources provide more complete and nuanced guidance on institutional IT priorities. The lists are created by the community for the community, with support from EDUCAUSE staff. The Top 10 IT Issues list is developed by a panel of experts comprised of IT and non-IT leaders, CIOs, and faculty members and then voted on by EDUCAUSE members in an annual survey.  The Trend Watch and Strategic Technologies reports are derived from authoritative sources that annually identify emerging and maturing technologies and trends in higher education. The ELI Key Issues in Teaching and Learning list is crowd-sourced by surveying the higher education teaching and learning community to identify the issues and topics most important to them. The NMC Horizon Report identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in education. "

Sir Ken Robinson's views on creativity are abundantly well documented. In his 2006 TED Talk-still the most-watched of all time-he claimed that "we are educating people out of their creative capacities" and charged the current education system with being too rigid in adhering to traditional academic subjects. Kids, he argued, need time to dance, draw, create and find what they're good at. But he hasn't given up on schools or education-far from it, in fact. For his follow-up act, Robinson is releasing a new book for parents on how to raise capable children who thrive in school. Make no mistake, though, he's still shaking up the system (and redefining what that actually means).

"The British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) - the post-secondary institution recognized for integrating education and industry - is announcing a partnership with Microsoft Corp. and its Technology Education and Literacy in Schools (TEALS) program to teach foundation computational skills for BC high-school students. This partnership recognizes the value of exposing young learners to the jobs of the future while equipping them with the appropriate knowledge and skills for success in the future tech workforce. With support from the BC Ministry of Education and BCIT, the BC branch of TEALS has already educated more than 400 students across four BC high schools. Credit: Microsoft Microsoft TEALS exists because many high schools want to offer computer science courses but often don't have teachers who are trained on the subject. To fill this gap, TEALS volunteers work with classroom teachers to team-teach students, and to equip instructors with the knowledge to teach students on their own."