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Part of the problem, he suggested, is the time it takes educators to move from learning about a piece of technology to actually integrating and manipulating its specific uses for the classroom. "If you take the five stages from the evolution of thought and practice," he said, "starting with 'entry' and moving through 'adoption' to 'adaptation' to 'appropriation,' and finally 'innovation,' research shows it takes seven years on average to go from the top of that list to the bottom. That's a long time." Too long, according to Benno. Which is why, as educators, "we have to figure out how to close the gap."

For Benno, staff development is the key to making that happen. "With professional development that number drops from seven years to around two and a half years," he said. "That's a huge difference." And a big part of the value of professional development, he argued, is that it gets educators to start thinking about new ways to use technology; ways that seem foreign, but that may be quite common in the minds of 21st century learners.

Clearly, the note-taking factor contributed to the overall scores. As someone who was in college before podcasting became popular but after sending students home with PowerPoint printouts became all the rage, I know from experience that many students think that printed slides are merely notes in prepackaged form.

McKinney acknowledged that the students who downloaded the podcast simply seemed to do better with taking notes and paying closer attention to what was being said, as they were able to go back and repeat parts of the lecture they had trouble understanding. "It isn't so much that you have a podcast, it's what you do with it," she told New Scientist.

As for whether podcasts can replace professors, McKinney stops short of suggesting that all classrooms become virtual. She refers to them as a supplemental tool to a traditional lecture that can help students gain a better understanding of the material and also help free up professors from answering repetitive questions. The takeaway? Go to class, take notes, listen to the podcast, and take more notes.

The Visible Body is a fantastic, free, program that allows your students to virtually explore all systems of the human body. I first learned about the Visible Body through Kevin Jarrett's blog, he used the program with a 4th grade class, but the Visible Body could just as well be used in a high school setting. In fact, the reason that I thought about the Visible Body today is that a science teacher in my school mentioned that she has used it with her anatomy students.

To use the Visible Body you need to install the Unity Web Player for Mac or PC. Once installed you can explore all of the systems of the body. The Visible Body allows students to view bones, muscles, and organs from various perspectives and see how the parts of the body work together as a system.

Update: Kevin Jarrett reminds us in the comments that if you're going to use Visible Body with younger students be aware that Visible Body is 100% anatomically correct. In that case it's probably best to use Visible Body as a teacher-directed exercise and not a individualized activity.

Some people can read instructions on how to do things and can immediately go out and do them without any problems. But others need to see things done before they fully grasp how to do them. This is fine if you know someone who can show you how to do things, but if you don’t, it’s a little harder. Enter the video tutorial. I

Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. It is being used in planetarium projectors. Just set your coordinates and go.

LyricWiki is a free site which is a source where anyone can go to get reliable lyrics for any song, from any artist, without being hammered by invasive ads.

Can you think of 50 different ways to go green in your classroom starting this fall? Don’t worry: we really want you to enjoy your time off, so we came up with this little cheat sheet to help you and your students make a pact to make more eco-conscious choices and take real steps to saving our planet.