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"Ever wonder why you can't figure out when and where to stick a comma? It's probably because commas, by far, have more rules and applications than any other punctuation mark. But why do so many people use the semicolon incorrectly? Comparatively, it should be one of the easiest punctuation marks to master. And why doesn't anybody seem to use the en dash?"

"There has been much focus on shifting our assessment practices in education and, particularly in BC, moving toward more Assessment For Learning (or formative assessment) in schools. This is such an important conversation and needed change but at some point along the way, Assessment OF Learning (or summative assessment) has been given a bad rap. To have sound assessment practices in a classroom and school, we need a solid balance of ongoing formative assessment (click here for more info) as well as an effective way to verify that learning has occurred (summative). Formative assessment should be where we spend most of our time but summative assessments are still very important. As we engage in dialogue in our school around assessment, I recently posed a question at our staff meeting that said: Are we marking assignments or assessing learning outcomes?"

Including MP# and Ipod versions of The King James Bible,Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan Treasure Island by R. L. Stevenson, Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Classic Short Stories Vol 1 by Various, Ten Days in a Madhouse by Nellie Bly, White Fang by Jack London, The Four Million by O. Henry,American Indian Folklore and Fairy Tales, The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

A superb assessment resource which allows you to gain real-time feed back through tests, quizzes and even allowing students to annotate a document that you upload. Set up your quiz/test using true/false statements, longer text answers or students can draw the answer. You can setup a marking key meaning that the site will mark the answers for you and give instant data on who is correct. Your student can either have there own free account or they can access the material using a link. The site works across a wide range of devices.

"Many languages use accents and diacritic marks to change how a letter or vowel sounds. Accordingly, you may find it useful to know how to type accents and diacritical marks on a Mac using the keyboard. This should be particularly useful for users who also type or write in Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Greek, but obviously this applies to many other latin language scripts as well. Modern versions of Mac OS offer an exceptionally fast way to type letter accents, and it's quite easy to use. "

On Saturday PZ Sydney Network hosted Ron Ritchhart and Mark Church for a conversation about their new book, "The Power of Making Thinking Visible". What follows is a summary of some of the key messages from this conversation. You can watch the whole conversation above. For more learning opportunities like this visit the PZ Sydney Network or follow @pzsydnetwork on Twitter.

"One of our favorite times of the year is Dot Day and September 15 will be here before we know it! In fact, Dot Day is only 60 days away so it is time for all of us to sign up and start planning to make this the BEST celebration yet!  "

Social book-marking technology that may be preferable to Diigo for research purposes as citations are afforded

So with the caveat that I am only halfway through Mark Bauerline's book The Dumbest Generation, I have some early impressions to throw out there. While I think there is some merit to this side of the debate (much like Keen's Cult of the Amateur) what really bothers me about this book so far is, as the title suggests, this sense that our kids are at fault. Let me put it plainly: our kids are not "dumb" nor is this generation "dumb" simply because they spend a lot of time in front of television screens and computers or because they haven't worked out for themselves how to get smarter using the Read/Write Web.

The mother and father of murdered boundary broker Mark Terry informed He Hannity on Friday that they think Lawyer Common Eric Owner and other Rights Division authorities are "hiding something" in their reaction to the messed up anti-gunrunning function Quick and Enraged.

"On comparing iPad apps with iPhone equivalents, one thing rapidly becomes clear: apps for Apple's tablet are pricier. Many of the best free iPhone apps cost 59p or more in their iPad incarnations, and the quality level of what's still free is often ropey. But among the dross lie rare gems - iPad apps that are so good you can't believe they're still free. Of those we unearthed, here is our pick of the best free iPad apps. Note that apps marked 'universal' will run on your iPad and iPhone, optimising themselves accordingly."

"Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879. Today marks what would have been his 134th birthday. Sure there are a lot of different ways to celebrate Einstein's legacy, but we hope you will take a moment to remember this remarkable scientist by checking out an Einstein-themed iPad app or two."

"Hadi Partovi wants more kids to learn to code. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerber, Sheryl Sandberg, and many others agree. Partovi wants all high schools to offer computer science classes because it represents a growing cluster of job skills but one that few schools teach-particularly schools attended by low income and minority kids."

"What's the flap about the flip? Studies say it's an effective way to engage students in learning. But in order for the flip not to flop, we need to step back. It is not a "one size fits all" model:"

"In less than a decade, Oregon State University went from not offering formal tech support to its faculty to having the director of its faculty tech training program, Jon Dorbolo, named one of this year's top 50 innovators in education. That's because in 2003, Dorbolo and his colleague Mark Dinsmore had a vision for how to turn their scattershot efforts at individual faculty tech support into something more scalable."

" 2013 marks the tenth anniversary of MLTI's one-to-one laptop initiative"

"Now that we have ushered in 2013, we are at a point where we should look back on the applications that have been gracing the home-screens of many iOS users over the past year. 2012 as a whole was a year of social media advances: developers everywhere found amazing ways to improve and extend the way that we are using social networking websites, and moreover, users who were fed up with social networking being seen as useless have been finding educational ways of making use of social networking and iOS applications in general. Let's take a look at applications old and new that have made their mark over the past year."