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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.

"Reading, writing... and texting? Stanford University's Andrea Lunsford on the myths and realities of digital literacy."

This format could be easily replicated by teachers wanting to support students who are confined. The Scholastic siite "features 20 days of grade-level, ready-to-print language arts and math pages, along with content-related online activities. Stay Smart! provides students with important skills practice to help them stay on track when they can't get to school."

"After combing through four years of images from our popular What's Going On in This Picture? feature, we selected 40 photographs to highlight in this slide show. Many of these are our most commented-on images - some attracting nearly a thousand student comments. Others are simply our favorites. We invite teachers and students to use this bank of 40 intriguing images, all stripped of their captions or context, to practice visual thinking and close reading skills by holding a "What's Going On in This Picture?" discussion or writing activity."

"As anyone with a toddler knows, iPads are addictive for children. They seem to have some sort of special radar that lets them know when an iDevice is within their reach, and they'll do anything they can to get their hands on them. Resistance is futile, but instead of lamenting excessive screen time, you can make your child's iPad addiction a productive one with educational apps, including those that promote early reading. With these 20 apps, children can learn how to write letters, improve phonics fluency, and even write their own books."

free, easy to read, voice to text, books for special needs readers up to teenagers

Welcome to the Tar Heel Reader, a collection of free, easy-to-read, and accessible books on a wide range of topics. You may write your own books using pictures from the huge collection at Flickr or pictures you upload.

"Five or more hours of sedentary sitting, according to Dr. David Agus, is the health equivalent of smoking a pack and a quarter of cigarettes. Yikes. Yet, sitting around is something we get plenty of practice at. Reading and writing and creating on a computer makes for big chunks of sedentary time. If you're reading this post right now, are you sitting down? How long have you been sitting?"

"Over the past couple of weeks I have shared two of Elise Gravel's wonderful non fiction children's books on disgusting critters. We have read The Slug and The Rat. After reading The Rat, and knowing that Elise is on twitter I asked my students if they wanted to tweet her and tell her what they thought about her book. To no surprise the answer was YES! Since I teach a combined grade one and two class I started by modelling how to tweet with the entire class. I ask my grade one students what they wanted to say to her and I typed their tweets as they spoke them. In the process I modelled how a tweet is written and what we needed to include in a tweet. With a few tweets sent, my grade two students were encouraged to tweet to her too while I worked with some of my grade one students. Of course, the rules never change, and I saw each tweet before it went live. Actually one tweet did sneak out without my eyes but it was quickly brought to my attention. This tweeting provided my students an authentic opportunity for writing. "

"As the school year draws to a close, I am looking forward to the laidback freedom of summer with its less hectic schedule and longer daylight hours. If I'm being completely honest, there's something really incredible about turning off my alarm clock for the foreseeable future. For me, it's time to recharge, to reflect and to prepare to return to the classroom and library renewed with energy and ideas. As an educator, I'm also keenly aware of the potential for kids to suffer from the summer slide-a loss of academic progress over the course of the summer months. According to a study done by the Colorado Department of Education, children in low-income households fall behind an average of 2 months in reading during the summer. And, summer slide is cumulative, with these learning losses building up each summer. The basic solution? Stay engaged in learning: read, write, do some math."

Mentor texts in our classrooms could open up students' possibilities to these decisions-the options they have as writers. They can see that they are the decision makers and that multi-media requires creators of digital text to make many decisions so that their messages are clear and powerful.  Rather than be formulaic, I want my students' mentors to be pieces that open up what is possible in their own work.

"A couple of days ago I shared with you here in Educational Technology an Mobile Learning a list of some useful educational web tools to use with your students to create comics. I also argued that those comics can be used to teach both writing and reading. However, today I am sharing with you a great resource where you can find tons of free comics to use in your class."

use of Twitter enhanced student engagement

"When you're finding amazing content to share on social media-the kind of thing that grabs attention and gets people to click, share, and comment-one of the most valuable, most original places to turn is your own blog and the content you personally create. So the questions become: How to create amazing content, how to put together blogposts strategically and efficiently, and how to get your content out to the masses. Writing tips are a good place to start. And to supplement the words you use to build your blogposts, I've found a huge number of blogging tools that help with everything from coming up with ideas to spread the content far and wide. Do you have a favorite blogging tool? Read on to see if it's included here in the list, and drop a note in the comments with which ones you love."

"That you probably use Wikipedia but tell your students not to is why we're here. Wikipedia has long been the bane of educators-a poster child for the 'don't believe everything you read on the internet because anyone can publish anything' movement. While making for wonderful subject matter in teaching credibility, authority, source citations, and more, the idea of actually using Wikipedia to teach explicitly teach research for an entire unit is lesson common. Luckily, the good folks at Wikipedia Education have you covered with the following (very long) unit. In the unit, students will create, edit, expand, and otherwise immerse themselves in the surprisingly complex world of public-knowledge-article editing."