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"Top five reasons why teachers love to rrripple 1 Makes connecting with students, parents, and other educators easy, meaningful, and secure. You can create groups comprised of people you know; no one can solicit membership, which makes sharing very secure. Moreover, teachers can moderate the groups to ensure appropriate online behavior. 2 Promotes creativity, collaboration and community by offering a fun and engaging digital platform. The media-rich interface makes viewing, uploading and downloading all sorts of media a fun experience. 3 Allows teachers and students away from the classroom to keep up-to-date and in-touch with classes, and to monitor progress on assignments. Even after you leave the school campus, or if a student is out of school sick, you and the student can access any of the media shared using various mobile devices. 4 Assists students with accessing, organizing and tracking materials and deadlines. The timeline interface helps students review lessons and assignments on their own terms, in their own way, at their own pace. 5 Provides web-savvy teachers the latest tools and technology to make class life more informative, fun, and exciting. Students have an insatiable desire to create digital content and to share it with others, yet public social networks are not safe venues for sharing and rrripple is ideal."

Howard Rheingold 03 Feb 12 10:09:30 Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck conducted the groundbreaking research showing that praise intended to raise young people's self-esteem can seriously backfire. When we tell children, "You're so smart," we communicate the message that they'd better not take risks or make mistakes, lest they reveal that they're not so smart after all. Dweck calls this cautious attitude the "fixed mindset," and she's found that it's associated with greater anxiety and reduced achievement. Students with a "growth mindset," on the other hand, believe that intelligence can be expanded with hard work and persistence, and they view challenges as invigorating and even fun. They're more resilient in the face of setbacks, and they do better academically. Now Dweck has designed a program, called Brainology, which aims to help students develop a growth mindset. Its website explains: "Brainology makes this happen by teaching students how the brain functions, learns, and remembers, and how it changes in a physical way when we exercise it. Brainology shows students that they are in control of their brain and its development." That's a crucial message to pass on to children, and it's not just empty words of encouragement-it's supported by cutting-edge research on neuroplasticity, which shows that the brain changes and grows when we learn new things. You, and your child, can learn to be smarter.

this is so much better than glyfos. Destiny Quest® is a K-12 student-friendly searching interface included with Destiny Library Manager, the comprehensive, award-winning K-12 library automation solution.Online Searching for the K-12 Digital NativeWhen was the last time your students called library software 'sweet'? That's what they say about Destiny Quest, the first library search interface designed to appeal to today's digital native students. Destiny Quest engages students in a visually appealing and highly graphic online searching experience, leveraging Destiny's proven K-12 research strategies to help them easily locate and identify appropriate resources. Students can apply the web-savvy skills they already know and expand the skills they need to thrive as 21st century learners.With Destiny Quest, students can see the top 10 books and new arrival titles highlighted on the Destiny Quest homepage, search the library collection, browse the scrolling carousel of bookshelves, view book covers, and link to title details from any computer with an Internet connection. Visually appealing, customizable themes make searching the library a comfortable and familiar experience for today's plugged-in generation.Students become more active learners using Destiny Quest's engaging interface, which invites them to explore and dig deeper through "You May Also Like" automatic suggestions. They can refine their search results by author, subject, series and more, and find the best titles for their interests or reading levels and save their favorites for easy retrieval with the easy drag and drop functionality of 'My List'. Younger students or non-English speakers can easily find materials using a picture-based icon search option.

It is no secret that mass media is an important part of today's cultural landscape. But while people are consuming media, they are also creating it. More and more, people are creating their own messages, sharing the work of others, and excerpting from other people's work as part of their own creativity, learning and development. Therefore, there is a need for a strong understanding of the concepts of copyright and fair use and how to apply it in an educational setting. While copyright and fair use can be confusing to navigate you CAN use copyrighted material in your creative work! The panel goal is to explain fair use as a reasoning process in order to reduce copyright confusion. We will model the process by sharing scenarios for the audience to deconstruct and will go through our own reasoning and analysis of "sticky copyright situations" and share helpful ideas regarding how to teach students and staff about copyright and fair use.

Welcome to the new DIGIZEN website The Digizen website provides information for educators, parents, carers, and young people. It is used to strengthen their awareness and understanding of what digital citizenship is and encourages users of technology to be and become responsible DIGItal citiZENS. It shares specific advice and resources on issues such as social networking and cyberbullying and how these relate to and affect their own and other people's online experiences and behaviours.

# According to Picasa, If you've signed up for Google+ photos up to 2048 x 2048 pixels and videos up to 15 minutes won't count towards your free storage. (hat tip to Greg Grothaus) # To add people who have added you to their circles, but you haven't add them, go to the "People who've added you" tab and select "Not yet in circles" from the sort menu. All the people not in your circles will be listed first (hat tip to Owen Prater) # Right click on a circle and select "View circle in tab". This is a terrific way to see who's in a circle and allows you to do neat things like drag all the people inside it to another circle. # If you have a lot of Circles and/or a lot of people in your various Circles views (e.g. "People in your circles", "People who've added you", etc."), Mac users can use the pinch functionality to make the Circles section smaller so you can view all of your Circles. # Order of Circles in Left-Hand Nav: Default Circles appear first in this order - Friends, Family, Following, and Acquaintances. Then your personal circles are arranged alphabetically. You can rename any of the circles, including the default ones, and renaming a default one makes it part of the normal alphabetized list. Put an underscore in front of one that you want at the top of the list. You could also delete the default circles and start over in the order that you want.(hat tip to Donna Fontenont and Joe Hall)

We think JavaScript is awesome. We also think browsers are awesome. Together, they can do some beautiful, magical, crazy things. And that's why we created this website. Chrome Experiments is a showcase for creative web experiments, the vast majority of which are built with the latest open technologies, including HTML5, Canvas, SVG, and WebGL. All of them were made and submitted by talented artists and programmers from around the world. We hope the projects on this site provide inspiration for anyone interested in experimenting creatively with the web. And we hope they show how the web has become faster, more fun, and more open - the same spirit in which we built Google Chrome. All of the work here is user-submitted, so naturally we're looking for more. If you've made something fun and fast in JavaScript, please send it in. We can't post everything, but we'd love to see it. Thanks for visiting, and happy experimenting.

"We hear about it all the time: Universal access to research, education and culture-all good things, without a doubt-made possible by things like open source software, open educational resources and the like. But what are these various communities and what do they mean? How can we all learn more and get involved? School of Open has rolled the conversation back to square one so that understanding the basics is easy. Through a list of new courses created by users and experts, people can learn more about what "openness" means and how to apply it. There are stand-alone courses on copyright, writing for Wikipedia, the collaborative environment of open science, and the process behind making open video. These free courses start March 18 (sign up by clicking the "start course" button by Sunday, March 17): Copyright 4 Educators (US) Copyright 4 Educators (AUS) Creative Commons for K-12 Educators Writing Wikipedia Articles: The Basics and Beyond These free courses are open for you to take at any time: Get a CC license. Put it on your website Open Science: An Introduction Open data for GLAMs Intro to Openness in Education A Look at Open Video Contributing to Wikimedia Commons Open Detective "

Evernote is a great web service and software application that we can use in education. A lot of ink has been shed on this topic and just one click in a search engine is enough to get hundreds of links to guides and tutorials about Evernote. I have been going through so many of these resources and have collected ideas, videos, notes and many more. If you are a loyal reader to my blog ( I am glad most of you are ) you would clearly notice that guides I write here are different in that they are simple. to the point, address teachers and students direct  need, and most of all written in an easy and simple language. In this regard, I am working on an ebook that will contain all the guides I have posted here so far but will be available for free only to my subscribers. Without any further ado, let us get back to our guide.

"Video games have both positive and negative effects on the human brain. They can be used to educate through repetition and feedback, but they also have some less-positive side effects. Our kids and students are excessively using video games and sometimes to the point of addiction. Adults too have recourse to them once in a while. The infographic below has some amazing facts and data about the impact of video gaming on the human brain. You need to go through it attentively and share it with your students and colleagues."

"So you want to pop your filter bubble - to see the neutral, un-filtered, un-personalized web. How do you go about it? Unfortunately, there are no magic bullets: The ad companies and personal data vendors that power and profit from personalization are far more technologically advanced than most of the tools for controlling your personal data. That's why The Filter Bubble calls on companies and governments to change the rules they operate by - without those changes, it's simply not possible to escape targeting and personalization entirely. But that doesn't mean all is lost. Here are 10 simple steps you can take to de-personalize your web experience. They won't work forever, but for now they'll take you out of your own personal echo chamber."

Some very good advice here to try out. Check out the links.

# 1.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services # 11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services. 11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Google to take these actions.

"This site aims to inspire teachers to increase the communication and collaboration in their classrooms using web based tools such as blogs, wikis and social bookmarking tools. The examples given on this site focus on using these web tools in Design and Communication Graphics classrooms but many of the activities outlined can be easily modified to be used in different subjects and to cater for many different ability levels. The site explains what the web based tools are, what they can contribute to teaching and learning, how they can be integrated into the classroom using simple and clear examples, and how to enable pupils to use them saf"

"Pinterest's members are solely responsible for what they pin and repin. They must have explicit permission from the owner to post everything." What's more, Pinterest places all blame and potential legal fees on its users. It writes: "You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold Cold Brew Labs, its officers, directors, employees and agents, harmless from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses, including, without limitation, reasonable legal and accounting fees, arising out of or in any way connected with (i) your access to or use of the Site, Application, Services or Site Content, (ii) your Member Content, or (iii) your violation of these Terms." Basically, if a photographer sues you for pinning an image illegally on Pinterest, the user must not only pay for his or her lawyer, they must also pay for Pinterest's lawyer. In addition, the defendant must pay all charges against him or herself, along with all of Pinterest's charges. Kirsten likens Pinterest to Napster as an enabler of illegal activity. It wasn't just Napster that went down -- 12 year old girls who downloaded music were sued too. Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/pinterest-copyright-issues-lawyer-2012-2#ixzz1nsmeSGHc

Phil Brady's Blog post 60+ Fake and spoof websitesI've updated the pages on my site that deal with science spoofs, commercial fake sites  and social, political, historical, news, religious, travel and educational spoof and fake sites. I know from the feedback that I get that these sites are well used, so I have deleted the few that no longer work and I have added some more in. There are now a total of 61 sites split between the two pages. It's not a complete listing, and it's just my personal choice, but you might be interested in them. They're primarily designed as a teaching aid, but some of them are very amusing indeed, if you have that sort of a mind!

"Death to the Digital Dropbox: Rethinking Student Privacy and Public Performance Death to the Digital Dropbox: Rethinking Student Privacy and Public Performance By Patrick R. Lowenthal and David Thomas * Requiring students to submit work privately using a digital dropbox (or even worse, e-mail) can be a destructive pedagogical practice. * Students benefit from public performance and public critique because people have to perform in the "real world" and are regularly subject to critique. * Online faculty should strive to incorporate authentic, real-world types of experiences in the online courses they teach - including public performance and the accompanying public feedback. "

"Accessing music online and via mobile phones has never been easier, but it does raise legal, security and ethical issues. This new guide for parents, carers and teachers aims to give essential advice about how young people can get the best out of downloading and sharing music online and via mobile technology in a safe and legal way, as well as providing tips for discussion. This guide:"

Collaboration Our primary goal at this point is to prove or disprove the effectiveness of puzzles as a learning strategy. If you are a teacher who would like to experiment with these ideas in your classroom please contact us. We'd love to work with you. In fact, regardless of who you are, if these ideas seem promising and you'd like to help or try them out, please contact us. We're very open with our work and are interested in collaborating with anyone we can, within the constraints of our very limited resources. You can reach us at info@puzzleschool.com Our Mission The Puzzle School was started with the mission of creating educational environments that will inspire a greater love of learning. We strongly believe that learning is something people truly love to do when it is presented in a way that gives the learner a sense of progress toward their learning goals. We focus on puzzles as they provide one of the most effective ways of creating a learning environment that is interactive, giving students an immediate sense of progress as they try to "figure out" the material they are learning. The methods we use at The Puzzle School mimic the learning environments that children thrive in while learning how to walk and talk. This model can best be summed up as hypothesis and error driven learning, where students develop a hypothesis toward solving a problem and are able to test that hypothesis using feedback loops, learning from a success or failure as they move closer to a solution. This model has been used successfully in thousands of schools around the world, most notably Montessori Schools. We simply want to highlight this method and make it so that all students have access to environments where they can learn in this way. We believe this will encourage a love of learning in all students.

Australian outfit Bridge 8, who have the admirable mission of devising "creative strategies for science and society," and animator James Hutson have created six fantastic two-minute animations on various aspects of critical thinking, aimed at kids ages 8 to 10 but also designed to resonate with grown-ups. Inspired by the animation style of the 1950s, most recognizably Saul Bass, the films are designed to promote a set of educational resources on critical thinking by TechNYou, an emerging technologies public information project funded by the Australian government. The animations - which are part Minute Physics, part The Dot and the Line, part 60-Second Adventures in Thought - are released under a Creative Commons license and cover the basics of logic and the scientific method, as well as specific psychological pitfalls like confirmation bias and Gambler's Fallacy.

Welcome to the 'iPad in Education' web site - concerned with using Apple's iPad for learning and teaching. Although this is based in the UK, the site's content will reflect practice from other counties and contexts in order to explore and learn from a wide field. I am Ian Wilson (www.ianwilson.biz) a freelance Apple Education Mentor based in the north west of England (Twitter: @Ian__Wilson). I have set up this site as I believe the iPad signals the opportunity for a transformation in how technology is used in schools, colleges and universities. I am interested in looking at all age ranges, all abilities across all areas of the curriculum and keen to see if the iPad makes technology more transparent and cross-curricular as it should be.