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A great article from the NMSA's Middle School Journal on digital storytelling.

"Glossi is a new service for creating digital magazines. Glossi magazines can include images, videos, audio files, and links to external sources of information. The magazines that you create are displayed with page-turning effects. Your magazines can be embedded into your blog. Learn more about Glossi in the video below. "

more at the article.... The Common Core standards don't just suggest novel technology use as a way to "engage students," but rather requires learners to make complex decisions about how, when, and why to use technology-something educators must do as well. In the past, tech use-whether limited or gratuitous-has been more a matter of preference or available resources than a must-do requirement. With the Common Core, such use is now a matter of law. Takeaways for Teachers: For teachers, the takeaway is simple: technology is no longer a feel-good way to develop buzz and honor authenticity, but rather a matter of academic merit and fidelity-which is awesome for several reasons: -No longer must progressive educators defend the reasoning behind twitter, YouTube, iPads, or blogging in their classroom. -Teachers will now have access to district, state, and federal resources to more meaningfully integrate technology. This means funding, training, school and district programs, and formal and informal professional development. -Social media professional learning networks (PLN) from linkedin to twitter, facebook to even pinterest, can be dominated by education technology discussion rather than broader concerns of how people learn, likely because those educators tending towards technology are on these digital networks to begin with. Now that said technology integration is required, it has the chance to bring the "old guard" of educators (perhaps kicking and screaming) into the world of #edtech. -This should also mean better resources for all teachers in the future. Digital "stuff" is easier to share than yellowing worksheets in an old file cabinet. As more learning becomes digital, sharing should increase as a result.

This is an interesting blog post from an 8th grade English teacher about using Diigo to support creative writing on a blog. He has some basic guidelines and assessments too.

A free app for creating digital posters. 

This example comes from grade 5/6, but could be scaled up....