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I like this guy's videos  - check out the PBS Idea Channel

a drive app for recording comments directly into google docs - potential time save for grading!

This is going to be an amazing tool! Use engaging videos to create customized lessons. You can use, tweak, or completely redo any lesson featured on TED-Ed, or create lessons from scratch based on any video from YouTube. Watch the video to learn how.

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.

"Tinychat provides dead simple, free to use, video chat rooms that just work!"

I read an article about a month ago on when watching a video or movie in class, teachers were using a chat room to simultaneously discuss the movie. Tiny Chat is only one of many sites where you can create temporary chat rooms for the class and share the link to all of your students. At the end, many of these chat rooms disappear and the info gets cleared. What I liked about Tiny chat is that is also has the ability to show webcams, share Youtube videos, and you can create a whiteboard to share with the group so they can do some brainstorming.

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