"This week, NPR Ed's Eric Westervelt visited a special education classroom in New York City where iPads are being used in a novel way. Students with a range of severe disabilities, including developmental, mental, physical and autism spectrum disorders, are using apps alongside traditional instruments to help express themselves through music."

"Only one Pets in the Classroom grant per teacher, per school year is permitted. Teachers who apply for more than one grant in a school year may be disqualified from the program. Pets in the Classroom grants are offered to Pre-Kindergarten through 8th grade classes only in both public and private schools. Home school settings and high schools do not qualify for grants at this time. These grants are intended to support pets or aquariums in the classroom for the purposes of teaching children to bond with and care for their pets responsibly. The welfare of the small animals involved is of paramount importance. These grants must not be used for the purposes of research or experiments of any kind."

Ramven has released Mobile Web Apps for informative and productivity. Our Mobile Web Apps include financial calculators, unit converters and many more categories. These Mobile Web Apps are light weight and support all major mobile, tablet, smart phone and desktop web browsers.

Kevin Honeycutt's iPad site

Apple made mention of a standalone podcast app earlier this month, but most figured it would arrive with iOS 6 this fall. Not so. Earlier this week, Apple released Podcasts. It's free and universal, designed for both the iPhone and iPad.

Differentiating instruction is a time-tested way of thinking about meeting students' needs as they make progress toward achievement or learning targets.  Differentiation is an elegant mindset that suggests to teachers a framework that permits them to engage students while focusing on learning results, and digital technologies offer many opportunities to differentiate instruction in meaningful ways.  However, differentiating instruction takes a concerted planning effort on our parts as teachers and teacher educators. This is especially so as we develop a mindset that differentiation can be effective. In this post, I propose a three-phase approach to planning differentiated instruction: Where do we start planning for differentiated instruction with technology, What are considerations for who we teach, what we teach, and how we plan? How do I put it all together?

Unique Learning System is the ONLY online, dynamic, standards-based curriculum specifically designed for special learners. Subscribers download monthly instructional thematic units of study. Each unit contains 30 lesson plans and downloadable materials that teachers can readily implement into classroom learning activities. All materials are created using SymbolStix graphics. The unit lesson plans define three levels of differentiated tasks to accommodate the diversity of learners with significant disabilities.

Help your students become better searchers Web search can be a remarkable tool for students, and a bit of instruction in how to search for academic sources will help your students become critical thinkers and independent learners. With the materials on this site, you can help your students become skilled searchers- whether they're just starting out with search, or ready for more advanced training.

Hands-on teachers, meet hands-on learning.

eduTecher was created in late 2007. The website's main purpose is to help educators and schools around the world effectively integrate technology, including the wonderful tools on the vast World Wide Web, into the classroom. eduTecher provides links to thousands of Web Tools and provides concise information on how these tools may be useful in the classroom setting. The site's goal is simple: contribute to the academic world, without charging membership fees for the users or promoting specific software and hardware products through commercial advertising.

The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) with the mission of providing a world-class education to anyone, anywhere. We are complementing Salman's ever-growing library with user-paced exercises--developed as an open source project--allowing the Khan Academy to become the free classroom for the World. The Khan Academy is all about using video to explain the world, so what better way to explain the Khan Academy than through videos. If you watch four or five of the videos below, you should have a pretty good idea of how we got started and how we hope to empower everyone, everywhere with a free, world-class education.

"Virtual Field Trips Virtual field trips challenge and expose students to new types of technology. It is a great way to spark their interest and motivate their learning in a specific content area. Virtual field trips can offer students more opportunities because you can take them to places they wouldn't normally be able to go to otherwise - like inside a volcano or ocean floor! In addition, virtual field trips may even boost students' reading comprehension skills and will expose them to different cultures and environments. "

"The Internet Classroom Guide With the Internet, teachers have the tools to open a new world to their students. The learning experience is enhanced by interactive activities and virtual field trips, which is much more interesting than traditional methods. Other than that, students can learn how to do research on the Internet, and practice online safety when they are doing Internet exercises. Here are some resources for teachers who want to introduce their students to the Internet classroom."

"This week's Cool Tool, the new Pulse digital pen from LiveScribe, is still undergoing my evaluation since I've only had it about a month now, but it has already lived up to its predecessor, the now discontinued io2 digital pen from Logitech, which I nominated as a previous Cool Tool. I can see that this new Pulse pen has much more to offer, so I thought it worthy of bringing to your attention. "

There are new web 2.0 tools appearing every day. Although some of these tools were not originally meant for use in the classroom, they can be extremely effective learning tools for today's technology geared students and their venturesome teachers. Many of these teachers are searching for the latest products and technologies to help them find easier and efficient ways to create productive learning in their students. More and more teachers are using blogs, podcasts and wikis, as another approach to teaching. We have created a list of 100 tools we think will encourage interactivity and engagement, motivate and empower your students, and create differentiation in their learning process.

There are new web 2.0 tools appearing every day. Although some of these tools were not originally meant for use in the classroom, they can be extremely effective learning tools for today's technology geared students and their venturesome teachers. Many of these teachers are searching for the latest products and technologies to help them find easier and efficient ways to create productive learning in their students. More and more teachers are using blogs, podcasts and wikis, as another approach to teaching. We have created a list of 100 tools we think will encourage interactivity and engagement, motivate and empower your students, and create differentiation in their learning process.

NaturalReader is a Text to Speech software with natural sounding voices. This easy to use software can convert any written text such as MS Word, Webpage, PDF files, and Emails into spoken words. NaturalReader can also convert any written text into audio files such as MP3 or WAV for your CD player or iPod.