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These could be handy for any students wanting to explore and create digital stories. "These web-based applications will have you creating animations in no time. Creating animations has always been considered as one of the most complex aspects of graphic design that requires specific software and technological expertise. It is a time-intensive activity that requires heavy software and high speed computers."

The Substitution Augmentation Modification Redefinition Model offers a method of seeing how computer technology might impact teaching and learning.  It also shows a progression that adopters of educational technology often follow as they progress through teaching and learning with technology.   While one might argue over whether an activity can be defined as one level or another, the important concept to grasp here is the level of student engagement. One might well measure progression along these levels by looking at who is asking the important questions.  As one moves along the continuum, computer technology becomes more important in the classroom but at the same time becomes more invisibly woven into the demands of good teaching and learning.

Another good video/animation to use at the start of a writing session - this time looking at the use of dialogue! 

Cool video/animation to help students create tension and drama in their writing! 

Can a decent education turn young criminals around? Tony Wilson goes inside Victoria's toughest youth prison to see a remarkable new school in action. The first minute of the first day at Parkville College began with a teacher, Jess Appeldorff, shaking the hands of eight teenage boys and thanking them for coming to class. The school's other four teachers were there, as was their principal, 40-year-old Brendan Murray. The school was Murray's brainchild and it was an auspicious moment: Victoria's highest security youth justice centre - comprising a cluster of buildings collectively known as The Precinct - was about to undertake a bold educational experiment, and these boys from the college's North Remand had just received what Murray called "the three-quarter-time speech of my life".

Every single teacher is concerned about his/ her teaching practices and the skills involved in this process. How many times have you wondered about a better way to teach the same lesson you have delivered to an eariler class? How often have you used technology to engage your students and improve their learning 

Overview of the book 

The Arrival is a migrant story told as a series of wordless images that might seem to come from a long forgotten time. A man leaves his wife and child in an impoverished town, seeking better prospects in an unknown country on the other side of a vast ocean. He eventually finds himself in a bewildering city of foreign customs, peculiar animals, curious floating objects and indecipherable languages. With nothing more than a suitcase and a handful of currency, the immigrant must find a place to live, food to eat and some kind of gainful employment. He is helped along the way by sympathetic strangers, each carrying their own unspoken history: stories of struggle and survival in a world of incomprehensible violence, upheaval and hope.

One of our most innovative, popular thinkers takes on-in exhilarating style-one of our key questions: Where do good ideas come from? With Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson pairs the insight of his bestselling Everything Bad Is Good for You and the dazzling erudition of The Ghost Map and The Invention of Air to address an urgent and universal question: What sparks the flash of brilliance? How does groundbreaking innovation happen? Answering in his infectious, culturally omnivorous style, using his fluency in fields from neurobiology to popular culture, Johnson provides the complete, exciting, and encouraging story of how we generate the ideas that push our careers, our lives, our society, and our culture forward. Beginning with Charles Darwin's first encounter with the teeming ecosystem of the coral reef and drawing connections to the intellectual hyperproductivity of modern megacities and to the instant success of YouTube, Johnson shows us that the question we need to ask is, What kind of environment fosters the development of good ideas? His answers are never less than revelatory, convincing, and inspiring as Johnson identifies the seven key principles to the genesis of such ideas, and traces them across time and disciplines. Most exhilarating is Johnson's conclusion that with today's tools and environment, radical innovation is extraordinarily accessible to those who know how to cultivate it. Where Good Ideas Come From is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how to come up with tomorrow's great ideas.

Here are three new additions to what continues to be my all-time most popular post, The Best Resources For Helping Teachers Use Bloom's Taxonomy In The Classroom:

Google Drive is Google's cloud storage  with15 GB free of charge. This is probably one of the best productivity suites that  has a huge potential for us in education.  Besides being able to store our files and access them anywhere with internet connection, Google Drive also enables us to view, share and collaborate in real time while creating a document, spreadsheet or making a drawing. For those of you who are still struggling to come to grips with Google Drive functionalities, Educational Technology and Mobile Learning has a special page packed full of interesting guides and tutorials on how teachers can use Google Drive. Check it out to learn more

Though we've talked about digital citizenship in the past, since we're constantly using technology and interacting in digital communities, an ongoing discussion about digital citizenship isn't a waste of time, but rather a necessity.

A proven program for enhancing students' thinking and comprehension abilities Visible Thinking is a research-based approach to teaching thinking, begun at Harvard's Project Zero, that develops students' thinking dispositions, while at the same time deepening their understanding of the topics they study.? Rather than a set of fixed lessons, Visible Thinking is a varied collection of practices, including thinking routines?small sets of questions or a short sequence of steps?as well as the documentation of student thinking.?Using this process thinking becomes visible as the students'?different viewpoints are expressed, documented, discussed and reflected upon

"introduced by ABC3 presenter Kayne Tremills, the stories tackle topics including cyberbullying, excessive gaming, sharing passwords, free downloads and online friends. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Communications, Paul Fletcher, MP, has welcomed the release of #GameOn. 'In my conversations with teachers and parents, I am regularly told that they have to spend significant time in dealing with cyberbullying and disputes on social media,' Mr. Fletcher said. 'In line with the Australian government's commitment to enhance online safety for children, I commend #GameOn as a tool you can use with your children or students to raise awareness of online safety issues, and to help students navigate the online world safely and with confidence.'"

Online interactive clock looks great on a big screen

"The greatest software invented for human safety is the human brain. It's time that we start using those brains. We must mix head knowledge with action. In my classroom, I use two essential approaches in the digital citizenship curriculum that I teach: proactive knowledge and experiential knowledge. "

Very simple, easy to use clock with minute and hour hands for use on the Interactive Whiteboard.