A powerful tool for students. Shelfari integrates reading and social networking. Readers list books they have read, are reading, or want to read "my wish list" - can you say reading logs? The members home page can be configured to look like virtual book shelves. Members can read and post reviews; join groups and communities. In my opinion the ultimate use for shelfari would be creating book clubs, making it a quick comprehension tool.

Sponsored by NC State University and the University of Central Florida, MidLink Magazine highlights exemplary student work, defining best practices in educational technology integration.

Be sure to listen to co-founder Caroline McCullen's podcast.

The best thing about free is...well it's free. I'm still a die-hard Mac fan so I had to post this. When I find one for PCs I'll post it. As one commentator pointed out, this list was compiled awhile ago.

I don't even buy batteries for my digital camera before visiting this page. Dave's Picks is a must see.

Buffalo City School District (BSCD) TIS Kathleen Emhof's teacher web page. The site is clean, efficient and provides or links to many staff resources. Three features really stand out . First the subpages under the section My Home Page are written in a conversational tone. I think that has an inviting appeal. Second is the use of the Calendar feature of the home page. This moves the lab scheduling off her shoulders and encourages the staff to plan and communicate with each other. Third and lastly, making all relevant itech forms available to the staff. I have just a few suggestions: - consider password protecting the teacher resources page - create separate student/parent resource section

I used AirSet cloud computing in the past with the staffs of Schools #65 and #95. The primary reason was to create a shared calendar. It worked really well in both locations mostly because they were only asked to use the calendar feature. More advance/adventurous users took advantage of the other apps including text messaging, file storage and sharing, committee to do lists, and iCal integration. It has changed quite a bit since then.

This one is an oldie but a goodie. I use it whenever I work a new group of learners or learners that are new to educational technology. It's an easy read and can be modified to reflect the rapid changes in technology.

Absolutely Sui! I think TISs face the same challenge as classroom teachers. How do we hook them? For people like you and I it's an intrinsic motivation to grow our knowledge base and fine tune our craft. Once a teacher told me, "there are three kinds of teachers, those that were born to do it, those that can be taught to do it and those that will never get it." I want to believe that the overwhelming majority of teachers fall into that second category. So, back to how do we hook them. I agree with Bill that Atomic Learning is woefully underutilized. One way to get the teachers hooked and increase the likelihood that AL is used is to adopt AL as our launching point for developing all PLOs. Take a look at the AL Toolkit http://movies.atomiclearning.com/k12/atomictoolkit. Assuming that we have done our due diligence and prepared our teachers to register for AL and view relevant tutorials prior to the PLO. Use the toolkit materials to "promote" our PLOs. Encourage teachers to subscribe to the AL newsletter and our web site blog feeds. Design PLOs with their work in mind - flipcharts using upcoming unit actiities, etc. I think it was Kathy Shrock that said something like, when teaching an unfamiliar application use a familiar task and when teaching an unfamiliar task use a familiar application. We also need to change the mindset so that the "learning" is their bag of bricks to carry and that we are here to coach, and support them to that end.

Any idea what "folksonomy" is? Where did the term come from? Why would it be important to this group?

Ah! You've been doing your homework young Jedi! Do we want to apply "some structure" for example ELA8_xxx; use the more popular tags that are recommended when creating a post, or do we let it all evolve?

"I tend to use the tags that are provided when I tag in Diigo. Is there something I am missing by not evolving our own tags?" Oh, no not at all. I was thinking down the road when we get teachers hooked on Diigo. Let's say Teacher A wanted to search through his schools' group for ELA content. If the group added ELA_ or Gr8_ as a prefix that might simplify his search. So, in this scenario the provided tags would serve as a base and the prefixes would allow for faster more refined or focused searches.

I've used this site to evaluate books, and movies that I consider sharing with my own children. A national organization led by concerned parents sharing common interests in the quality of media families choose to consume. Common Sense Media's mission is built upon the foundation of ten beliefs, two of which I think will appeal to most educational technology and library media specialists: * We believe in media sanity, not censorship. * We believe in teaching our kids to be savvy media interpreters -- we can't cover their eyes but we can teach them to see.

The Online Activities area contains an excellent array of resources, and interactive activities for educators, and fans of the MoMA. Be sure to visit the Modern Teachers Area designed to connect K-12 teachers to resources and the MoMA's collection.