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"If we believe that someone's talent is fixed-including our own-we are effectively writing off any options for growth. But if we believe that talent, or intelligence, or any other ability, evolves as a result of how much effort we put in, the opportunities are endless." Yet another contribution to the innate vs. acquired debate about intelligence.

This is a great set of tools to explore the solar system and dabble in astrology vs astronomy. You can move the time frame and see the plantes and constellations in motion from various aspects, including a geocentric view. Good for studying science first-hand.

A good review of both LMS tools. Winning for me is Schoology's iPad connections and, especially, it's good was to create and thread discussions (with embedded media). Teachers can also see which students participate by using a filter, and share discussions across classes/courses.

How do we educate our children to meet the needs of the new economies of the 21st century, and retain local cultures while recognizing globalization? The current system of public education was conceived and designed for the 19th century period of industrialization with the social and economic imperatives of the Enlightenment: academic vs non-academic views of the mind. The result is kids being medicated to sit still in school while besieged with the information overload of the digital age. How do we allow divergent thinking and creativity?

I like the idea of "flipped tweeting": topics are posted several hours before live Twitter chats, Thursdays, 3 pm EST. See the whole schedule posted at the Bottom-Line Performance Blog: http://www.bottomlineperformance.com/

This article (pdf file) considers three styles of motivation: goal-, relationship, and learning-oriented. It then offers strategies for engaging students in their own education. Includes a nice table comparing teaching-centered vs learning-centered classrooms.

"Twurdy is actually based on Google, but it analyses Google results for readability, so it can help you to find more lower level texts for learners without you having to read through every result from Google to see if it's simple enough. Just type in the topic of the text you need and click on your Twurdy type. You have a choice of three different Twurdy types. The differences are mainly speed (how fast you want your results) vs complexity (how thoroughly you want the results analysed) I would recommend choosing Twurdy with Pop as this will analyse the number of word on the page, length of sentences, number of syllables per word and also the popularity of the words in the text." After finding a good text, you could create lessons with Hot Potatoes for it. Nik's blog entry also includes related links for reading, such as "Prompting reading speeds" and "Comparing Texts to aid Noticing"

Paper by Michael Coughlan: A mediation on Nicholas Carr's Thinking Deeply about the Shallows. Discusses vertical vs. horizontal learning and the effect of the Internet and new media on education and our uses of information.

Very young learners learning about facts vs. opinion in Social Studies. Students create a poster demonstrating what they have learned about American symbols. Video shows relationship to several Common Core standards.

Fotobabble lets students load in pictures and write on or about them. R. Stannard shows how to use the interface.

Info from R. Byrne's blog on this site for digital safety: "The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre hosts an excellent resource for helping students learn how to be responsible digital citizens. ThinkUKnow offers videos, games, and lessons for students ages five through sixteen. The site is divided into five sections; 5-7, 8-10, 11-16, a section for parents, and a section for teachers. The 5-7 section of ThinkUKnow feature a cartoon video series titled Hector's World. Hector's World is designed to educate students about safe use of the Internet and computers in general. Through the cartoons students learn about things like protecting their personal information and asking a trusted adult for help when necessary. Each episode of Hector's World is accompanied by a coloring book that you can download as a PDF."

"Jeez, there are sure a ton of ways to find images on the Web, as well as many places where you can find lengthy link lists to image collections. "I'd lay odds that most people, including myself, just use Google Image Search when they need to find an image. However, there might be instances when you want to use another tool - perhaps you're a language teacher searching for just the right clip art or photography to illustrate a verb, maybe you have very young students and are concerned about what they might find on Google, possibly you're particularly teaching about copyright issues, or you want your students to easily connect an image to a writing exercise and have them send an E-Card. (Google has recently added an option in their advanced image search feature - go to the bottom left under "license" and choose "labeled for reuse")" The list includes many academic sites.

These are some good tools, some of which may be new to you. Includes Dipity, Document Suite (an authoring tool to transform documents into online help modules), Izzui to track and deliver courses, LessonWriter, Scratch from the MIT MEdia Lab for content creation, timeliners, course builders of various sorts, and a list of free podcasting, polling, and quizzing tools. Not much for mobile technology. There is a lot here to explore.

A chart showing the differences between individualized instruction and personalized learning. "On the face of it personalized and individualized learning are two sides of the same coin, a game of semantics and this is why many teachers still use them interchangeably as if they mean the same thing while in fact there is a noticeable difference between the two particularly in how each trend views the role of teachers and students, knowledge, and standards." This chart by David Warlik shows the differences.

Nice intro video helps you see how interesting making comics is for children (of all ages). There are school plans and free 14-day trial. Also an individual Bitstrip site where you can be the star of your own comic.

EDPuzzle let's you insert questions, add notes, and make the flipped classroom more interactive at home. You need to use one of the video sites that EDpuzzle offers. This YouTube video shows how to crop a video, add notes, and so on.