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"We currently teach multiple courses for a total of 12 or 13 different lab classes. Each class has 50-60 students and can have up to two or three graded assignments in a given day. Paper grading takes too long and transferring thousands of grades to our computerized grade forms has huge potential for human error. Grading with a spreadsheet, even on a tablet, becomes too slow with so many rows and columns. So we made Green Gradebook to solve our problems. "Our plan was to create a gradebook app that allowed for large or small student and class numbers while minimizing the time it takes to enter a grade for one assignment. Ideally this would speed things up for us as we walked around the room grading!" Mobile access for grading has some real advantages.

A video on how to use Keek to make and share short video messages. Although limited to only 36 secs, this might be a good application for beginning learners, or for a quick pronunciation quiz (you will see who is taking that quiz!) You can also embed a finished recording in your blog or wiki, as well as sending it by email. A good way to have students create a short, practiced conversation. Also has smartphone apps for mobile recordings, RSS feed to follow, and links to Facebook, Yahoo, and Twitter.

"Learnist, as many have already pointed out, works much like Pinterest - a way to catalog online resources on a topic and share them with the user's social network. And like Pinterest, it looks like a digital bulletin board with pictures and messages, and connects with Facebook accounts. In fact, the site's "learning boards" look quite a bit like Facebook's timeline feature, and Facebook membership is required to use Learnist at this point. In its current closed beta form, Learnist, launched by Grockit, is still very much in its infancy, but some curious teachers have already jumped on the wagon. Time will tell whether educators will stick with Pinterest, or migrate to Learnist because of its association with Grockit, which already has a large and loyal following as a social learning tool." Nice article on how educators are using Learnist. Hope this one makes it past Beta.

This is a good article because it gives you the details of each engine and the good and the bad in a systematic way. Be sure to ignore the ads at the top and go to the content. Mind-mapping is a great way to visually brainstorm and encourage connections, whether for a written project, a presentation, or a video storyboard.

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."

This blog entry describes what a rubric is and how to create rubrics for your own purposes. "Authentic assessments typically are criterion-referenced measures. That is, a student's aptitude on a task is determined by matching the student's performance against a set of criteria to determine the degree to which the student's performance meets the criteria for the task. To measure student performance against a pre-determined set of criteria, a rubric, or scoring scale, is typically created which contains the essential criteria for the task and appropriate levels of performance for each criterion. "

This blog discusses a tool that allows you to collect data on your personal use of email, and helps you understand all the controversy over government collection of data. "They have created a new program called Immersion. It works by signing you into your Gmail account and collecting only the meta-data from your account usage history. From there you can get a picture of your emailing habits from that single account, and you will be shocked at what you see. "According to the three creators, there are four purposes to the program: self-reflection, artistic representation, privacy revelations and the ability to develop a strategy in your communications on a professional level."

Let's you create word clouds with specific shapes. Still fairly limited, but more shapes will probably be coming soon. See the Gallery. Compare to Wordle, which has a great deal of font and color variety. Word clouds might be used as a response to reading or a collection of vocabulary about a subject, or to create a logo for a project, etc.

"Maps can be a remarkably powerful tool for understanding the world and how it works, but they show only what you ask them to. So when we saw a post sweeping the Web titled "40 maps they didn't teach you in school," one of which happens to be a WorldViews original, I thought we might be able to contribute our own collection. Some of these are pretty nerdy, but I think they're no less fascinating and easily understandable. A majority are original to this blog (see our full maps coverage here), with others from a variety of sources. I've included a link for further reading on close to every one." Exceptionally explanatory. Use for class projects and problem-based learning.

"... Fotobabble...it's a fun, easy to use tool that enables many types of student learning. Low 'start up' time - simply select a user name, add a password and valid email address, and I was ready to go. Alas, no Google sign in, but it was easy anyway... "I entered a url for an image, to which I then wanted to add a voice-over. Fotobabble also allows image uploads from the desktop. I added a little 'background' spruce it up, and the image was all set."

"The basic purpose of Huzzaz is to help you create and organize collections of videos. In your account you can make as many thematic collections as you like. To add a video from YouTube or Vimeo to your collections you can search within Huzzaz, use the Huzzaz browser bookmarklet, or copy and paste video URLs into your collections. Once you have some videos in a collection you can organize them by simply dragging and dropping them into a sequence. Your collections can be shared with others. Likewise, you can share individual videos. " Perhaps best of all, you can open a "comments" window while watching a video and it creates a live chat area.

Holding oneself in a "state of questioning" may be a desirable outcome of learning, as well as a process for learning. For example, "adaptive software that leads students through English/language arts or mathematics on a pace set by their own abilities fails to force students to ask questions about that material, contextualize it in real life, or communicate about the concepts with others, Lehmann said. The same is true of collaborative projects where restrictive guidelines result in several, nearly-identical finished products across student groups. "In a true inquiry-based model, how learning happens isn't as important as whether that learning encourages students to try to learn even more. Lehmann compared the scenario to the plight of a two-year-old child who has graduated from 'yes' and 'no' and proceeded onto an endless string of 'why's.' "'To me it comes down to process,'" Lehmann said. 'Inquiry means living in the soup. Inquiry means living in that uncomfortable space where we don't know the answer.'"

"Geeky teachers have brought Minecraft to subjects ranging from history to biology to probability. The game is being rolled out to every secondary school in Northern Ireland this month. If you're a parent, you've noticed Minecraft offerings spawning in your local summer camp listings. The Chicago Architecture Foundation offers a Minecraft camp for budding builders. Ninety-two libraries participated in the International Games Day Minecraft Hunger Games tournament, andcrowned a 13-year-old girl as its champion. And, I've helped launch Connected Camps' Summer of Minecraft, a new in-game online camp. "Progressive educators have been advocating for games-based learning ever since Carmen Sandiego, Oregon Trail, and Reader Rabbit opened up a new market for consumer children's software in the '80s. SimCity demonstrated how a building and tinkering game could be embraced by parents, kids, and educators. And, Scratch shows how kid-centered learning communities can thrive online. "Minecraft is part of this lineage of learning games, but it fundamentally rewrites the playbook." This blog talks about why Minecraft is so popular with kids and with educators alike, referring back to Papert's experiments with "turtles." My 9-yr-old granddaughter is totally absorbed by the game and the games within the game she can play. She's even venturing into the "survival" mode where exploration includes fighting zombies. What's not to like?

"ANVILL (A National Virtual Language Lab) is a speech-based toolbox for language teachers. Like the language lab console of old, it's focused on the practice of oral/aural language, but at its core are very modern web-based audio and video tools from duber dot com and the University of Oregon: Voiceboards, LiveChat, and Quizzes and Surveys. Our newest tool, TCast, allows teachers to record and place audio or video files anywhere in a lesson--in 3 easy steps. Each of these tools really opens up the scope and sequence of lessons centered around spoken language tasks." Jeff Magoto has done a great presentation on how to use ANVILL, which is a wonderful, free, A/V tool available now internationally.

"By Alvina Lopez It doesn't matter if you're a veteran teacher or a newbie just now taking college courses - finding new ways to get students engaged in the classroom is always a great thing. One way many teachers are reaching out is with the multitude of material found on the web, allowing them to turn everyday lessons into a multimedia experience. You can find a great amount of helpful material on these sites, including videos to augment your lessons, lectures to inspire students, documentaries to show them how things work, and loads of additional videos to help you become a better, smarter teacher."

"The Taxonomy of Effective Teaching Practices, described in the book Teach Like a Champion, is a collection of instructional techniques gleaned from years of observations of outstanding teachers in some of the highest-performing urban classrooms in the country. Developed by Uncommon Schools Managing Director Doug Lemov and Uncommon teachers, this set of specific and concrete actions, paired with a library of over 700 video clips of highly-effective teachers in action, has provided teachers nationwide with actionable tools to drive greater student achievement and a shared language to discuss and support teacher effectiveness." This particular page has a set of videos demonstrating the small, but crucial techniques that make a good, effective teacher int he classroom.

Type in a tag and see a world of pictures from Flickr. Snap a screenshot of the globe, and you have a nice logo for a project. This is a fun application, and your students will have even more incentive to create pictures.

"Make your own poster |For a party, your walls or as a gift" Select a poster tmeplate, add photos, and buy a copy. A limited number of poster templates, but easy to use. Can also be done with a mobile phone.

"This is a virtual place for folks interested in learning to "operationalize TPACK" (Technology, Pedagogy, and Content Knowledge) via curriculum-based learning activity types ('LATs') to get up-to-date information, and (more importantly) participate in the vetting and refining of the activity types in each of the curriculum areas in which activity type development is happening." College of William & Mary School of Ed has set up a community site where there is a collection of activities with accompanying technologies for a wide range of ages/grade levels. There is also a "teaching strategies" page and links to presentations, assessment tools, and other resources. Hopefully there will be frequent updates and the pages will be a useful resource.

"Tackk could be a good tool for students to use to quickly create a page to show off some of their digital photography, video creation projects, or audio files. Student groups looking to create a landing page for a fundraising event may want to give Tackk a try too. " Unregistered accounts have a 7 day expiration for any page. T/H to R. Byrne