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R. Byrne: "Study Boost could be a good service for students to use to study on the go. Using Study Boost students traveling for club or sports activities need to only take their mobile devices with them study. As a teacher you can register and submit batches of questions that your students can study. Or students can create their own sets of questions to study. " This has some potential, especially if students can be persuaded to build their own study questions to answer.

"As you design blogging assignments for students consider that text may not always be the best medium to have students use to express ideas and share information. For the student who is trying to quickly convey an idea or share research that he or she compiled, posting an infographic or a video presentation might be a better method of sharing than writing a long passage of text and hoping that readers make it all way through to the end." R. Byrne discusses a short list of tools, including Infogram, Thinglink, YouTube, and SoundCloud, that help students make ideas visual and aural/oral.

A great lesson plan for writing collaboratively. Students extract memento and write them on large cards/pieces of paper. They then create the poem by placing the cards on the floor or table. The teacher (or students) select a topic that the quotations should reflect. It makes students thing about the real meanings within the text. Students discuss their found quotations as they write them. The 5 min. video shows students discussing and coming to realizations as they collect and collaborate. Great speaking, writing, reading activity.

"Google's Drawing program is the perfect platform to practice orthography- the skill of writing characters and symbols to create words- in language classrooms with non-Roman alphabets, such as Arabic or Chinese. Students of these languages need lots of practice handwriting the new alphabet or pictographic symbols, which is difficult to do in a digital environment. In traditional word processing programs, typing pictographic languages, such as Chinese, requires the student to change the keyboard language and then phonetically type the syllables. Characters will pop out fully formed, which is efficient and useful, but bypasses the important orthographic practice! Google Drawing presents teachers with an opportunity to digital collect and monitor their students' orthography without having to scan in and email worksheets. The Scribble Tool in Google Drawing allows the user to create free form lines and by extension hand-drawn language characters. Couple Google Drawing with a pen mouse and Chinese language students are fully prepared to complete short answer or extended writing assignments online." You could also use Google Drawing for students from pictographic language to practice handwirting English.

LInks and insights from a talk at the iPadpalooza Conference 2015, Austin, TX: "Giving students websites increases motivation, reflection, and ownership of learning A blog is a type of website that includes an RSS feed (subscription) and comments (feedback loop) An ePortfolio is a structured blog or website that includes scaffolding for organizing student work Publishing on the web is not only 'the law', it builds digital citizenship and provides an authentic audience for students There are tons of web publishing tools available. WordPress powers 25% of the entire web for a reason. Many schools and districts are providing WordPress blog and website networks to every teacher and student. No two implementations are the same. Make it your own. But know there are tons of resources available."

"For most students, assessment can be a bit of a mystery, which is really unfortunate given how much a student's future depends on how a teacher assesses his or her achievement. In Ontario, we've been working hard to make assessment explicit to students and parents. One of the expectations is that educators and students co-construct success criteria and rubrics so that students have a thorough understanding of what is expected of them." Shows how a class of 6th-graders creates their own holistic rubrics for a difficult class project using ideas from the Ontario Achievement Chart.

"The grammar blog is a weekly assignment I use in my high-advanced reading/writing classes for pre-matriculation international graduate students.... Each student chooses a grammar error or interesting/confusing sentence to focus on each week. Students read their classmates' posts and give feedback, and then I answer any remaining questions. The grammar blog is a motivating, student-driven, focus-on-form activity that engages students in important questions of syntax (grammar), semantics (meaning), lexis (vocabulary), and register."

This two-step exam process sounds like a great way to do online-exams: "The two-stage exam is a relatively simple way to introduce collaborative learning and formative assessment into an exam. Their use is rapidly growing in the physics department at the University of British Columbia, as both students and faculty find them rewarding. In a two-stage exam students first complete and turn in the exam individually, and then, working in small groups, answer the exam questions again. During the second stage, the room is filled with spirited and effective debate with nearly every student participating. This provides students with immediate targeted feedback supplied by discussions with their peers. Furthermore, we see indications that the use of this exam format not only ensures consistency across interactive course components, but it also positively impacts how students approach the other collaborative course components. This is accomplished without losing the summative assessment of individual performance that is the expectation of exams for most instructors. In this paper we describe how to implement two-stage exams and provide arguments why they should be part of physics courses that use interactive engagement and social/collaborative learning methods." The paper is from The Physics Teacher, AAPT.

"Word clouds can help students analyze documents written by others as well as documents of their own creation. By copying the text of a document into a word cloud generator your students can quickly see the words that appear most frequently in that document. Word clouds can also be used to help students see which words that they have frequently used in their own works. Have your students create word clouds of their work during the revision process of writing a story or essay. The word cloud will quickly show students which words they have used the most. Then ask them to think about synonyms for the words that they have used most often in their writings. " T/H R.Byrne

"Shadow Puppet Edu is a free iPad app that students can use to create audio slideshow videos. The app offers an integrated search tool that students can use to find pictures from the Library of Congress, to search for images from NASA, and to find Creative Commons licensed images from Flickr. Students can also import pictures and videos from the camera roll on their iPads. " R. Byrne's blog also gives directions on how students can use this image search tool integrated with audio-slideshow.

R. Byrne has a nice description of two apps to make interviews with -- a great listening speaking activity for ELLs, with some writing to make up questions. "The Opinion app could be a good choice if you just want students quickly create a simple recording. Students might use Opinion to record a quick reflection on what they learned during the week. If they have SoundCloud accounts Opinion makes it easy to create an on-going audio blog. "StoryCorps.me will take a little more time for students to set-up than they will spend setting-up the Opinion app. That said, StoryCorps.me is the app that I would want students to use when they are recording podcasts involving two or more people. Being able to see the questions while they record should help students keep their interviews concise and on track. "

"Essay Map is a handy tool from the folks at Read Write Think. Essay Map provides students with step by step guidance in the construction of an informational essay. Some of my students seem to struggle most with constructing an introduction and conclusion to their essays. Essay Map is particularly good for helping students visualize the steps needed to construct good introductory and conclusion paragraphs." R. Byrne's description of this tool includes some applications. He suggests Essay Map may be too basic for most high school students, but might be a good tool for middle school or high elementary. However, ESL students of any age might benefit.

"In 2007, my co-teacher and I noticed that students felt increasingly like the world was "happening to them," as if they had no ability to affect positive change. This, coupled with the question "When am I going to use this?" led to the inspiration which has become the Fifth-Grade Environmental Project. "Our goal was to create an educational model in which students' passions are the driving force, empowering them as global citizens. While we have limited time to cover required curriculum, we are committed to finding ways of embedding curriculum in "real-life" applications within the project. "While the project's topic changes each year, the roots (or required elements) are the same, and the work evolves based on student passions, allowing each individual to find and contribute his or her gift to the whole, and reaffirming our belief that together we are smarter." Explains how service learning can inspire student passion, critical thinking, and learning to affect change. Describes partnerships with community nonprofits, and products that students can create to inspire others.

"Today's updates to Office 365 Education include enabling students to write a paper using only their voice, thanks to Dictation in Office, the latest feature to join Microsoft Learning Tools, as well as improved access to assignments and class collaboration with the Microsoft Teams iPhone and Android apps. What's more, we are delivering on the number one most requested feature from teachers, page locking in OneNote Class Notebook-allowing teachers to provide students with read-only access-and we will further help teachers save time through assignment and grade integrations with leading Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Student Information Systems (SIS), including Capita SIMS in the U.K. Office 365 Education gives teachers and students the power to unlock limitless learning. And best of all, it's free for teachers and students." Update on new features (2019), including dictation to Office apps.

An educator explains how he uses Twitter to inspire authentic conversations within his class and across the Twitterverse:: "Within days he found students tweeting at each other multiple times an evening, mentioning and "favoriting" their peers' thoughts, and providing ample material for classroom discussion. His students were being "more careful and reading more closely," Bronke noted. Conducting conversations online allowed him to track their comprehension as well. Because most of his students used Twitter for recreational purposes, they could also utilize their experiences in English class and include their class hashtags as they responded to tweets from One Direction and Tim Tebow. And as an added bonus: Bronke used his already-established education-oriented Twitter handle. This meant that the student comments he retweeted were often retweeted and "favorited" by teachers and scholars who wanted to support their ideas. These students learned that their voice mattered even outside of the classroom setting, and that engaging in real dialogue could be fun and worthwhile."

"Roughly 4.6 million English language learners attended U.S. public schools in 2014-15 and, while many of these students have the English skills needed for everyday life, some lack the language proficiency to get into college. Or they may have misconceptions about college so aren't even thinking about going. But many of these students have the drive and ability to do well in higher education - they just need the right information, support, and tools to get there. ESL/ELL students can find those resources in this guide. Read on to learn more."

"Mote works through a Chrome extension that makes it easy for teachers to leave students voice-recorded feedback in Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, and Classroom. Students don't need the Mote extension or even an account to listen to recorded feedback. It's a real time-saver and a great way to provide effective feedback. " While Nick is right that voice annotation may be a good way to explain you thoughts on student writing, I think that MS Word has a voice annotation feature. And the written notes to students are still important if for nothing else than a reminder as the student re-writes. Mote requires uploading a document to Google Docs first, though that is no big deal. Worth a try, and Nick explains clearly how to run through the whole process.

"Among the many things students are expected to do, self-assessing their learning is part of the suite of metacognitive tools that are valued in today's society. This skill enables the student to think about their thinking, identify what they're doing well and what needs improvement. Self-assessment takes practice, and when it comes to schoolwork, students are not given enough opportunities. " K.Sung offers an example of ways for students to get in practice in self-assessing.

Online resources are a great way to individualize/personalize reading habits: "Teachers trying to motivate or teach students to read can find lots of reading resources online. This includes printable worksheets, lesson plans, reading diaries for students, reading certificates for encouragement, fun activities, audio-visual aids, and tons of other resources that teachers can use in the classroom. Some teachers like to use audio hooks - audio extracts that stop just where the story gets interesting. The teacher can then hand out copies of the book, since students are much more likely to want to read the book after hearing the hook. For students who can read on their own, it is important to have the type of books they like to read. In some classes, this may amount to a very large collection of books. It is also important to ensure that the language of the books matches the reading abilities of the students. An alternative to stocking up on a large collection of books that meet these criteria is to use e-libraries to encourage reading."

Linked from the WebQuest page--by N. Pickett & B. Dodge. It has a short article on the why and how of rubric assessment, and also provides links to rubric-makers, a rubric template, and other online resources. "The rubric is one authentic assessment tool which is designed to simulate real life activity where students are engaged in solving real-life problems. It is a formative type of assessment because it becomes an ongoing part of the whole teaching and learning process. Students themselves are involved in the assessment process through both peer and self-assessment. As students become familiar with rubrics, they can assist in the rubric design process. This involvement empowers the students and as a result, their learning becomes more focused and self-directed."