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Kaizena is a wonderful tool for giving oral feedback. This may be faster and more explanatory when working with student essays than writing comments. You will probably give more feedback, and perhaps more positive feedback than when writing cyptic notes. Oral commenting also gives students some listening practice. This YouTube tutorial shows how a teacher is using Kaizena with her student papers.

"Knowmia Teach is a new free lesson planning and recording tool for teachers. It helps you create short video lessons on any subject and publish them on Knowmia.com so your students and the public can find them. Knowmia Teach makes it easy to bring in visual aids from multiple sources, organize them in steps (like slides in a presentation) and use your own voice and fingers to bring your lesson to life. You can design each step in the lesson, record illustrations as you draw them, and create sophisticated animation sequences with a simple stroke of a finger. We also give you the ability to describe your lesson in a way that makes it simple for any student who is interested in the subject to find your video. " This seems to be a hany app that allows you to design and record and draw with one app. Available at the iTunes store. So far iPad only, but their site at knowmia.com also gives tips for creating lessons using other tools and storing them at their website.

"When I show the picture to the left during my workshops (click it to enlarge it and feel to use it yourself) I simply ask people to share the questions that come to mind when they see it. Then I give people time to try to use various Google search strategies to find the answers to their questions. Sometimes people find the answers and other times they don't. It's okay if they don't find the answers because the point is to try a variety of search strategies." This blog gives a nice example of a lesson, with frequently asked questions, and links to pre-made images and the Google Search Education page.

This avatar based text-to-speech gives students a chance to making talking characters for their website, and give themselves practice in listening and speaking. Fun, too.

"Peer review has long been regarded as beneficial practice in the teaching of writing. In North American educational settings, learners are often asked to provide feedback on each other's papers. However, when international students come to study either in intensive English programs or in institutions of higher education, they may encounter difficulties during peer review activities because many of them never had experiences with this kind of practice. As a result, students tend to give each other broad, irrelevant, essentially unhelpful comments." This blog post offers help in training students for giving good feedback.

"One of the Eight Essential Elements of Project Based Learning is Revision and Reflection. This important element enables learners to improve their work through the use of feedback from multiple sources - peers, teacher, and expert. "However, giving and receiving feedback from others can be tricky. It can take time, and the giver might not know how to frame his or her feedback, both in terms of content and tone. The receiver might take critical feedback personally, or be misled by feedback that is off-target in some way. "One way to avoid potential pitfalls and help ensure feedback is "kind, specific, and helpful" (to quote Ron Berger) is to use a protocol. One of our favorite feedback protocols is the Gallery Walk. The basic idea is to post pieces of work on a wall - as in an art gallery - so people can move around and look at it. In BIE's "PBL 101" workshops, teachers use this protocol to give and collect feedback on their initial ideas for a project they're designing. "

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."

"Sites is Google's free tool to create custom websites. Similar to a wiki, you can develop the site by yourself or choose to collaborate with others on the creation and content of the pages. Then, you can decide on the level of sharing you would like to permit. You can determine who the owners are, whom you would like to give permission to edit and revise the site, and whom you would like to give permission to view the site. You can limit viewing your site to a small, private group or you can choose to publish it so that it is accessible to anyone in the world."

These writing prompts are ingenious and will give your writing class a little spice. Also a link to Writer's Boot Camp. "Need an idea to help you get started writing? You'll find hundreds of fun writing prompts here - perfect for beginning a new novel or short story, or simply giving your writing muscle a workout." For more adult or upper level high school (ages 16-18).

"Programming is magic. It's the ability to create things from pure imagination. We started CodeCombat to give learners the feeling of wizardly power at their fingertips by using typed code. "As it turns out, that enables them to learn faster too. WAY faster. It's like having a conversation instead of reading a manual. We want to bring that conversation to every school and to every student, because everyone should have the chance to learn the magic of programming. "CodeCombat is a community project,with hundreds of players volunteering to create levels, contribute to our code to add features, fix bugs, playtest, and even translate the game into 50 languages so far. Employees, contributors and the site gain by sharing ideas and pooling effort, as does the open source community in general. The site is built on numerous open source projects, and we are open sourced to give back to the community and provide code-curious players a familiar project to explore and experiment with. Anyone can join the CodeCombat community! "

"To give a brief over view of the paper, it was written for people who have a basic understanding of Blogs. I looked at how Blogs have impacted business and communication. . . etc."

Pupils have a say in what their classroom will be. "HIGH TECH: 21st century classroom on the horizon Pupils have say in their future - by John Thorne in Mid Devon Gazette - 6/11/01 Primary school pupils have been given the opportunity to say what they think a high-tech 21st century classroom should contain. The pupils took part in a technology day at Chulmleigh Community College, which has been chosen as the site for a pioneering classroom of the future project, along with Witheridge and Winkleigh primary schools. Devon County Council has been awarded £900,000 by the Department for Education and Skills for the innovative scheme. It aims to help boost learning opportunities for children and adults in rural communities. Devon is one of 12 local authorities selected following an invitation by the Government to councils to come up with plans for a classroom of the future. Each of the three schools would be equipped with the latest computers, audio and video technology. This would allow pupils and adult learners to benefit from video links with experts at three of Devon's technology colleges, including Queen Elizabeth's at Crediton. They would be able to take lessons or give lectures without moving from their home base. The idea is to provide greater learning opportunities for people living in rural areas and help to cut down social exclusion in isolated communities."

R. Stannard training video for students: "This is a guide on how to use Quizlet to study vocabulary. If you are a teacher and you want to know what tips you can give to your students about using Quizlet, then this will really help you. It shows you ONLY the essential things that you need to show to students so that they can understand how to use Quizlet and how to organise their learning. If you do now know anything about Quizlet then I recommend you watch these videos first. Key Tools for Educators: A full introduction to Quizlet"

A paper describing massively multiplayer online games for situated learning, which give students a chance to operate in a simulated environment and share with other online players through chat. (Second Life has now become the standard for MMOGs.)

A taste of the paper, which is relatively expensive, but it gives an idea of what kinds of things can be used with a GET (Google Earth Tour). This blog also has many earlier posts about the subject. Great for content-based science classes.

"Why do many students have difficulty transitioning from ESL programs to the mainstream curriculum? One reason is that many of them don't understand what is expected in U.S. colleges and universities. To address this problem, I decided to create a video series that gives students the opportunity to practice with authentic examples of the courses they will soon enroll in. Also crucial would be devising accompanying materials that would help students learn from the examples provided. It's one thing to watch a YouTube lecture from Yale or MIT, but quite another to understand a class within the context of academic norms in the United States. " Excellent advice for getting EFL students ready to study online or in the U.S.

Gives ideas on how to select a movie, how to use online learning, and some teaching tips.

"What you see here are candid submissions from people who have engaged in a little exercise. Here's how it works. Think about the word Race. How would you distill your thoughts, experiences or observations about race into one sentence that only has six words?" This National Public Radio blog makes the perfect starting point for a multicultural lesson for ESL/EFL students. The entries are sheer poetry and give a great deal of content to think about the issue of race and one's place in society, for better or worse. Each 6-word "poem" makes us, as one contributor said, "Look past race to underlying humanity."

"ScheduleHangout is great for scheduling group hangouts on Google+ Invite your guests, give them a few date options and ScheduleHangout does the rest. We'll help you organize the Hangout session around your friends/colleagues optimized availability." This may be a way to organize Google+ a little.

Five studies of iPad use for learning in a variety of schools at varying levels. Doesn't give results of the studies, so you'lll have to search them yourself. Concludes with links to some excellent apps.