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In this TED talk, Andreas Schleicher describes a new scale, "PISA (the Programme for International Student Assessment), an initiative of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). PISA not only tests students on their mathematical understanding, reading level and ability to apply learning to new problems, but also looks at what teachers get paid, how long the school day is, what the average class size is and whether quality of education is uniform across schools and social stratifications. It even measures cultural attitudes, like whether people in the country expect all students to achieve or only a small segment of them to. It's this broad approach to data collection that makes PISA so powerful, says Schleicher." An interesting way for a country to compare where it is and how it compares globally.

"2011, Badges as credentials, 160,000 students in a MOOC, peer-ratings = students teaching students, Udacity charges 20% finder's fees for grads, MITx, TEDed, free, student loan overhang, tuition going up …. free content, pay only for assessment, transferable credits based on ability, Apple buys Amazon, iTunesU becomes the ed app platform, preference matching, Google buys Udacity and Khan Academy, tied to education model, most colleges wait it out as badges replace degrees, residential college campuses are for the children of the wealthy only, Google unleashes EPIC the all-knowing learning system, 2020. " It could happen...

True grit may be the most important thing students can learn from you, according to this TED talk. Darwin thought that hard work was not only the most important thing in intellecutual endeavor, but the only thing. To see how to inspire grit, check out Larry Ferlazzo's inks and other resources, including free excerpts from his books, at this blog post.

This site is going EFL/ESL in a big way, using video: "We recently found out that 22frames.com is becoming a popular site for learning English as a second language (ESL). It turns out that watching captioned videos provides a way to not only learn formal English but also idioms and other cultural concepts. To find videos, you can browse through categories or make caption-only video searches on your interests. Even more, we have been devoting significant time and resources to developing ESL-specific features that are motivated by our users' feedback." "Recently, we found out that many of our users are using the site to supplement their English learning (see: http://www.22frames.com/esl.aspx ). They also began to pitch ideas we could implement to make the site even more useful for this activity. With so many requests, we decided to seriously consider these ideas and devote significant time and resources into realizing them. Now, we are turning our site into a substantial and FREE English learning resource. We are aware of a couple sites out there that are also focused on using captioned videos for English learning, so we've been focusing on the unique user-motivated features. Therefore, my goal here is to let you know about our free resource and that we are opening the door to requests for anyone who might desire features that have not been implemented elsewhere. Perhaps, you can share this with your colleagues/readers/etc as it will help us better gauge which features to prioritize and to increase the rate with which we will release new features. Please note that we are really serious about considering whatever feedback we get. I'm also pleased to announce our first feature, which we expect will help in learning/teaching popular English idioms. Idioms are a big deal in learning English, and it is clear that watching them used in real situations will increase the rate with which they are learned. We therefore processed a large group of YouTube videos in o

"In compiling this list, I tried to really focus on highlighting sites that would be easy-to-use and engaging to both a younger Beginning English Language Learner and to someone who was new to computers. They all have audio support for text and, with only one exception, they also have visual support. only a couple require registration (though the top-ranked site lets you do so if you want to keep track of what exercises you've done (and registration takes seconds). Of course, they all are free-of-charge."

"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.

"Here are few tools which can be used to create tutorials. These screen casting tools are free alternative to some of the higher priced utilities. This list covers both PC and Mac utilities." But it doesn't specifiy which are Mac-only or PC-only, so it takes a little experimenting. I didn't realize there was a free, open source version of Camtasia. A good list, except Jing is apparently going to disappear -- get in now!

This is one of those amazing Internet contraptions that make one realize how digitized learning can really differ drastically from paper/pencil learning. This site allows you to translate any word in a website, so you can read any digital text, then practice the words you have selected in flashcards. The free version allows only 10 words/day (about what one could reasonably learn), but the premium version is only $5/month for unlimited words. Neat idea. I imagine teachers could put their texts on a website and have students work away at them.

Our pedagogical imperative is to let a course unfold according to the whim and determination of the group - to replace teacher-as-content with learning-community-as-content-maker. Doesn't this replace the content-as-authority with the random knowledges of various members of the group? How does "whim" become "content"? Wouldn't it be better to start with actual, factual knowledge? on Dec 09, 14 - Edit - Remove This is at the heart of what Freire calls "co-intentional education," in which "Teachers and students (leadership and people), co-intent on reality, are both Subjects, not only in the task of unveiling that reality, and thereby coming to know it critically, but in the task of re-creating that knowledge." The collective knowledge of a group of students will almost always exceed the expertise of one instructor. The last sentence is misleading -- not what Freire says. If the teacher is not included as part of the task, the knowledge of the group of students probably doesn't exceed the instructor's expertise.

"Index Mundi is a site that provides a huge amount of information about every nation in the world. This site is a data portal full of information, statistics, charts and maps that users will find easy to navigate because the information is all categorized and is easily accessible on the home page. The site not only offers data about individual nations but it has comparison maps and charts as well as an entire area dedicated just to the United States. With data ranging from health, to economics, to energy consumption,and so much more, Index Mundi is an amazingly useful site that just about any educator can use in the classroom."

This is the result of a survey by 582 professional worldwide, but they are ordered only by rank in the survey, not by type or use. May have some value if you are patient.

Bookr is a tool to create and share your own photobook using Flickr images. Add images, text, and publish. Creative Commons content only.

"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."

"if you use iBooks on Ipad or iphone than you also highlight some important text while reading ,and you wondered how good it can be to extract only highlighted part of that book which you want to revise in future …" Looks a little complex at first blush, but seems to work.

"Presentation Tube is a service that teachers and students can use to record, share, and watch presentations. Presentation Tube provides a free desktop tool (Windows only) that you can use to record a video of yourself talking over and drawing on slides. The Presentation Tube recorder automatically synchronizes your PowerPoint slides with your voice. The free recording tool allows you to record for up to 15 minutes. Your completed recording can be uploaded directly to Presentation Tube."

"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.

"Knowmia Teach http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/teach/id527216211?mt=8 Free; Designed specifically for teachers; Integrates directly into Knowmia.com (publish a lesson with the push of a single button); Organize lessons with steps/slides; Draw using shapes, multiple pens (with your finger), text tools, laser pointer and much more; Animate graphic elements on the screen by using two fingers (moving, scaling and rotating them); Integrate videos as part of a lesson (coming soon); The only iPad tool to allow face recording while capturing a lesson (coming soon); Imports images, drawings, and Adobe Acrobat files (coming soon); Integrates with Dropbox, Google Drive, Box.net and Gmail for transferring files (coming soon)" $2.99 Great tool for the iPad; see more info at the iTunes store.

"This database contains the official UN statistics used in monitoring the world's progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. The database is published by the United Nations Statistics Division. Data is included as of 2011, or early 2012 for a few select indicators and countries only." Search data by what, what, topic, or geographic area.

"Uruguay may only have 3.3 million inhabitants, but this South American country has distributed more than half a million free laptops to its students and teachers over the last five years. This achievement is one of the results of Plan Ceibal, a highly ambitious initiative inspired by Nicholas Negroponte's non-profit project, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)."

R. Stannard shows not only how to use iTunes, but the instructional virtues of this tool.