CALL_IS_VSL

How do you get kids - or for that matter, adults - to work collaboratively in groups? These games can also serve as ice-breakers when you start a new class.

Each site mentioned includes a brief description. Lots of math, science, and reading sites. A mix of grade levels/student ages.

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.'"

This is a neat way to personalize your school or students' websites. The Favicon is the little icon that appears in the tab on your browser. These directions help you create a favicon using http://favicon.cc.

This blog entry shows how to use the Google Drawing program to create a mind-map, brainstorm, and embed the map elsewhere, e.g., a blog or wiki, for instant updating. Includes a video tutorial as well.

This short (2.17 min) video shows how students in a multi-cultural, multi-language high school class, this teacher gradually puts the responsibility for learning about a topic (in this case Shakespeare and tragedy) directly on the students.

This 2 min. video shows how a teacher uses questioning strategies to help students think through, clarify, structure. and discover their own learning. She uses different types of questions to help scaffold understanding.

This might be an interesting tool to use with advanced writing students. It appears to be a toolbar add-on with Collect, Organize, Cite, Sync, and Collaborate features. Works with Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Completely free online lessons for your beginners and false beginners. A great way to supplement your own lessons and get students to listen and practice totally authentic language.

Great tool to slow down, edit, add CC to videos from Coursera, YouTube, etc. This would be great to use with content-based lessons, etc. Upload your video or link to videonot.es online to get started.

This is the anchor page for the playlist of video materials for Shaping the Way We Teach English. Great as an idea resource for lesson plans for your own classes. Each video/module has suggestions for both non-tech and tech-rich environments.

A nice example of how to do a Think-Pair-Share in a math context. Students first work individually, then pair up to compare and talk about their answers, and then share within their groups of about 5. Talking about concepts helps students process and learn the concept. The teacher circulates, listening in. Groups report back to the whole class by holding up a small whiteboard/paper with the answer, so that teacher can quickly see how each group (mixed levels of expertise) has done it. She selects one or two groups to explain the answer and how they arrived at it.

These resources include an APA Powerpoint tutorial, the APA Sixth Edition, advice on writing a dissertaion -- with samples -- the mechnaics of writing/grammar, and how to avoid plagiarism. For advanced, academic students.

Hundreds of resources, lessons, and teaching strategies for the Common Core standards. Also a listing of the standards themselves. Lots of good ideas here.

Dozens of ideas for using technology, explained by teachers. Emphasis on middle-school students (ages 11-13), and many for uses of video and mobile technologies.

Many good lesson ideas/tips from students and teachers who use tech in their classrooms. Here the focus is on social studies and history.

A wide variety of technologies are used to spark interest in science and math. Tips include use of video and video-editing software; games; Voki avatars, etc. Part of a very nice series for content-based learning.

These great apps, mostly free, allow you to record a lecture on your iPad, edit it in various ways, upload to YouTube, et al. Must haves.

Emaze is a much less complex presentation program than Prezi, but has similar interesting effects. Teachers use a variety of presentation programs to give variety to their lectures. Free (sign up), and online, whith lots of examples. A nice example of a science Emaze about the human nervous system: http://app.emaze.com/40664/central-nervous-system#slidenum=1

Not exactly mind-blowing, but very useful. Users claim they also (mostly) work in OS 7.0.