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These competencies address the skills and knowledge about technology necessary for library work. This competency set also addresses the role of providing access to and educating the user in the use of technologies and equipment relevant to information seeking, access, and use.

Need to compare things such as number users of Facebook vs Myspace, or Google users vs Bing users vs Yahoo users? This is an interesting tool to let you do that. It produces a nice graph to show the results, too.

a game where you choose a player to compete with in a spelling contest. Each player chooses from a variety of words and challenges their opponent online to correctly spell the word that is spoken to them in the context of a sentence.

a great way for kids to experience history and create solutions while competing for $250,000

so much for my blog

Advice from Wired Magazine: Shut down your blog; you can't compete. Take refuse in Twitter, Flickr & YouTube.

Project New Media Literacies (NML), a research initiative based within MIT's Comparative Media Studies program, explores how we might best equip young people with the social skills and cultural competencies required to become full participants in an emergent media landscape and raise public understanding about what it means to be literate in a globally interconnected, multicultural world.

The Foundation and Center for Critical Thinking aim to improve education in colleges, universities and primary through secondary schools. We present publications, conferences, workshops and professional development programs, emphasizing instructional strategies, Socratic questioning, critical reading and writing, higher order thinking, assessment, research, quality enhancement, and competency standards.

Overall there is a strong body of evidence linking the use of technology to improvements in learning and outcomes for learners. The relationship is not a simple one. Time taken to embed the use of technology, school-level planning and learner competency and focus of use, and link to models of learning are all important in mediating the impact of technology on outcomes. Schools that take a systematic and planned approach to using technology to support learning achieve better outcomes with technology than other schools. These 'e-mature' schools have a well-developed vision for learning and lead and manage their use of technology in support of this.

New Zealand Curriculum Manager, Andrew Churches, posts this revision of the revised Bloom (on his blog, educational origami; Thanks to Tracy Rosen's blog, leadingfromtheheart.org for the link): This is an update to Bloom's Revised Taxonomy which attempts to account for the new behaviours and actions emerging as technology advances and becomes more ubiquitous. Bloom's Revised Taxonomy accounts for many of the traditional classroom practices, behaviours and actions but does not account for the new processes and actions associated with Web 2.0 technologies and increasing ubiquitous personal and cloud computing. Bloom's Digital Taxonomy isn't about the tools or technologies rather it is about using these to facilitate learning. Outcomes on rubrics are measured by competence of use and most importantly the quality of the process or product.

The Reflective Principal: A Taxonomy of Reflection (Part IV) Reflection can be a challenging endeavor. It's not something that's fostered in school - typically someone else tells you how you're doing! Principals (and instructional leaders) are often so caught up in the meeting the demands of the day, that they rarely have the luxury to muse on how things went. Self-assessment is clouded by the need to meet competing demands from multiple stakeholders. In an effort to help schools become more reflective learning environments, I've developed this "Taxonomy of Reflection" - modeled on Bloom's approach. It's posted in four installments: 1. A Taxonomy of Reflection 2. The Reflective Student 3. The Reflective Teacher 4. The Reflective Principal It's very much a work in progress, and I invite your comments and suggestions. I'm especially interested in whether you think the parallel construction to Bloom holds up through each of the three examples - student, teacher, and principal. I think we have something to learn from each perspective. 4. The Reflective Principal Each level of reflection is structured to parallel Bloom's taxonomy. (See installment 1 for more on the model) Assume that a principal (or instructional leader) looked back on an initiative (or program, decision, project, etc) they have just implemented. What sample questions might they ask themselves as they move from lower to higher order reflection? (Note: I'm not suggesting that all questions are asked after every initiative - feel free to pick a few that work for you.) Bloom's Remembering : What did I do? Principal Reflection: What role did I play in implementing this program? What role did others play? What steps did I take? Is the program now operational and being implemented? Was it completed on time? Are assessment measures in place? Bloom's Understanding: What was

Grant Wiggins

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Using Accountability to "Reform" Public Schools to Death

By using its "Salary Wizard," you can find the salaries for many different occupations in different regions of the country. It's an excellent way for students to research the pay for various jobs. It's pretty accessible, though it might take a minute or two of teacher explanation to Intermediate English Language Learners.

"The Common Core State Standards provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them. The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy."