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Schools are working with a flexible definition of literacy, influenced by established core concepts of media literacy, to: * promote the development of critical thinking skills necessary to independently 'read' & 'write', and make meaning of messages in a variety of forms * promote the basic operational skills, and understanding of the languages necessary to independently 'read' and 'write' effective messages in various forms of media (print, video, audio, etc.) * instill confidence in the ability to adapt those skills and concepts to emerging forms of communication * connect and transfer the fundamentals of literacy to other forms of real world communication and problem solving Challenges & Questions: * How do you fit this into already full school schedules? * If these type of productions do take time from other discipline and skills, is it worth it? * When and how do we train teachers to be confident enough in their own media literacy to fluidly guide students? * Where is the balance that satisfies outcomes schools are traditionally responsible for with the real world needs of our students?

"The mission of School of One is to provide students with personalized, effective, and dynamic classroom instruction so that teachers have more time to focus on the quality of their instruction. To achieve this mission, School of One re-imagines the traditional classroom model. Instead of one teacher and 25-30 students in a classroom, each student participates in multiple instructional modalities, including a combination of teacher-led instruction, one-on-one tutoring, independent learning, and work with virtual tutors. To organize this type of learning, each student receives a unique daily schedule based on his or her academic strengths and needs. As a result, students within the same school or even the same classroom can receive profoundly different instruction as each student's schedule is tailored to the skills they need and the ways they best learn. Teachers acquire data about student achievement each day and then adapt their live instructional lessons accordingly. By leveraging technology to play a more essential role in planning instruction, teachers have more time to focus on doing what they do best - delivering quality instruction and insuring that all students learn."

MeeGenius is an online library of picture books that kids can read independently or as a read along. Books can be personalized with students names, just answer a few quick questions and the book is rewritten for you. Each book comes with audio playback and word highlighting, perfect for beginning or struggling readers to read along.

This section contains reproducible copies of primary documents from the holdings of the National Archives of the United States, teaching activities correlated to the National History Standards and National Standards for Civics and Government, and cross-curricular connections. Teaching with primary documents encourages a varied learning environment for teachers and students alike. Lectures, demonstrations, analysis of documents, independent research, and group work become a gateway for research with historical records in ways that sharpen students' skills and enthusiasm for history, social studies, and the humanities.

ImageStamper is a free tool for keeping dated, independently verified copies of license conditions associated with creative commons images. You can use it to safeguard your use of free images from license changes, or to prove you are the original image creator.

The only problem with it is that it seems to require an email address. Maybe someone can contact them to find out how schools can use this without that. Or, the teacher can create a generic account that the students can use. Maybe? (This was on the Clif Notes list)

hands-on reading skills for K-4 students, great for demos on large boards, independent review

StoryCorps is an independent nonprofit project whose mission is to honor and celebrate one another's lives through listening.

A free internet TV platform supported by advertising, Babelgum Beta, combines the full-screen video quality of traditional television with the interactive capabilities of the internet, offering professionally produced programming on-demand to a global audience with broadband access (a minimum of 450kbit/sec). As the name suggests, Babelgum's goal is to act as an international 'glue', bringing a huge range of content to a global audience - like a modern-day Tower of Babel. The bubble logo is a fun visual pun on the company name, but also reflects Babelgum's commitment to a green, global future. Babelgum's editorial focus is on three Passions, that is, specific subject areas that we present with depth and a point of view: independent film, independent music and underwater. Each Passion has a dedicated publisher who will select the best content and stimulate the debate. In addition, to the 3 Passions, videos are arranged into 9 theme-related Channels such as Film, Nature, Comedy, Travel, Sport, just to name a few.

Excellent video resource. They have an entire AP news archive, excellent for history teachers. There are also many fine science videos both long and short.

Folkstreams.net has two goals. One is to build a national preserve of hard-to-find documentary films about American folk or roots cultures. The other is to give them renewed life by streaming them on the internet. The films were produced by independent filmmakers in a golden age that began in the 1960s and was made possible by the development first of portable cameras and then capacity for synch sound. Their films focus on the culture, struggles, and arts of unnoticed Americans from many different regions and communities. The filmmakers were driven more by sheer engagement with the people and their traditions than by commercial hopes. Their films have unusual subjects, odd lengths, and talkers who do not speak "broadcast English." Although they won prizes at film festivals, were used in college classes, and occasionally were shown on PBS, they found few outlets in venues like theaters, video shops or commercial television. But they have permanent value. They come from the same intellectual movement that gave rise to American studies, regional and ethnic studies, the "new history," "performance theory," and investigation of tenacious cultural styles in phenomena like song, dance, storytelling, visual designs, and ceremonies.They also respond to the intense political and social ferment of the period.

My 2002 book, Smart Mobs, was widely acclaimed as a prescient forecast of the always-on era. The weblog associated with the book has become one of the top 200 of the 8 million blogs tracked by Technorati, and won Utne Magazine's Independent Press Award in 2003. In 2005, I taught a course at Stanford University on A Literacy of Cooperation, part of a long-term investigation of cooperation and collective action that I have undertaken in partnership with the Institute for the Future. The Cooperation Commons is the site of my ongoing investigation of cooperation and collective action. I teach Participatory Media/Collective Action at UC Berkeley's School of Information, Digital Journalism at Stanford University, am a non-resident Fellow of the Annenberg School for Communication, and am a visiting Professor at the Institute of Creative Technologies, De Montfort University in Leicester, UK.

Woohoo!

News story about an independent study that shows: Based on two years of reporting, the data show that frequent usage of Discovery Education streaming is associated with higher achievement scores in grades 3-8 in math and reading.

Project this technology out 5 or ten years. Imagine! Certainly THEN we won't be able to say business as usual is good enough to prepare our kids for the world they'll be entering. WOW!

GlobalPost is embarking on a bold journey to redefine international news for the digital age. To get there, we are relying on the enduring values of great journalism: integrity, accuracy, independence and powerful storytelling. GlobalPost follows no political line. We encourage our correspondents to write with a strong voice and to work hard to unearth facts. But we leave opinion on the opinion pages.

Teaching with primary documents encourages a varied learning environment for teachers and students alike. Lectures, demonstrations, analysis of documents, independent research, and group work become a gateway for research with historical records in ways that sharpen students' skills and enthusiasm for history, social studies, and the humanities.

Resources, materials, and processes for creating an environment that will develop critical, creative, and independent thinkers in a culturally diverse, technologically advanced society.

"BeatPick is a specialized online music licensing agent that provides pre-cleared music for both commercial and non commercial multimedia projects. Approximately 250 independent artists have joined the service, from over 40 different countries. Commercial music licenses have been arranged for hundreds of small to mid-sized clients. Music licenses were issued for major brands such as 20th Century Fox, Ralph Lauren, Toyota, Dodge, Scott Wintersport, The Travel Channel, Chevrolet. The company is also proud to have helped students, developing professionals and open source projects in finding free quality music to use for their non commercial projects. "

Interesting idea. What do you think? Kids directing their own education.

Shared today by @Kyle_simon on Twitter.

"We're calling this new feature Projects. Whenever you have a particular assignment or activity, you can create a project for it, then define teams of members, each with its own unique pages, files, and permissions. Team content (that is, pages and files) are grouped together, separate from the main area of the wiki. That way, students in teams can do their group work completely independently from other teams."

Curriculum Analysis Tool and Professional Development Materials from NCSM.  This will save so much time with selecting materials aligned with the standards, independent of what the publishers claim.