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Librarians and educators need to be able to illustrate to students and users alike that websites cannot always be trusted to provide truthful and accurate data. This page provides examples of websites that are full of lies, inaccuracies or false information - either for amusement or for more worrying reasons. The list does not include phishing sites however; these are intended to fool a person into believing that they are visiting a legitimate bank site for example; there are already plenty of links to these online already.

With Got Free Fax, you can send up to two faxes in a day for free to any number in the U.S. and Canada. You can either use its online rich text editor to compose a fax or upload a PDF /Word file from your computer, type the recipient's fax number and hit send. The service won't add any advertisements or branding to your faxes. If you would like to send a fax to an international number, you can buy credits through PayPal.

From Mara Linaberger: Great discussion on the iPad everyone! Next Friday we will be launching an iPad pilot with 48 art, music and theatre teachers at IU1 as part of our ArtsEducator 2.0 project. You can read about our inquiry and preparation done this summer to get some practice in, and to think through some of the logistics these folks might face this fall with their own pad here: http://artsedtech.wordpress.com/ Our thinking was to have the teachers use the iPad as a personal tool first, then move to them as a tool for instruction. The logical step for some may be to then take the tool into student use while others may stick to it as an instructional tool. We'll be documenting our project online here.

"If you're a teacher / administrator / librarian / education professor that somehow 'doesn't even realize [yet] that there's a decision to be made,' should you even be working in a school or university? Don't our children and our school systems need and deserve someone who's in a different place than you are? It's one thing to still be a learner; heck, we're all learners with this technology stuff. It's another to opt out or not even recognize the choice. If we look at what our kids need, shouldn't we replace you with someone else? "

Clive Thompson - NYTimes.com

Interesting!

Atomic Learning's Tech Skills Assessment helps you gauge technology skill levels, demonstrating skills can actually be applied. How is the Tech Skills Assessment unique? * Focused on how to use technology and how to apply it * Correlated to ISTE NETS-S 2007 standards * Easy identification of areas of greatest instructional need * Includes curriculum projects to target technology gaps * Comprehensive reporting system scalable to the needs of a district of any size * Can be completed in a single class period * Available with a subscription to the Technology Skills Collection

The cohort group had been meeting throughout the summer, focusing on learning about social networks, on making connections, reading blogs, trying Twitter and Facebook, and thinking about social tools in the context of their curriculum. The teachers come from every discipline, from math to special education to media specialists. ... [The Supt] started by asking everyone to read Margaret Wheatley's "Willing to be Disturbed."

Critical Challenges

A free resource for math review material from Algebra to Differential Equations. The perfect study site for high school, college students and adult learners. Get help to do your homework, refresh your memory, prepare for a test. Browse the more than 2,500 Math pages filled with short and easy-to-understand explanations. Click on one of the following subject areas: Algebra, Trigonometry, Calculus, Differential Equations, Complex Variables, Matrix Algebra, or Mathematical Tables. You can find topics ranging from simplifying fractions to the cubic formula, from the quadratic equation to Fourier series, from the sine function to systems of differential equations - this is the one stop site for your math needs.

Our goal is to increase the quality of our students' writing skills by sharing knowledge among experts and practitioners. We plan to share theory, practice, and research through our articles, feedback from our readers, and a numbers of web events in the planning as we launch. We will have teachers, writing assessment experts, academics, and others write about what they've tried, what works, how to implement ideas, and current theories on the subject of writing. We also plan to include lots of ideas regarding ways to get students writing more, since that's the surest way to improve writing.

Using Accountability to "Reform" Public Schools to Death

"iRubric is a comprehensive rubric development, assessment, and sharing tool. Designed from the ground up, iRubric supports a variety of applications in an easy-to-use package. Best of all, iRubric is free to individual faculty and students. iRubric School-Edition empowers schools with an easy-to-use system for monitoring student learning outcomes and aligning with standards. Click. Click. Done. Scoring rubrics cannot be made any easier. Just pull up a rubric from the gradebook, click, click, and you're done. Rubric scores are automatically adjusted to the coursework grading scale and posted on the gradebook. All you have to do next is to press [save]. Students get a copy of the scored rubric securely... no more paperwork, no more calculations and no more confusion. Finally, spend more time teaching and less time grading. Only with iRubric. "

"Welcome to the CEO Forum's Interactive School Technology and Readiness (STaR) Chart, a self-assessment tool designed to provide schools with the information they need to better integrate technology into their educational process. Here, you can complete an online, multiple-choice questionnaire that will provide you with instant feedback on how well your school is doing in this process. The STaR Chart identifies and defines four school profiles ranging from the "Early Tech" school with little or no technology to the "Target Tech" school that provides a model for the integration and innovative use of education technology. The STaR Chart is not intended to be a measure of any particular school's technology and readiness, but rather to serve a benchmark against which every school can assess and track its own progress."

"Why shouldn't learning start with hunches? As a new teacher, there are many times I feel stranded somewhere between the older students I teach and the younger teachers above me. I still have strong memories of being a high school student, but am operating in an authoritative role "above" them. I've gotten used to being "the new guy" on the staff, but also to being "the tech guy" to whom many come with questions. I enjoy the dichotomy that being new and also holding a position of soft power puts me in; It's a place that fosters frequent reflection, which is good." An excellent comparison of traditional research methods to 21st Century skills. A great discussion to advocate for the use of Wikipedia, and the difference in research styles between students being a positive thing.

This soccer coaching game is a good one to use with young players when you would like to stop the parents interfering from the sidelines during a match. It uses role reversal ideas to show pushy parents how shouting instructions to their children can be distracting and unhelpful. Kids love it!

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), created this Web site to educate adolescents ages 11 through 15 (as well as their parents and teachers) on the science behind drug abuse. NIDA enlisted the help of teens in developing the site to ensure that the content addresses appropriate questions and timely concerns. Recognizing that teens want to be treated as equals, NIDA scientists were careful not to preach about the dangers of drug use. Rather, the site delivers science-based facts about how drugs affect the brain and body so that kids will be armed with better information to make healthy decisions. Elements such as animated illustrations, quizzes, and games are used throughout the site to clarify concepts, test the visitor's knowledge, and make learning fun through interaction.

The Complete Guide to Google Wave is a comprehensive user manual by Gina Trapani with Adam Pash. Google Wave is a new web-based collaboration tool that's notoriously difficult to understand. This guide will help. Here you'll learn how to use Google Wave to get things done with your group. Because Wave is such a new product that's evolving quickly, this guidebook is a work in progress that will update in concert with Wave as it grows and changes. Read more about The Complete Guide to Google Wave.

I know some of you are into Google and thought this would interest you.

I know some of you are into Google and thought this would interest you.

YouTube launched a redesigned copyright center and a brand new Copyright School. These new services are designed to educate YouTube users about what is and is not a copyright violation. According to their announcement, users who have a video flagged for copyright violations will be required to attend Copyright School before being able to upload more content. Copyright School is essentially a video explanation of copyright accompanied by a series of questions. You can watch the video below.

Our Mission NetSmartz Workshop is an interactive, educational program of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children® (NCMEC) that provides age-appropriate resources to help teach children how to be safer on- and offline. The program is designed for children ages 5-17, parents and guardians, educators, and law enforcement. With resources such as videos, games, activity cards, and presentations, NetSmartz entertains while it educates. Our Goals     Educate children on how to recognize potential Internet risks     Engage children and adults in a two-way conversation about on- and offline risks     Empower children to help prevent themselves from being exploited and to report victimization to a trusted adult