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Purdue Universities Online Writing an incredible resource for writing that could be used by teachers in English, S&E, Rel, Media, Business etc.  This link is the Argumentative Essays to give an example of what is there    

"Writing appropriate emails is part of being a good digital citizen! Students (even digital natives) are not born with knowing the rules and responsibilities. Just as they need to learn to answer and talk on the phone, they need to learn about e-mail writing in an academic setting (to their teachers, Skype partners, project collaborators, administration or their classmates regarding school business)."

"We want a team to think about action research as a collaborative endeavor, where principals and teachers work together to improve something over time. It's not just about gathering data, it's about working hard to improve something. Maybe you see a need to improve writing in the building, and you're going to figure out whether there's a way to take a techno-constructivist approach to strengthening students' writing skills. Maybe you feel the culture of your school is very mired in antiquated approaches to teaching and learning, and you want to build a new culture of innovation and collaboration, so you're going to develop your project around that goal."

"How this class attempted to transform the traditional research process to a completely paperless one"

The 4 goals stated in this post tie in with Alan's philosophy nicely.

The purpose behind this series is to make  teachers and educators aware of the potential of this free service.

"teacher-ready tips for stimulating curiosity in others. First, she suggests starting with the question, rather than the answer-which teachers will recognize as the foundation of inquiry-based or discovery learning (see: math teacher Dan Meyer's take on how to make math "irresistible" to students). She then suggests offering some initial knowledge on the subject. "We're not curious about something we know absolutely nothing about," she writes. Again, teachers may know this as "activating prior knowledge" or "setting the stage" before a lesson. Finally, she says it helps to require communication, or "open an information gap and then require learners to communicate with each other in order to fill it." The think-pair-share technique and vocabulary activities that require students to teach each other their words both exemplify this. What would you add to the list? How does stimulating curiosity gel with other motivation tactics-or should teachers think of curiosity and motivation as one and the same?"

I have been thinking a lot lately about the challenge we face as educators when well-intentioned learners make incorrect, inscrutable, thoughtless, or otherwise off-the-mark comments. It's a crucial moment in teaching: how do you respond to an unhelpful remark in a way that 1) dignifies the attempt while 2) making sure that no one leaves thinking that the remark is true or useful? Summer is a great time to think about the challenge of developing new routines and habits in class, and this is a vital issue that gets precious little attention in training and staff development. Here is a famous Saturday Night Live skit, with Jerry Seinfeld as a HS history teacher, that painfully demonstrates the challenge and a less than exemplary response. Don't misunderstand me: I am not saying that we are always correct in our judgment about participant remarks. Sometimes a seemingly dumb comment turns out to be quite insightful. Nor am I talking about merely inchoate or poorly-worded contributions. That is a separate teaching challenge: how to unpack or invite others to unpack a potentially-useful but poorly articulated idea. No, I am talking about those comments that are just clunkers in some way; seemingly dead-end offerings that tempt us to drop our jaws or make some snarky remark back. My favorite example of the challenge and how to meet it comes from watching my old mentor Ted Sizer in action in front of 360 educators in Louisville 25 years ago. We had travelled as the staff of the Coalition of Essential Schools from Providence to Louisville to pitch the emerging Coalition reform effort locally. Ted gave a rousing speech about the need to transform the American high school. After a long round of applause, Ted took questions. The first questioner asked, and I quote: "Mr Sizer, what do you think about these girls and their skimpy halter tops in school?" (You have to also imagine the voice: very good-ol'-boy). Without missing a beat or making a face, Ted said "Deco

"I decided to use the teacher console on Diigo to create groups for each of my classes. I used handouts and tips from Bill Ferriter's Digitally Speaking Wiki to get everything set up and explain to the student how I wanted them to find, annotate, and share resources and information. (I highly recommend Bill's resources. They saved me a ton of time.) The students had used Diigo for research on a project during a previous school year so I thought with Bill's handouts and the boys' previous experience we were in good shape to begin. I soon learned differently. We have a 1:1 laptop classroom and the boys have a natural tendency to head straight to Google any time they have a question, but it was obvious after the first day that they weren't finding the quality resources they needed. Additionally, some boys still didn't know (or forgot) how to share to a group while others didn't know how to write a quality annotation. I had assumed too much. They needed what Mike Kaechele calls a "teacher workshop" on searching for information and on how to use Diigo. They needed me to model what they should do."

"The classic "3 R's" of learning are, of course, Reading, 'Riting, and 'Rithmetic. For the 21st century, we need to add a fourth R--and it will help inspire the other three: Algorithm. I know, it isn't a very graceful "R"--but 'riting and 'ritmetic are fudges too. And the beauty of teaching even the youngest kids algorithms and algorithmic or procedural thinking is that it gives them the same tool of agency and production that writing and even reading gave to industrial age learners who, for the first time in history, had access to cheap books and other forms of print. "

Quick tips about making book trailers This is not a book report, it is an old fashion book talk. Get really big pictures. 640 by 480 at least Use advanced searches for images. Script writing and image searching go hand in hand. Get the narration right. Think end game - how am I going to share this? Youtube, Schooltube, my own web or wikisite, school news."

"We expect other drivers to observe the rules of the road. The same is true as we travel through cyberspace. That's where netiquette, a term allegedly coined from either network etiquette or Internet etiquette comes in handy. To guide you through your online communications, keep these pointers in mind: 1.Avoid writing e-mail or posting messages in blogs, newsgroups, forums, chat rooms and other online venues using all capital letters. IT LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE SHOUTING! Not only that, it's difficult to read. 2.When you talk with someone, the tone and inflections of your voice convey great meaning. To add personality and humor to your messages, use smileys, also known as emoticons, expressions you create using the characters on your keyboard. Below are some of the more popular smileys. Can you guess what they mean? Roll your cursor over each one to find out. Try This How good are your netiquette skills? Find out by taking the Netiquette Quiz . 3.Keep your written communications focused. This is true whether sending e-mail or posting messages online. Few people like reading lengthy text on a computer screen. Many people now receive e-mail on mobile phones and other portable devices. Tiny screens make reading e-mail challenging. 4.To shorten messages, use common abbreviations: < BTW > means By the Way. A < G > enclosed in brackets indicates grinning. A good one to keep handy in case you're worried about offending someone is < IMHO > -- In My Humble Opinion. One of our favorites is < ROTFL >, which stands for Rolling on the Floor Laughing. A shortened version is < LOL >--Laughing Out Loud. And if you get called away while chatting online, try < BRB >--Be Right Back."

The easiest-to-use, best-selling handwriting app for iPad, Penultimate gives you the experience of writing with pen and paper, with the power, flexibility and availability of Evernote. Take notes, keep sketches, or share your next breakthrough idea -- in the office, on the go, or at home on the sofa.

Very good explanation from a teacher as to why Google Drive works so well.

"In the process of writing and finalizing the chapter on "Visual Notetaking" for my forthcoming eBook, "Mapping Media to the Common Core," I found Giulia Forsythe's blog page "Visual Practice" and her WONDERFUL presentation a year ago for the 2012 University of Mary Washington Faculty Academy. Her presentation slides are available on SlideShare, and the entire 68 minute, recorded presentation is on Vimeo. I highly recommend you watch this entire presentation if you're interested (as you should be) in learning more about visual notes."

"This year, I am not worried, I am not stressed, I am not anxious. I know that I have plenty of time to get my reports completed because I already have so much information already typed, personalised and ready to go about my students. I have Evernote."

"Fourteen years after writing Teaching Zack to Think, there is still no Internet skill more critical than Web literacy. However, simply teaching students to be able to search for and validate information is not enough. The ever-growing amount of information on the Web and the immediate access to experts and peers from around the world create great opportunities for thoughtfully organizing and expanding upon learning. Alan November and Brian Mull have recently written an article titled Why More Schools Aren't Teaching Web Literacy-and How They Can Start, which now appears on the eSchool News site and discusses a three-part framework for making sure students are Internet savvy."

"After two articles in the irish papers (links below) where I was asked about how I use twitter in my classroom, I decided to detail what exactly I do, so that it's a little clearer. Before I begin though we have to talk about fear. There's so much fear about the educational value of twitter from teachers, managers, parents and students that some might be worried about entering that lion's den. My answer to these fears is simple: the internet is where kids are, schools have to go there. It was video for an earlier generation and tv before that. It was probably radio once and I'm sure some Greeks were worried about writing things down rather than learning them by heart. Students will always be ahead of us, so why not meet them there, rather than dismiss them as fad-followers or time-wasters?"

The Home Page for the Purdue Online Writing lab highlight in my previous post.  Resources here can be adapt for school use.