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"I watch principals or superintendents who tweet or blog a lot, and often I wonder what they could be doing in their building instead of that. In the blogosphere or twitterverse, there is a lot of self congratulatory back slapping in the education administration world with people who tweet and blog, but truth be told, the people running really tough schools (i.e. inner city, struggling to make AYP) don't have time to do it."

"There are still a large number of folks who believe that Twitter is a very amateur and even entertaining task. After all, how hard could 140 characters be? Who needs a strategy for telling people what you had for breakfast? Champion Tweeters think differently. They approach Twitter and their time in the Twitter community with a different behavior set, mindset and belief system. Their Twitter Habitudes separate them from the pack. If you seek to be more successful on Twitter, reach out to more people, get noticed, and make a bigger impact; you must be willing and ready to think and act like a Twitter Champion! Here are 5 ways to get your Twitter Game on: "

"Chatting with students in Pakistan, reporting high school football on the fly, and supplementing classroom discussion are just a few of the great ways high schools have made use of Twitter. Read on, and we'll explore 20 innovative ways high schools are making use of this great social media tool."

"Every topic, every bit of learning has content that can be Googled, and we don't want teachers wasting precious enquiry time lecturing that content. We want students, instead, to be using class time to collaborate and debate around the questions that are Not Googleable, the rich higher order thinking to which neither the textbook nor the teacher know the answers. One of our schools in Brisbane, Star of the Sea Cleveland, took my "Googleable" / "Not Googleable" to a very literal end, when they pinned up two headings and got students to post-it each and every question in the class, categorising those which could be searched quickly (the lower order questions) and those which they should dwell on in class time. This is the kind of meaty discussion that we want in class, and making it explicit in this way means that we cut to the higher order thinking so much quicker."

"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."

"Adding some technology to the educational process is one thing, but truly revolutionary learning experiences take a deeper sort of innovation, which you can see at a program at Duke working for change in Haiti."

So you have decided to flip your classroom this year and invert your instruction method hoping to get more student engagement and boost their productivity levels. Well good thing  you are going to give Flipped Classroom a try but before that you need to make it clear to your students what this new method is all about and why not even explain it to their parents as well.

"Getting the school year started right can mean calling home with a positive message, stepping out of your comfort zone or simply asking for help. The connections you make in August can serve you well through the trials of K-12 education. You never know when you're going to need help -- from an encouraging smile to a better way to assess a standard. While the Internet and social media are great, they are merely tools to connect you with the people behind all of the accounts. With so much to do, it can be easy to push collaboration back, but this can have a long-term erosive effect on your happiness in teaching. The earlier you start, the easier it becomes. "

"A Personal Learning Network (commonly referred to as a PLN) is one of the most popular ways for modern teachers to reach out and get connected to other educators, whether this means keeping in touch with colleagues and friends or making new connections with other talented teachers across the globe. The very best PLNs facilitate wonderful information sharing, learning opportunities and gateways to collaboration between classrooms. Read our recipe for the perfect PLN and start cooking yours up today!"

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

A growth mindset is the secret to maximizing potential. Want to grow your staff? Give them tasks above their ability. They don't think they could do it? Tell them you expect them to work at it for a while, struggle with it. That it will take more time than the tasks they're used to doing. That you expect they'll make some mistakes along the way. But you know they could do it.

So here is a handy improvement to Google image search, that makes it easier to encourage appropriate use . In amongst the image search tools, Google has just added a search by 'usage rights' field.

edWeb.net is a highly-acclaimed professional social and learning network that has become a vibrant online community for exceptional educators, decision-makers, and influencers who are on the leading edge of innovation in education. edWeb members are teachers, faculty, administrators, and librarians at K12 and post-secondary institutions. edWeb is a place where educators who are looking for ways to improve teaching and learning can gather and share information and ideas with peers and thought leaders in the industry. Any educator can use edWeb for free to create a personal learning network or professional learning community to make it easier to collaborate, share ideas, and move forward faster with new ideas and initiatives, particularly those than leverage technology to accelerate improvement.

A recent new and relatively little-known feature was added to the Keynote and Pages apps that makes removing the background of any image an easy task.

A recent new and relatively little-known feature was added to the Keynote and Pages apps that makes removing the background of any image an easy task.

While iPads might be taking up a lot of buzz in the classroom technology world, laptops are still a widely used tool for both personal and classroom use. Choosing a laptop may not be a simple task, either - there are a lot of choices out there. Making sure it has the right tools you need and falls into a price range that works for you tend to be the top two factors for most people who are in the market for a new laptop. So we thought it'd be useful to tackle the best laptops for teachers in a world filled with iPads and smartphones.

In order to effectively use iPads in education, you probably need a modern iPad workflow that works for both teachers and students alike. I just came across a fabulous version that is in graphic form - which makes it all the better. It's from dedwards.me and lists out the apps, parties involved, and how each one fits into particular steps along the process. In other words, this is a workflow designed to help both sides of the classroom.

Infographics are pretty popular. We share a lot of them on this site because they're an easy way to consume information. They're eye catching, the visuals tend to help people connect and remember the information, and they're easy to share with just about anyone, even non-experts in a field. They often boil down a lot of information into very manageable pieces, so for teachers, they're easy to check out and learn something quickly while browsing the internet during a lunch break or after school.

Make a visual QR Code in 60 seconds