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"Diigo is a powerful information capturing, storing, recalling and sharing tool. Here are just a few of the possibilities with Diigo: Save important websites and access them on any computer. Categorize websites by titles, notes, keyword tags, lists and groups. Search through bookmarks to quickly find desired information. Save a screenshot of a website and see how it has changed over time. Annotate websites with highlighting or virtual "sticky notes." View any annotations made by others on any website visited. Share websites with groups or the entire Diigo social network. Comment on the bookmarks of others or solicit comments to your shared bookmarks."

Learn how to empower students to improve technology use in their own schools! These resources are based on lessons learned in our years of working with K-12 schools around the world building successful student-centered, student-led technology programs. These guides were written and are endorsed by us. Please use, print, and feel free to share them with your colleagues. Please use, print, and share with colleagues. We ask that you not modify, sell them, remove our name or copyrights, or use parts without attributing us. Other than that, we hope you link to them, download them, share them, and let us know if they were helpful!

There is much more to efficient Googling than what most of our students know. From the specific order of the words constituting our search query to the use of search operators, Google provides all kinds of tricks for users to implement in order to tap into its full search potential. I have recently come across an interesting post shared by LifeHacker in which they outlined a wide variety of Google  tips and tricks that students should know about. They have also shared this wonderful video which I am sharing with you below on how to quickly find exactly what you are looking for.

Sharing your App Store or iTunes account with a family member while keeping iCloud separate is possible, and easy!

"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."

"Pinterest, a social sharing website that allow users to create and share virtual bulletin boards, has been the darling of social media over the past year. Its primarily female user base continues to grow by leaps and bounds. While you likely know teachers who have free Pinterest accounts, you may still be wondering if you belong on yet another social media site. "YES!" (Uttered quickly and with much enthusiasm!) And here's why. While Pinterest is exploding with fashion boards, trendy home decor, and to-die-for travel destinations (that sadly don't fit my budget), it also includes many boards for educators. Pinterest, heavy on visual appeal, can serve as a great resource for such areas as: classroom decor, language arts. content areas, lesson plans, technology tools, professional books, and much, much more! Your boards can also be a resource for students (age 13+ according to Pinterest regulations), teachers, and parents. If you're a newbie to Pinterest, listed below are a few must-know terms and how-to's. With a few quick tips, Pinterest can help you organize the internet jumble of resources for teachers and students. If you're a full-fledged addict, er, Pinterest Pro, skip to How Educators Use Pinterest or simply download today's Pinterest Cheat Sheet that also includes many ideas for boards."

"We've now posted a user guide to help you get started with the bookmarking tool Diigo. This brilliant service allows you to save, tag and search your own bookmarks. Diigo also lets you create public lists of links and share your bookmarks with other people in groups, such as the #VicPLN Diigo group. Diigo is the perfect way to share bookmarks within your faculty, your class or your learning network."

"A teacher's role in the classroom is to supply direction, maturity and wisdom. It is to raise questions, inspire endeavour and lay down challenges. A teacher brings purpose to the lesson. But to be effective in an iPad classroom, she must relinquish control over the tools used, allowing students to share the responsibility and joy of discovering and sharing solutions to achieve that purpose. I'm not saying that teachers are absolved of their professional responsibility for learning to use the technology. But they should admit to being learners, and not let that fact stop their students from using the device in unforeseen ways, in the pursuit of the class goals."

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.

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.

One of the ways to create interactive online experiences is to use a learning management system (LMS). This is much easier than you think and is a great way to use mobile learning devices in daily classroom practice. These systems now incorporate social networking so students can create and share their learning as part of professional learning networks.

Flubaroo enables you to quickly grade all of your students responses to quizzes that you deliver through Google Forms. The newest features allow you to share graded quizzes to students through Google Drive in addition to the email option that has existed for a long time. Through Flubaroo you can send students a copy of their responses, a copy of the grading key, and their individual grades. To be clear, a student will only see his or her grade and quiz responses.

"While we've witnessed many effective approaches to incorporating iPads successfully in the classroom, we're struck by the common mistakes many schools are making with iPads, mistakes that are in some cases crippling the success of these initiatives. We're sharing these common challenges with you, so your school doesn't have to make them."

When socializing or communicating with Facebook here are some resources to support your understanding of the environment, a few tips to ensure for a safe experience, and some links to keep up you up to date on changes and privacy settings. The concept to be aware of is that anything online is not private. So be cautious and thoughtful about what you say, share and post. It will be associated with you on the internet and you may never be able to get rid of it. Think before you post!

Do your students realize how vulnerable they are, when using the Internet and social media? Are you teaching them appropriate use? The guest post below, featuring the video above, is an excellent resource to share with students.

"iBooks Author is a great tool for creating interactive ebooks. Unfortunately, creating content with iBooks Author isn't always as easy as you might hope it is. Back in June I shared a free 110 page book about using iBooks Author . However, if video tutorials are more helpful to you I have found twenty six videos that you should look at."

One of my favorite ways to use the commenting feature in Google Documents is to host online discussions around a shared article. Doing this isn't a radical departure from having a classroom discussion about an article that you've printed and distributed to your students, but there are some advantages to hosting your discussion in Google Documents. The first advantage is that your students can participate in the discussion from anywhere at any time they are connected to the Internet.

"Internet has definitely marked a revolution in the way human knowledge is being generated, shared, communicated, and stored. The answer to almost any question is available within seconds, courtesy of the invention that has altered how we discover knowledge - the search engine. With this abundance of online information comes the question of credibility. Some critics argue that a tsunami of hogwash has already rendered the Web useless. I disagree. We are indeed inundated by online noise pollution, but the problem is soluble. The good stuff is out there if you know how to find and verify it. What we all need is "information literacy"."

"a shared close reading of a complex text in which students propose emerging understandings, supported by textual evidence, with occasional reminders and re-direction by teacher-facilitators."