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If you have tried your hands in screencasting then you probably would have an idea that most of the screencasting applications cost money. TechSmith's Camtasia and Macromedia Captovate 2 are some of the best out there but they is out of the reach of many people. The market is definitely ruled by the paid softwares but it doesn't mean that there are no free applications for you. There are quite a few free screencasting applications which you can use without burning hole in your pocket.

From mapping the weather and news to mapping things that aren't maps at all, Google Maps has a lot to offer. Here are 100+ best Google Maps tools and mashups.

Teaching children how to think has brought academic success to schools in Manchester. But will techniques pioneered by the guru Edward de Bono catch on?

Twitter can be a game-changer for online communicators. Education provides countless opportunities for various forms of communication, especially online. This leads to the question: Can Twitter be incorporated into an effective online communication strategy for educational institutions? The short answer is yes and I wanted to explore how educational institutions can and are using/trying Twitter to assist in their communication efforts.

John Cleese provides a ten-minute insight into what many of us know already, but fail to acknowledge: 1. We do not know where we get our ideas from (but we do know we don't get them from our laptops). 2. Sleeping on an idea can help make its reappearance later so much better. 3. Ticking things off and keeping all the balls in the air means you will not have any creative ideas. 4. In our frenzied connected world we need to make some time to make some mood for creativity: a tortoise cocoon from which we can check it's safe to come out into a self-created oasis in our lives. 5. We need to set aside time and place where interruptions are not allowed - we need to create boundaries of space with a starting time and a finish time, separate from ordinary life, and only then creating a space and place where we can play. 6. The problem with some teachers is that they may not know that they are not very creative, and therefore they may not value creativity even if they can recognise it. 7. If those in charge are egotistical and wish to claim credit for the work of others, then they shall directly or indirectly discourage others from being creative.

Zigtag's group option could be useful for creating professional learning networks. The group option could also be useful for students that are working in groups on research projects.

Bookmark for any school or teachers! Parts and clips from this series have been posted several times, but I thought I'd try sifting this playlist, with 5 full-lenght 1 hour episodes in one neat list.If they show up in low-quality, they are all available in High quality on YouTube. Youtube desctription: Oxford professor Richard Dawkins presents a series of lectures on life, the universe, and our place in it. With brilliance and clarity, Dawkins unravels an educational gem that will mesmerize young and old alike. Illuminating demonstrations, wildlife, virtual reality, and special guests (including Douglas Adams) all combine to make this collection a timeless classic.

The Spanish researchers believe that including video games in the online education platforms is the best way to achieve mass, economic distribution of this tool, the educational effectiveness of which is now rarely a topic of debate in the academic field. However, widespread use of video games in these environments must still overcome certain educational and technical difficulties. According to the authors, an educational video game must be designed with three key elements in mind: the possibility for evaluation, adaptability and ease of integration.

However, not all adolescents participate in music equally, and certain groups are disadvantaged in access to music education. Families with high socioeconomic status participate more in music than do families with lower socioeconomic status. In addition to social class as a predictor of music participation, ethnicity is also a factor. Asians and Whites are more likely to participate in music than are Hispanics. While young Black children attended concerts with their parents, they were less likely to take music lessons.

The mission of Teampedia is to become the world's largest collection of resources (e.g. warmups, icebreakers, and other group facilitation and training activities) to facilitate teamwork, teambuilding, and community.

Social media - Pownce, Twitter, Facebook, Social network service, Second Life - Visual Wikipedia

Social networking in education is a flattener, this breaks down barriers that would otherwise exist between the student, the program and the instructors. This also makes information on demand as long as there is a good way to find that information that students will work with and use. Reliance on the old static school room or black board computer system is not necessarily the way that things are going. Education 2.0 should be breaking down these barriers, and it is great to work for a school that is doing this, because it is all about how people learn, and if people learn, then we are doing our job.

Play actually appears to make kids smarter. In a classic study published in Developmental Psychology in 1973, researchers divided 90 preschool children into three groups. One group was told to play freely with four common objects--among the choices were a pile of paper towels, a screwdriver, a wooden board and a pile of paper clips. A second set was asked to imitate an experimenter using the four objects in common ways. The last group was told to sit at a table and draw whatever they wanted, without ever seeing the objects. Each scenario lasted 10 minutes. Immediately afterward, the researchers asked the children to come up with ideas for how one of the objects could be used. The kids who had played with the objects named, on average, three times as many nonstandard, creative uses for the objects than the youths in either of the other two groups did, suggesting that play fosters creative thinking.

Today at our Saskatchewan Curriculum Renewal workshops we were introduced to many of the new concepts and philosophies of the new curriculum. The intent of the curriculum is to reduce outcomes, provide common language for all curricula, focus more on learning than on teaching and focus on depth of understanding instead of only breadth. There was a lot of talk of big picture thinking and encouraging teachers to reflect on why they teach what they teach. Early on someone mentioned the goals of education. With some recent discussions on the purpose of education, I thought it pertinent to look up the 9 goals of education for students in Saskatchewan.