"This year, in conjunction with October's Connected Educator Month, Common Sense Media is sponsoring Digital Citizenship Week from October 19 through October 25. Here, educators can find ways to get connected, activities to do with students and ideas for engaging parents. Really, the week is a perfect time to discuss digital responsibility, safety, and citizenship with students, and there are plenty of valuable events and resources for educators and students to use. Here are six of my favorites:"

How to Create a Works Cited with Google Docs"

"Thank goodness Chris started dropping truth bombs before I could tune out. "Who is telling the story of your school? Who is sharing the successes and failures of your students and staff?  How do people know what's happening on the other side of those school walls? Why would you wait for someone else to tell YOUR story?"  I sat there with tears in my eyes and restrained myself from running across the room and embracing Chris after a 20 foot running jump hug. (I'm totally serious, I'm pretty good at those.)"

"If I could go back and change my classes now, I would immediately: Offer brief, blitzkrieg-like mini-lessons with engaging, assessment-for-learning-type activities following directly on their heels (e.g. a ten-minute lecture on Whitman's life and poetry, followed by small-group work in which teams scour new poems of his for the very themes and notions expressed in the lecture, and then share out or perform some of them to the whole group while everyone takes notes on the findings.) set an egg timer every time I get up to talk and all eyes are on me. When the timer goes off, I am done. End of story. I can go on and on. I love to hear myself talk. I often cannot shut up. This is not really conducive to my students' learning, however much I might enjoy it. Ask every class to start with students' Essential Questions or just general questions born of confusion from the previous night's reading or the previous class's discussion. I would ask them to come in to class and write them all on the board, and then, as a group, ask them to choose which one we start with and which ones need to be addressed. This is my biggest regret right now - not starting every class this way. I am imagining all the misunderstandings, the engagement, the enthusiasm, the collaborative skills, and the autonomy we missed out on because I didn't begin every class with fifteen or twenty minutes of this."

"How Do You Participate in a Twitter Chat?"

"This site is a collection of information and "How tos" about Google Sites provided by Google Sites Top Contributor 'philridout'. There are a number of other sites around that provide similar information and I have linked to them below."

"9 Science Centered YouTube Channels for teachers and students"

"9 Science Centered YouTube Channels for teachers and students"

Always wondered why a violin sounds different than a guitar? Or what size mirror you need to see your entire body? Or what keeps a bobsled on its track? Say hello to CK-12's latest product: Interactive Simulations! Discover a whole new way of teaching. Play with these rich, free immersive experiences to teach core physics concepts through daily real world experiences. These simulations immerse students in an interactive learning experience using real world context combined with math or science content. So go ahead, spark their curiosity - help them learn, interact and have fun!

Great new and current list.

We've spent some time categorizing our favorite sources for free images and organizing them in such a way as to help you find what you're looking for. Here are the criteria we've examined: Subjects: Does a site focus on specific genres of images, or is it a mass collection of various image types? High Resolution: Lots of great image resources emerged in the pre-Web 2.0 phase, but it wasn't until bandwidth dramatically increased that allowed for the uploading of much higher resolution images suitable for editing and printing. License: The licenses vary extremely from source to source. Some are listed as Creative Commons (with variations on attribution and availability for commercial use), others are Public Domain, and still others have unique licenses that maintain copyright while allowing users to download or embed photographs. To better understand Creative Commons licenses, check out our post on Images, Copyright, & Creative Commons. Safety: Government sites and many specific subject collections are extremely safe for students to use. But before you start using one of these sites for student blogging, check out our safety note and examine the site to see if you find it appropriate for students. Some sites are terrible for filtering out inappropriate content, while others display advertising from paid stock-photo websites that can often be questionable, depending on the age level of students.

"Metta, a video learning platform that allows them to create and share engaging video lessons in their groups and also track the progress."

Amazing global list

Twitter Chats - The ins, outs and my top 8 chats Educational Twitter Chats are happening all the time on Twitter and as a globally connected educator - I LOVE IT! Every opportunity I can get I involve myself in the 1 hour twitter chats that surface themselves in my twitter feed. It gives me the opportunity to connect and collaborate with like minded educators, network with the best in the business and pick up new and interesting things to use to make me a better educator. PD in the palm of my hands (literally). For those that don't know what I am talking about - let me give you the low-down. Twitter chats take place on twitter at a certain time every week (click here for a complete list of education related twitter chats and their times). All chats use a certain hashtag to discuss a variety of topics with a education related theme. They provide a unique and eye opening opportunity for educators to connect, share and collaborate with others from all over the world. The best part about this virtual staffroom ….. it is FREE!