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Will Richardson explores this idea: "By pairing personalized learning and technology, a teacher can help students learn what they need to learn through the topics that interest them most." How does "personal learning" fit into the structures we have in school learning environments? 

Socrative is a student response system that leverages the use of smartphones, laptops and tablets by having students respond to questions in various quiz and game formats. Almost instantaneously, student responses are populated and can be viewed by the entire class. No matter what format you use, Socrative is a fun and easy way for students to receive immediate feedback and for teachers to collect marks. Here is a nice tutorial:  http://youtu.be/EIn0FUzyDuE Here are some examples created by an English teacher you may want to import and try out:  SOC-256509 - Poetic Devices SOC-256496 - Types of Poems SOC-90777 - Short Story Terms #1 SOC-93415 - Short Story Terms #2 SOC-93503 - Short Story Terms #3

Interesting article about a two-year, five-campus ethnographic study examining how students view and use their campus libraries. The goal was to generate data that, rather than being statistically significant yet shallow, would provide deep, subjective accounts of what students, librarians and professors think of the library and each other at those five institutions. The resulting papers are scheduled to be published by the American Library Association this fall, under the title: "Libraries and Student Culture: What We Now Know." One thing the librarians now know is that their students' research habits are worse than they thought.

Students at Burlington HS took on the task of learning about Digitla Citizenship and built this site. I love how students interviewed teachers and students, and also the school principal, and also posted examples of good/bad practices. Points to the fact we need to work on this concept and that of a "Digital Footprint"

I like the reflective process this teacher is using to improve her teaching literacy to her students. The methods she is practicing and refining are in contrast to the "one and done" reading approach she mentions students practicing outside of class. A favorite quote in the reflection: "In my class we explore the why--the story behind history. Pace carefully and read closely, and students will discover the why--especially when they can discuss the questions they've had time to think about." Instead of the teacher "teaching" content, the students explore that content and find meaning for themselves that is relevant and connective to other learning experiences.

"Coding In The Classroom: 10 Tools Students Can Use To Design Apps & Video Games" gives some of the best sites where students can learn code for design work. This is a must skill for students who have an interest in computer programming and developing games/apps.

Ideas on how to embed and use Google Forms to track the understanding of students when watching assigned videos, either lectures or other videos. Using the form makes is easy to compile the response of students and provides for discussions and additional teaching of concepts. This teacher copied and pasted the response into Wordle and it gives a sense of what students found to be of significance in the video.

gClassFolders is a tool that allows for management of all the files that students share with teachers and allows for sharing easily with students. The setup is straight forward and sets up three folders for students for a class - Edit, Preview(Read Only) and Dropbox to turn work in. If your school can't afford Hapara or you don't want to spend lots of time setting up folders, this may be the tool for you.

Ready for the next generation of textbook creation that utilizes good pedagogy? Imagine a living, breathing, dynamic textbook that offers different assignments for each individual based on their learning styles, allows for student-created work to be posted and featured based on accuracy/creativity votes and having students all around the world discuss content and share resources in real time through an integration with Google's new social networking service Google +.  Imagine all of this in a new dynamically changing interactive living 21st Century textbook ecosystem. Brain Mannix  would like to use the Blackboard/Collaborate platform as an engine to bring students and teachers around the world together to make this happen. Check it out!

Read about the Leyden High School's Chromebook Initiative from the perspective of 4 students. Before reading them, you might want to check out the links to four other guest posts about the initiative: *Why 1:1?  Why Chromebooks? *The Logistics of Chromebooks at Leyden *What Can You Expect When You Move Learning to the Web? *Tech Support Internship:  Student-Led Support for Leyden's Chromebook Initiative

Blog that encourages the use of multimedia to engage students. I like the "Free Resources" section on "Student News" and "Digital Storytelling". Some good ideas for students to do news shows. 

Various keyboarding sites for students of all ages. Typing Web: Typing Tutor is better for older students. Dance Mat typing is one of the most fun sites for younger students.

Nice example of how to use Google Forms to capture information by students on how they perceive different aspects of your courses. Class evaluations shouldn't be something to fear, but to welcome as a lifelong learner and give students a voice into your reflection process.

Planet Nutshell produces short animated videos to explain products, services, and concepts. One of their series of videos is all about the Internet and Internet safety for K-12 students. The series is called NetSafe and it has 17 episodes that were produced for the Utah Education Network. The videos are labeled with grade levels so that students in high school don't watch videos designed for K-3 students. (Via Free Tech for Teachers)

This blog post will get you to ask yourself, "What is the role of a teacher?" Some of the comments show the wide diversity in views among educators - those who would abandon schools if they could (LIsa Nielsen), others who have the paradigm of the student making the instructional choices and the teacher just floating around and helping students, and those who see the teacher as embodying many different skill sets and who work out of a strong relationship with their students. The current educational shifts in pedagogy and goals in education have had a profound impact on teaching. Reading this post will help stimulate and hopefully clarify you own views.

Although this is written with younger students in mind, there are some good ideas of the skills all beginning bloggers need to learn, how to organize posts in a spreadsheet and track posts using Feedly, an RSS reader. Some good ideas for the classroom teacher. If 4th graders can blog, why not older students?

iCivics has just released its seventeenth educational game for students. The new game is called We The Jury. We The Jury puts students in the role of a juror for two trials. Looks like a great activity for students. I would also use it and have discussion groups. Those using an LMS with online discussions or Collaborize Classroom, this would be a great online activity for interactive discussions.

Whether or not you realize it, you probably have philosophical discussions with your students. But if you use the term "Philosophy", it would probably be met with blank stares. This website, developed by a college philosophy professor, provides an easy to understand, engaging introduction to philosophy for middle schoolers using FILM. I think it could also be used with high school students and used as a tool for how students could engage each other in a variety of discussions across the curriculum.

Kyle Pace, Google Certified Teacher and Instructional Tech. Specialist shares his insights into creating workflows in Google Drive with students. The most common methods used are #2 and #3 (Doctopus is another popular script that I like). However, another teacher shared another on you can view here ( http://goo.gl/Kuy3b9 ) that utilizes the idea of a digital portfolio. Using one of these methods is KEY to helping you and your students more effectively leverage Google Drive...and keep your Inbox a bit leaner from all of those file sharing notifications.

Glogster is a great tool for having students create collages of information they've found and or created. Students can combine videos, images, text, and audio into one online display that can stand alone or be embedded into a blog, website, or wiki. For example, Civics students can create Glogster "glogs" about the candidates running for political office this fall.