"How is it now that so many adults are reduced to tears when confronted by an unfamiliar technology?" One answer is that, "We have learned to become helpless; most likely by playing the traditional game of 'school'." Our evaluations through PD surveys, conversations, and focus groups indicate that teachers feel they don't use technology because they don't have enough training. Tom Whitby advises educators hesitant to use the modern tools of today, to stop relying on others and take ownership of their learning and suggests this can be done through developing a personal learning network.

Julie Greller is an educational media specialist in a New Jersey junior-senior high school. Recommended by Richard Byrne, of Free Technology for Teachers, it to be a well organized resource that all K-12 educators could benefit from. Julie has organized her site into three sections, one each for elementary, middle, and high school. Within each section are dozens of subsections for all manner of topics taught in public schools.

Here's the latest update to the first article on Dropbox for educators. I would encourage you to read both posts & take advantage of this great tool - Dropbox!

Free online software to design yearbooks that can be printed or you can pay for them to print books.

There is a collection of different timers you can use online, or download and use on your desktop (PC), or embed on a webpage or wiki.

An interesting blog post from an educator & parent on homework and learning in general. What do you think about it, as a teacher,j administraotr & a parent?

The videos cover topics like Federalism, Checks & Balances, and the legislative process. The video below contains a short lesson on how a bill becomes law. Entertaining way for students to learn various aspects of government. A must use!

A guide from Microsoft on developing information literacy skills. I'm going to use some of these ideas in an upcoming training & with students in the classroom.

"The Commons is a great place to find images that are free of copyright restrictions. But, if The Commons doesn't have what you or your students need for a multimedia project, here are seven other places you can try your search."

"Soshiku is a simple but powerful tool that manages your high school or college assignments. Soshiku keeps track of when your assignments are due and can even notify you via email or SMS."

Excellent direction & examples of how to build an award-winning sub plan. May be too much for some, but you can pick & choose the elements you would want to use.

"This is part of a series for being professional ina digital world and focuses on when teachers should and shouldn't use email communication." I liked the guidelines. Very clear use of email for teachers with parents, guardians, etc. ***You can download the document & revise it.

This is an amazing solution for storing, sharing, and back up your data. The ability to access files from any computer & mobile devices makes this a great solution. Up to 2GB storage free! Learn more about the public folder to share files with others, while keeping your other files private. I have it on both my Apple computers and on two PCs. This rocks!

A free service providing access to more than 8,000 free books and essays written by more than 3,500 authors. The titles available through Read Print are generally works that are in the public domain or have Creative Commons licensing. The collection of works contains many of the classics in fiction and non-fiction literature. In addition to books, poems, and essays you can also find plays on Read Print. You can search by author, title, or quotation for titles on Read Print. Once you've found what you're looking for you can print all or parts of your chosen title or read it online using the Read Print viewer.

Among the findings: New teachers aren't more likely than veteran teachers to use technology. This raises some important questions how well teacher preparation programs are training pre-teachers how to integrate technology or if they're simply entering school environments where they're not encouraged to do so.

Great reminders of things you can do with Google-Tip of the day-many with short videos demoing the tip. I added the gadget to my iGoogle homepage.

Helpful chart to compare/contrast each tool

Shelley Terrell pulls together some great Skype resources. The embedded video is amazing on the how to of using Skype.

"Welcome to the ultimate guide to YouTube. Unless you've been living under rock throughout the 'Noughties' YouTube is quite simply the world's largest collection of video content and as an educator it is an amazing resource that you SHOULD NOT be without."

For those working with students on Internet safety, there are some good sites here. I've used some of them and look forward to trying out some others.