Awesome speech. Should be required watching in every classroom. 

We've created the Twitter Handbook for Teachers, a brand new, interactive, 13-page guide to Twitter. This guide is for educators who are new to Twitter, or veterans to the social media platform who want to bring Twitter into their classrooms or grow their network. Is that you?

A dozen activities are presented for using an online education technology tool to engage students in classroom activities to develop a better understanding of concepts.

A story was recently reported about an Edmonton teacher being suspended for giving his students zero's in class in a school that has a no zero policy.  (Incidentally, this article is located in the "news" tab and should be moved to the "opinion" tab.  I always taught my kids that reporters should refrain from putting their personal bias into a news article.  So if you read it, read it with a grain of salt.)

You can't be a teacher, if you are not a learner. This week, I'm fortunate to be at an IB workshop in Chiang Mai, Thailand, training to be an IB workshop leader. Reflecting at the end of the first day, I have some ideas to add my list of ways teachers can learn…

Parents and teachers expend a lot of energy getting kids to pay attention, concentrate, and focus on the task in front of them. What adults don't do, according to University of Southern California education professor Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, is teach children the value of the more diffuse mental activity that characterizes our inner lives: daydreaming, remembering, reflecting.

I gasped. "What about Ethics? Character? Kindness?", I wonder. I continue to wonder (now with my TEACHER LENS),  "I've never heard of a school based PD about Minecraft servers, or world bucket". Come to think of it, I've never heard of a mandatory in-service, PD session about any social gaming , or media tool or strategy. 

Under a new set of social media guidelines (pdf) issued by the New York City Department of Education, teachers are required to obtain a supervisor's approval before creating a "professional social media presence," which is broadly defined as "any form of online publication or presence that allows interactive communication, including, but not limited to, social networks, blogs,  internet websites,  internet forums, and wikis." 

I'm more interested in having our students make a mark than get a mark, and so are they. So, lets be genuine with them. Push them to create great stuff about important ideas and students will not only rise to the challenge, they will be able to articulate what they have learned and why it matters. Do this, and don't cheapen it with a mark. Share your descriptive feedback, offer a genuine response. Let them know that when it comes time to write the report card you'll turn the great things they have created into a grade and all they have to do is keep creating things~the wonderful thing about people is we actually do great things when we are given the chance, a purpose, feedback and an audience. After all, look at all of us bloggers.

The conference in Jerusalem, Israel that Van Leer hosts each year  is intended to encourage professional dialogue among educators, academics, representatives of the Third Sector, and policymakers from diverse areas and places in Israel and abroad.    This year, I was asked to attend as a Canadian Teacher Representative, along with Ontario Ministry Officer, Colette Ruduck and our Ontario Deputy Minister of Education, George Zegarac. With the theme of "Trust and Regulation" at the center of our discussions, it did not take long to realize that my context, as a Canadian Educator, a parent, and a student -  was one of privilege and opportunity.

Premium Crossword is an online crossword puzzle game using the words and content from your lists.* Use this activity as your own personal crossword puzzle maker. Make crossword puzzles for kids that use content created especially for your students by entering your word list and customizing the sentences! Crosswords can be played as puzzles online or printable puzzles may be generated as worksheets for your students.

This website contains all the information you need to find  and take part in Education On Air sessions on Google+

Dr. Tony Wagner, co-director of Harvard's Change Leadership Group has identified what he calls a "global achievement gap," which is the leap between what even our best schools are teaching, and the must-have skills of the future: * Critical thinking and problem-solving * Collaboration across networks and leading by influence * Agility and adaptability * Initiative and entrepreneurialism * Effective oral and written communication * Accessing and analyzing information * Curiosity and imagination

I've recently read some articles on how physical exercise helps students learn, and thought I'd put together a related "The Best…" list. However, I only have a few resources now, and I'm sure there are plenty others out there. I'm hoping readers will contribute more (I, of course, will give you credit for ones I add to this list).

In theory, Open Educational Resources and wikis go hand in hand. In our ranks, we have some of the most dedicated and accomplished users and advocates the collaborative online tools. So why is it that the OER article on Wikipedia carries the site's second-lowest quality rating? It's not just one article - the Open Access article shows room for improvement; the Open Educational Practices article doesn't exist; and numerous related articles could be improved as well.

 The 40 page guide (embedded below) is designed to help teachers who have never used Google Documents. 

The accompanying presentation can be found at http://goo.gl/3VNp3

Three Ring is a new free service offering free Android and iPhone apps for digitizing and organizing student work. Using the app teachers can take a picture of a student's work and upload it to a free Three Ring account. Three Ring offers teachers a lot of organizational flexibility. You could organize artifacts by student name, class, date, or just about any other tagging system that works for you.

Introducing TED-Ed: Lessons worth sharing. You can also nominate an educator or animator or suggest a lesson via this site. 

A comprehensive, sorted, and indexed list of iPad apps for education.