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Some useful ideas for using screencasting to help studetns learn. "Screencasts can be a great tool for teachers to create presentations for their students to view away from the classroom. But it is even more powerful when it is used as a student creation tool. Screencasts can require higher order thinking skills when the students not only create a presentation, but then have to explain their thinking. "

20 Ways to use CloudShare in the Classroom, a great Google presentation looking at using all things Google and how they can be used in the classroom and beyond including workflow, timetabling and more. Make sure you check out the Complementary Site link for more goodies.

Finding free, high-quality photos is a tedious task - mainly due to copyright issues, attribution requirements, or simply lack of quality. This inspired us to create Pixabay - a repository for public domain images of extraordinarily high-quality. You can freely use any image from this website in digital and printed format, for personal and commercial use, without attribution requirement to the original author.

There are literally hundreds of tools and devices available to us today. This offers those involved in education 10 creative ways to use Google tools and services to help improve learning.

"Improve your vocabulary" This is a simple tool that will assist with learning English (to Advanced English), Spanish, and Polish vocabulary. More languages may follow. It can be used online or with a free Android app. It is similar to a lot of other language learning applications. You can create lists of words and phrases that you want to learn or you can select a list that was made by someone else and shared to the Vocabla library. You can study each list as a type of flashcard and when you are ready you can take a practice quiz. Teachers might like using Vocabla to create a list of words and share with their class. All the students could use the list to study on their own

If you watch a lot of online videos for education or research, you'll find VideoNotes a really useful tool. It's as simple as this: sign in with a Google account (VideoNotes uses Google Drive for storage) and then paste in the URL for a YouTube video. Then as it plays you can start making notes on the right-hand side of the screen. The clever bit is that as you click on previous notes you've made, the video will jump to that point, making this a really useful tool for navigating documentaries, study guides and other long, involved videos.

"After watching surgeons perform these experiments, it is chilling to watch the Google Glass promotional video showing a cyclist riding between cars in heavy New York City traffic, while being bombarded with head-up navigational data. Our attention is a resource that is extremely limited in supply and instinctively overestimated. Inevitably - as with mobile phone use while driving - accidents will occur and we will be left to legislate use after a string of tragedies. The biggest challenge with Google Glass and similar devices is us. When we divert our gaze to our smart phones, we do so consciously and alter our thoughts and actions, hopefully in a safe way, to compensate. If information is to be projected directly in front of your eyes, it needs to be filtered to avoid accidents."

"One of the best services Google+  provides to its users is called " communities ". Any Google Plus user can easily create and host his/her community on the cloud and in a matter of few clicks.For us in education  we can use this service to create a community for our class. In this virtual space, you will get to share with your students resources, links, and also get them to participate and contribute in it. You can also create class events with dates, location, and more details and share them with your students and their parents as well. Needless to say that you can use Google Hangout right from your community to hold video conferences with your students."

"This article sets out to explain some of the general principles in law which apply to using and re-using digital images, and provide guidelines for good practice in referencing and attributing sources when sharing content online that others have created."

"Since I started this Experiment to use Evernote in every aspect of my classroom, I wasn't really sure what I was going to discover. I was sure there would be some way that Evernote was not going to meet my needs and I would be forced to add another tool to my chest while I continue the experiment for the school year. One way I was weary of was lesson planning. I have used the the traditional planner book for years and it has always been very good to me. I could easily flip back and see what I what I did the year before as I planned the upcoming school year. I'm not a big fan of trying to fix things that are not broken, but I figured I needed to give it a try in the name of the Experiment. Needless to say, I was not disappointed."

"The purpose of this set of learning resources is to help students: explore the educational uses of Web 2.0 tools and services; familiarise themselves with a range of useful applications for study-related purposes; highlight good practice in the use of social software and the internet, in general."

"This book is designed to provide teachers and parents alike an insight into the bring-your-own-technology (BYOT) revolution sweeping across entire school communities in Australia, the US and UK, and explain the immense implications of these developments. In time all schools in the developed world will move to students using their personal mobile technology in class, rather than it being provided by the school. It is not a case of if, but when. BYOT is like a tsunami coming across the horizon. The forces impelling the change and the potential educational, social development, economic, technological and political opportunities opened by the development will not only bring about its introduction but will soon fundamentally change the nature of schooling, teaching, the technology used, home-school relations and the resourcing of schools."

"Below I have outlined information about three popular platforms used by schools implementing blended learning - Edmodo, Schoology and Moodle. These are not the only players in this field, but seem to be the most widely used - I have listed some other options at the Classroom Collaboration page. Each of these platforms has pros and cons, depending on your intended purpose. Of course, the best way to decide the most suitable option for your school is to give each platform a try. All are free, or offer a free component for educational use."

"Google Classroom is finally available to all Google Apps for Education teachers and students. The venture into the world of learning management systems seems to be a pretty solid one. First impressions: It looks and feels like a Google product and so is familiar to most. It's clean and simple (which should make it easy to use) It provides a home base for everything you do in Drive" The author then briefly explains 12 ways she would use some of the features in a classroom situation. They offer ideas worth considering.

"The Puzzle Maker (also known as Puzzle Creator or Editor) is an in-game puzzle editor that allows the creation, testing, and publishing (to Steam Workshop) of custom single-player and co-op test chambers. The Editor also adds new lines from Cave Johnson which, altogether, adds a story to downloaded test chambers. The DLC introduces the player to "The Multiverse" which contains an infinite number of Earths, an infinite number of Apertures, and therefore, an infinite number of test chambers. Puzzle Maker is not intended as a replacement of Hammer, which while more powerful and generalized in nature, is significantly more difficult and time consuming to use. It is possible to export a VMF from Puzzle Maker and open it in Hammer; many mappers do this to add polish or features that are not currently possible using the Puzzle Maker. Some mappers use the Puzzle Maker to quickly iterate through (and test) puzzle designs before building a chamber from scratch with Hammer. It is not possible to load a Hammer VMF file in Puzzle Maker."

Below you will find a collaboratively written document produced in Bangkok, Thailand, at the March 28-31 teacher's meeting of EARCOS, the East Asia Regional Council of Schools.  EARCOS is an organization of 130 primary and secondary schools that primarily use English as the language of instruction.  These include AP and IB schools and a number of other private schools.  We produced the document below on a public Google doc at a workshop, which I structured on the model of an "innovation challenge" of the kind that web developers use to bring together communities to complete a project.  We hope this guide will be useful to any teacher confronting the challenges of introducing new technologies into the K-12 classroom in meaningful, inventive, productive, creative, and connected ways.

The Internet is becoming our main source of memory instead of our own brains, a study has concluded. In the age of Google, our minds are adapting so that we are experts at knowing where to find information even though we don't recall what it is. The researchers found that when we want to know something we use the Internet as an 'external memory' just as computers use an external hard drive. Nowadays we are so reliant on our smart phones and laptops that we go into 'withdrawal when we can't find out something immediately'. And such is our dependence that having our Internet connection severed is growing 'more and more like losing a friend'.

Many of our staff have access to iPads and are keen to use these as part of their teaching. Some are exploring the use of Google Docs, some are exploring the Ultranet and some are exploring other options. The question of privacy and security of information was raised with regards to access to information that is stored within 'the cloud'. This lead to me completing a bit of an investigation of DEECD and Victorian Government policies on where we stand with regards to storing information online using Google Docs, Evernote and other web based applications.

When it comes to using technology in school, the tension between what students and parents want and what schools allow is becoming more apparent - and more divisive. Students want more control over how they use technology in school, but many classrooms are still making it difficult. That's according to the most recent Speak Up 2011 report, "Mapping a Personalized Learning Journey," which reflects the views of more than 416,000 K-12 students, parents, and educators nationwide surveyed on how technology can enhance the learning environment.

Children given iPads to use at school are more focused on learning and less likely to misbehave, research has found. University of WA education researchers have been investigating the use of iPads and other mobile devices in 12 independent schools during the past 10 months. UWA's Grace Oakley said teachers found that students were more likely to finish their homework and do a better job.