From ACMA Cybersmart this very catchy video has stats on what students are doing online as well as lots of targetted advice on what to do to prevent problems and what to do when problems arise. It also contains visual links to the support docs that Cybersmart can provided.

"Todays meet training videos. Part of the TeachertrainingVideos.com site. You can find many more free on-line training videos."

A great video on Twitter looking in particular at the use of Tweetdeck

Creating a jam track with apple's Garageband app for the ipad and then shredding a guitar solo over it!

"A Community of Practice for teachers using edmodo. Work in Progress" This Wikispace from teachers in NSW covers About Best Practices edmodo and school safety edmodo for Student Voice Independent Schools NSW DEC Topics Parents Resource List School Directory School Policy School Subdomains Selling edmodo Teacher Stories Teacher Topics The edmodo FAQ Use Edmodo - Primary School Using Edmodo - General Using Edmodo - High School Using Edmodo - Special Needs

"I'm firmly of the opinion that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in schools is misplaced and therefore misused. In essence, the way it is conventionally deployed negates much of the potential of ICT, and unless there is a dramatic reappraisal, we won't be witnessing much in the way of learning gains in schools. Here's my argument in two points:"

"It doesn't seem to matter what age group or demographic that I talk to, kids (and adults) everywhere are fans of Angry Birds. As I was playing around with Angry Birds (yep I'm a fan too), I started thinking about all of the learning that could be happening. I have watched a two year old tell an older sister that "you have to pull down to go up higher". I have watched as kids master this game through trial and error. Being the teacher that I am, I started dreaming up a transdisciplinary lesson with Angry Birds as the base. I happened to be writing an inquiry lesson that has students look at inventions throughout time and thought: the catapult-that is an invention that has technology and concepts that are used even today. This is one of those inspirational moments that comes when you are drifting off to sleep and has you frantically searching for paper and pen to record as fast as the ideas come. So what did I do? I got myself out of bed and went to work sketching out a super awesome plan. Here is the embedded learning that I came up with"

SearchTeam is a collaborative search engine. You start your research by creating a SearchSpace on a topic of interest. From within a SearchSpace, you can search the Web, videos, images, books and more. You can find and save only what you want while you are searching and throw away what you don't want or find irrelevant. You can automatically organize what you save, into folders of your choosing. Everything is automatically saved into your personal account, and you can return to your searches any time and continue from where you left before. What makes SearchTeam unique and valuable is that you can do your searches collaboratively with others you trust, such as friends, colleagues and family members. You can invite any set of people you trust to search with you from within a SearchSpace. An invitation is sent via email to those people you invite to join your search. When they enter your SearchSpace, they see exactly what you've found and saved so far. They can comment on or like your findings. They can chat with you from within the SearchSpace, and do further searches relevant to that topic and save more results into the SearchSpace. All changes made by any collaborator are relayed to all other collaborators in real-time, so everyone is instantly in synch with what others are doing. In addition to finding and saving search results, SearchTeam goes further to enable you to enrich your SearchSpace with knowledge that may come from other sources. You can upload documents to a SearchSpace to share your relevant reports / presentations etc. You can also add links to Web resources that you may have received from others via email or social networks. You can even create new posts to share your knowledge on the topic directly inside the SearchSpace. Together, as a team, you can leverage the collective effort to find good quality information, and benefit from the collective knowledge on any topic efficiently. In effect, SearchTeam is traditional Web searching + Wiki-like editi

"Using games in the classroom - This is a presentation to pre-service teachers about the affordability and importance of game-play. Low-end."

"Last week my wife and I told our 13-year-old daughter she could join Facebook. Within a few hours she had accumulated 171 friends, and I felt a little as if I had passed my child a pipe of crystal meth. I don't mean to be a spoilsport, and I don't think I'm a Luddite. I edit a newspaper that has embraced new media with creative, prizewinning gusto. I get that the Web reaches and engages a vast, global audience, that it invites participation and facilitates - up to a point - newsgathering. But before we succumb to digital idolatry, we should consider that innovation often comes at a price. And sometimes I wonder if the price is a piece of ourselves. "

"Connect.ed is an innovative, self-paced cybersafety education program offered by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) as part of Cybersmart. Connect.ed provides teachers with the flexibility of a self paced environment to learn about current online behaviours of students, potential risks involved in these activities, a teacher's and school's duty of care and the appropriate tools, resources and strategies to help students to have safe and positive experiences online."

"When I was 10 years old I was hitting a digital puck across the screen with a digital paddle playing Pong. My son at age 10 was learning metallurgy and materials management in an online multiplayer game called Runescape! I knew nothing of the game at the time, and he soon showed me how he learned to collect items in the world in order to make new things that he needed to complete quests and gain experience. In particular, he showed me how he needed to collect certain metal ores, take them to a smelter to extract metals, and then take those to a forge to create tools or to a craftsman to make other things. This is one of the reasons that I am still excited about Minecraft."

"The last four months have been tumultuous ones for our university. With the end of educational discounts for our island in Second Life, we faced a tough decision. Second Life's steep learning curve and our local system of incentives and rewards for faculty had discouraged any use of virtual worlds in our curriculum."

"Astro Empires is a strategy game played in real-time. Persistent universe with thousands of players. Browser based, no downloads or installs. Play for free."

Filament Games is a game production studio that exclusively creates learning games. Our core competency is producing games that combine best practices in commercial game development with key concepts from the learning sciences. Accordingly, our senior staff is comprised of individuals who are equal parts game and instructional designers; a "dual literacy" that allows us to engineer authentic gameplay mechanics (rules and interactions that directly correlate with specific learning objectives). Filament Games was founded in 2005 by education technology expert Dan White, game designer Dan Norton, and software engineer Alex Stone. In the time since, Filament has developed over 30 educational games for clients ranging from National Geographic's JASON Science to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's iCivics Inc.

"Our infographic to end the week is one of the better ones I've run across recently. It's about data centers, one of the more talked about topics in recent months. This one explores power consumption by making comparisons between standard usage and what can be accomplished with more efficient technologies."

"Working in technology administration, I have always bowed down to uniformity. I can't help it…it's the way we were all taught in the technology industry. It was routine and comfortable. Everyone got the exact same computer with the same image. Everyone had to login to active directory. Security groups were applied with abandon. I wax nostalgic just thinking about it.Fear of BYOD But those days are coming to an end. This is due to a huge number of factors including ridiculously tight school district budgets, much lower computer prices and cloud computing. I believe more and more schools will soon adopt bring your own device (BYOD) as a matter of economic necessity and recognition of educational potential."

A google custom search engine that returns results under a range of tabs including lesson plans, printables, practice, videos and games.

"Have you been gamified yet? Perhaps not a painful as it sounds, gamification is on its way to becoming THE buzzword of 2011. Social media engagement tools such as badges, points, levels, leaderboards, etc are making their way out of hipster apps to every online engagement you can think of. Yes, it all sounds oddly familiar (green stamps, reward cards, etc.) but of course, it's all NEW NEW NEW, with gurus and pundits claiming that gamification will change the way we live and of course, spend money."

The video is a great example of what kids are able to do with Minecraft and what educational value can be derived.  And kudos to Ethan's teacher for being open-minded enough to accept a Minecraft creation in lieu of a traditional history project.