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Allows your iPhone or iPod touch to become a higher quality recording device. Easy to use app. Quick edits and email capable. I can think of lots of uses for a high school classroom.

This app is helpful to teacher and pupil alike. Easy to organize/edit your speech, practice and rehearse. Could easily see use middle school and up.

Photoshop is a pretty powerful piece of software, right? But what if you could do almost every thing Photoshop does FOR FREE and in your browser? Welcome to Pixlr. Apply filters and effects, adjust colors, add text, even work with layers...and did I mention it's free?

Very interesting article. This article discusses findings of interactions and supports for communities of practice or both student-to-student and teacher-to-teacher. It goes on to describe the challenges for student-to-student communities and their dealings with conflict, and the corresponding support provided for the instructor who struggled with having student communities struggle in cohesion. There is a useful graphic on page 291 showing the gathering's (read: community's) intentionality and strength of their social bond - where both are high, there emerges a community of practice.

One of the highlights of the current Horizon report is the section on Personal Learning Environments. The report lists PLEs as being a personalized collection of tools and resources assembled to support your own learning. Horizon lists PLEs as being 2-3 years out from wide implementation in K-12 schools.

With PowerPoint Online you create presentations right in your internet browser. They live in your OneDrive or Dropbox space, and you can edit and share them online without any other software or installations. Let's walk through the steps for creating a basic presentation: PowerPoint comes with "themes," sets of professionally designed colors and layouts.

A free audio editing program helps students prepare recording and mixes easily.

#26 is a must see video from McGuffey School District using QR codes throughout the curriculum content areas.

A web-based word processesor that allows people to work together in real time, which is great for collaborative projects. Has a cool timeslider feature so you can watch your document as it changed over time which is great for teaching revision.

Audacity® is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. Learn more about Audacity... Also check our Wiki and Forum for more information. The latest release of Audacity is 1.3.13 (Beta).

Record, Mix, Edit, and Collaborate on Audio production. Free for Mac OSX and Linux.

A power-packed article about differentiation with ideas and resources.

I found this while doing research for my 541 project. Not all of these tools are digital, but there are plenty of good ideas that can be used here. This is worth a look.

This article discusses the use of communities of practice for libraries and library science. Due to the nature of university libraries being located far from one another geographically, communities of practice tend to be online. Additionally, this article talks about the differences in communities of practice, communities of inquiry, and communities of learning.

Research regarding the benefits of being a member of a community of practice. While the information seems a bit forced (the communities of practice used for the study were exclusively face-to-face communities), the benefits of being a member of a community of practice still seem valid. According to the study, they are (1) autonomy and freedom to think beyond, (2) sources to ideas, (3) sounding board, (4) intellectual discussion, (5) like-mindedness, (6) alternative perspective and cross-pollination of ideas, (7) overcoming intellectual isolation, (8) move towards collaborative research, (9) response to research pressure, (10) synergy and leverage, (11) time and energy saving, (12) an informal ground for learning and training, (13) fostering of tangible returns, (14) driving research, (15) opportunities to met, (16) networking, information sharing and updates, (17) support and guidance, (18) sense of belonging, (19) identity, and (20) intrinsic fulfillment. As the article is about higher education, there are certainly some benefits that are more specific to their context, but I think the findings of the article are still valid.

Research regarding the benefits of being a member of a community of practice. While the information seems a bit forced (the communities of practice used for the study were exclusively face-to-face communities), the benefits of being a member of a community of practice still seem valid. According to the study, they are (1) autonomy and freedom to think beyond, (2) sources to ideas, (3) sounding board, (4) intellectual discussion, (5) like-mindedness, (6) alternative perspective and cross-pollination of ideas, (7) overcoming intellectual isolation, (8) move towards collaborative research, (9) response to research pressure, (10) synergy and leverage, (11) time and energy saving, (12) an informal ground for learning and training, (13) fostering of tangible returns, (14) driving research, (15) opportunities to met, (16) networking, information sharing and updates, (17) support and guidance, (18) sense of belonging, (19) identity, and (20) intrinsic fulfillment. As the article is about higher education, there are certainly some benefits that are more specific to their context, but I think the findings of the article are still valid.

This article discusses the use of communities of practice for university teachers as the demand for research increases. Cites how many professors got into teaching to teach, not to do research, and are either leaving the profession or joining communities of practice to develop research skills and get help to meet the research demands. The bottom of page 972 talks about the challenges for those who are not well trained in research. The bottom of 973 talks about what it takes to change a teaching culture to a research culture. 979 has a useful table on what it looks like for education faculties to build their research capability.

I believe that a lot of individuals enter the university teaching profession thinking they are only going to teach! So many of my professor friends have found that they have to write grants and build in their yearly incomes just to stay employed! Thanks for sharing!

This article compares the process of earning a doctorate to running a marathon. It states that it is common practice for marathoners to join a community of practice. The task of running a marathon is typically too great to do alone, and support via the community of practice is needed to accomplish the task. With the length of time involved, one needs support to get through the doctorate. The article describes the challenges at 10 miles, 20 miles, and completion of a marathon and shows the parallels to earning a doctorate.