"I am conducting a series of workshops in Florida and was asked to share a rubric to help teachers evaluate educational apps as part of the workshop. In 2010 Harry Walker developed a rubric, and I used his rubric (with some modifications by Kathy Schrock) as the basis for mine. (Read Harry Walker's paper Evaluating the Effectiveness of Apps for Mobile Devices.)"

Often referred to as "blended classrooms," it's a movement that has been gaining hold in many districts around the country. It's also a system whose effectiveness in improving student achievement is just starting to be measured by researchers, although Lawrence officials say the early results are promising.

LIVE FROM CTIA 13, LAS VEGAS: Mobile technology has the potential to fundamentally improve access to education in the near future, according to Michael Chasen, founder and former CEO of online education platform Blackboard. Speaking at CTIA, Chasen said mobile technology is "fundamentally changing and disrupting both how people learn and how people connect" and could change education to the same extent it has with music, television and books. Four trends are coming together that will make mobile technology a fundamental disruptor to education, according to Chasen

Making a Visual QR Code is quick & easy, just follow the steps in our Visual QR Code Generator and you'll be done in less than a minute. You can select from many QR Code types and actions such as Url, vCard, Facebook, Twitter, Video, Text and more. Create your own Visual QR Code Create your own Visual QR Code.

PollSnack is the easiest online tool for polls & surveys, allowing you to create and conduct market questionnaires without having to learn complicated software. Also, the reporting is very simple and straightforward, with results being displayed in real-time.

Google announced today that it'll be closing Google Reader's doors on July 1st of this year, meaning you'll need to find a new way to get your news fix. Here's how to export all your feeds and put them into a new reader.

Students need our guidance to use virtual platforms for ACADEMIC purposes. We can't rely on their "so called" native status to know how and what to do. Just a few years ago, no one had heard of "backchanneling", nowadays, it has become main stream (although most people might not associate the term "backchannel" and "backchanneling" with something they might be familiar with. when you watch one of your favorite TV shows and are asked to use a twitter hashtag to interact with other viewers or the actors/participants…. you are participating in a backchannel when you are listening to a live political speech and are updating your Facebook status,  "liking" of commenting on someone else's status… you are in a backchannel when you are passing a note (in the same room) or texting a colleague or classmate during a meeting or lecture… YOU are in a backchannel

Later this week I'm running a workshop on the use of backchannels, polling services, and informal assessment tools. In preparation for that workshop, I spent quite a bit of time putting together a 32 page PDF of ideas and directions for using TodaysMeet, Socrative, and the updated version of Wallwisher. The end of the document includes some alternatives to each of those three tools. I've embedded the document below (it's hosted by Scribd) and you can download it from Scribd for your personal use. If you like it, I would appreciate it if you could share it on Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, or Google+.

Free Web-based email, calendar & documents for collaborative study anytime, anywhere.

Key findings from the NCLE survey, explored in more detail in the body of the report, yield the following conclusions about how US educators are currently working together to meet rising literacy expectations and how best to support them going forward. Literacy is not just the English teacher's job anymore. Working together is working smarter. But schools aren't structured to facilitate educators working together. Many of the building blocks for remodeling literacy learning are in place. Effective collaboration needs systemic support.

Remodeling Literacy Learning: Making Room for What Works surveyed 2,404 educators in schools across the US. Most of the respondents were experienced classroom teachers and specialist staff in public schools at all levels (elementary, middle, high) of schooling. The findings are reported in a 37 page very readable and ground breaking report.

Higher education has always been fond of its acronyms and they don't get much more prolific than the current four letters doing the rounds. From the December 2011 launch of MITx Stateside to the University of Edinburgh's decision to join the Coursera platform, MOOCs (or Massive Open Online Courses) have barely been off the education news menu. Nor was the Observer alone in recently asking: "Do online courses spell the end for the traditional university?"

Have you wondered how to develop digital literacy in students? Have you wondered how to encourage self-directed learners? How to develop deep research skills? Of course this is all possible without technology, but why would you teach students skills without using the tools that they will need as soon as they leave school? (and which they are In simple terms a BYOD program is any policy within a school which allows students to bring in their own devices and connect to any combination of the school network or the internet. Schools might make a BYOD program voluntary or compulsory, but the key policy decision is to allow students to choose the device which suits them best. Some students prefer Windows machines, other prefer Apple, some students like the fast response of a tablet. Many school which implement a BYOD program soon find that students are working on not one device but many.