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I want to point out one of the first blogs I ever read and one I've continued to read since I started building my PLN in 2005 -- Stephen Downes is one of the best resource sharers on the web. He's widely read and interjects his opinions and big picture issues into the conversation. I highly recommend that though leaders and researchers subscribe to his daily updates via RSS or email.

This looks like a very cool English game that uses all kinds of shows to teach. Thinking that ESL teachers will want to test this one out. Mau Butler send me this message about this new site: Hello Vicki, I've been an ESL teacher for 20 years, in several countries, and a reader of your coolcatteacher blog for a while. Congratulations. You do excellent work. :) For the past 3 years, I've been building a very innovative approach to teaching and learning English, which is now ready to use. Considering your work, I thought you'd be interested in trying it out. It's called Tripppin and I strongly recommend you see it for yourself on www.tripppin.com but this is us in a nutshell: "Tripppin is an English practice platform, which blends offline and online learning experiences into a game, a music channel, cooking shows, animation, entertaining videos shot around the world, and excellent support for English teachers everywhere." Hope you can have a look :) Thank you.

This website is a "reputation builder" for kids of all ages. When a child is in K-12, the parent has their account attached but then, the child can take it public after that point. This is a "reputation builder" for kids. Many students in Florida are already using this with their parents. This may be an option for efolio building where parents are involved. Worth a look for those working with digital citizenship and to share with parents.

create maps, find and use maps, applications, and tools, and share your maps and applications with others. Within the site, you will find applications for building and sharing maps. You will also find thousands of basemaps, specialty layers, applications, and tools that you can view and use, plus communities you can join.

It is our dream that teachers won't have to hunt and search for activities for hours or spend a fortune on materials. We hope to continue to build this site until it is a comprehensive collection of teaching materials across several grades. The site currently focuses on kindergarten-third grade objectives. We have begun with mathematics but will continue to create across subjects.

How to build professional, personal, social, and lifelong learning networks is the focal point of this post.

Speech given by Arne Duncan, May 17, 2010 regarding international collaboration and engagement in US Education

Civil War Augmented Reality project -- just in my inbox. You civil war buffs and history teachers may really get a "kick" out of this. Speaking of "kick" they are trying to get a grant that requires people to vote for them. Take a look: "This message is from a group of educators in Pennsylvania who have developed a Social Studies project that is in the process of raising a modest amount of money to build prototypes for gathering additional partners. Our project, the Civil War Augmented Reality Project, is intended to enhance the experiences of students visiting Civil War sites. It is also intended to increase attendance and revenue for historic sites by offering both "high" and "low" tech experiences to best reach the majority of the population. We feel that our project is fulfilling a need that educators, park workers, technology enthusiasts, and Civil War enthusiasts have discussed in the past: How can historic sites both raise educational value and public interest in their institutions though technology, while not alienating the non-technical history fans? We have worked hard on the answer, and are interested in promoting our creative solutions. We would like to make clear that the project is not intended solely for Pennsylvania. It is our hope that the project will expand to other venues, as we feel that we have the ability to use our ideas to enhance the experiences of all students at historic sites."

The internet is not a larger version of a library where you can examine the pieces of content that you need one by one and approve them. The internet is fundamentally something different simply by it's size, scope, growth and ability to change. Filters do not solve problems.

"You can use gl·am to... * Easily shorten URLs * Store an infinit amount of URLs into one single short URL with our Link Groups * Make a personalized homepage for yourself. Example: http://gl.am/wO21E * Take notes when comparing items. Example: http://gl.am/qRUy4 * Create a step-by-step tutorial for other users. Example: http://gl.am/YhPOI * Build website collections. Example: http://gl.am/jt2Ec * and much much much more."

Great enrichment activities

"Build your skills for thriving in conditions of accelerating complexity at the 20th Annual Systems Thinking in Action® Conference. With the help of keynote presenters Dayna Baumeister, Andy Hargreaves, Daniel H. Kim, Frances Moore Lappé, and Peter Senge, you'll soon be creating new cycles of success for your own organization or community."

Talks about how to contact other schools to build video chat connections-specifically Skype-for your school.

JeopardyLabs allows you to create a customized jeopardy template without PowerPoint. The games you make can be played online from anywhere in the world. Building your own jeopardy template is a piece of cake. Just use our simple editor to get your game up and running. Not interested in building your own jeopardy templates? Well that's cool too. You can browse other jeopardy templates created by other people. It doesn't get any better than this! via Jennifer Dorman http://groups.diigo.com/discovery-educator-network/bookmark/cliotech

Create your own jeopardy template online, without PowerPoint. Or browse the pre-made templates created by other people!

Simple Jeopardy game builder.

Mr. Tweet will do some homework for you - although I still believe in the randomness and greatness of building a network - I often find people that I thought I was following and wasn't. I don't know how this will work, but am goign to test it out!

John Pederson pointed me to Danah Boyd's post about the new book "Born Digital" by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser. Danah describes the book as: "Intended for broad audiences, "Born Digital" creates a conversation between adult concerns, policy approaches, technological capabilities, and youth practice. This is not an ethnography, but JP and Urs build on and connect to ongoing ethnographic research concerning digital youth culture. This is not a parent's guide, but JP and Urs's framework will benefit any parent who wishes to actually understand what's taking place and what the implications are. This is not a policy white paper, but policy makers would be foolish to ignore the book because JP and Urs provide a valuable map for understanding how the policy debates connect to practice and technology. The contribution "Born Digital" makes is in the connections that it makes between youth practices, adult fears, technology, and policy. If you care at all about these issues, this book is a MUST-READ." Danah also goes on to give a great disclaimer to the "academics in the room", those who are very wary and weary of the term "Digital Native". I just ordered this from Amazon - can't wait to share my thoughts on it!

New site for publishing websites that are easy.

Another new tool for building websites - synthasite. Have any of you used this new tool?

A San Francisco wiki services provider has just finished a multiyear project under which it gave teachers all over the world 100,000 free wikis. And now, it is doubling up and getting set to give away another quarter million. The company, Wikispaces, decided in 2006 that it would make helping teachers use the collaborative software to further cooperation between students, both in their own schools and with schools in other cities and countries, a cornerstone of its business. But while Wikispaces hasn't made any money directly from the project--and in fact has incurred significant costs due to supporting the teachers' use of the wikis--co-founder Adam Frey said the company has found that the educators are just the kind of evangelists that can aid a start-up in building a business.