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Synchronize your documents withMy Doc Stock.

For those of you moving from computer to computer - you shoudl try out My Doc Stock Sync - great for college and high school students who are mobile. This is a great idea for teams or people sharing files as well because you can make some public.

Great resource for anyone using Google Docs. Thanks, Lucy Gray!

Strategies are provided for classroom integration, creating survey, and science or math activities.

Discover, create and share documents with your friends, coworkers, and classmates on Facebook.

Uses MS Office online integrated into Facebook.

See how one lovestruck student collaborates with Google Docs.

THis article points out that some new gadgets have been created especially for the education market. But, the next time you're in a Google spreadsheet, check out Insert>Gadget to see what all they've added recently. From word clouds, to flash cards, and more. Fun stuff!

Some VERY cool new gadgets to use with your google spreadsheets

Créer des quiz avec Google docs (article anglais)

"This is an amazing Google Docs add-on which allows you to make audio and other comments and feedback on students' work. It's a wonderfully easy way to mark homework and assignments. Students can also reply to feedback with audio comments."

Sign easy just won an award for being the simplest way to sign docs on the iphone and ipad. It links with most cloud services like Dropbox, Box and Evernote.

Sad to see that the first major fail of a MOOC would happen at my alma mater, Georgia Tech, but I do applaud their transparency and moving forward with it. I hope they do it soon. With 41,000 students in the #foemooc - they had 40,000 students in a google doc which has a limit of 50 simultaneous editors - and with no backup - they weren't ready for the problems that would happen. This was a Coursera course and it just couldn't handle the load. Interestingly this was a Fundamentals of Online Education MOOC which makes it even more ironic. Read this article for more about what happened. "Maybe it was inevitable that one of the new massive open online courses would crash. After all, MOOCs are being launched with considerable speed, not to mention hype. But MOOC advocates might have preferred the collapse of a course other than the one that was suspended this weekend, one week into instruction: "Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application.""

Doug Johnson is a great read for his blunt, in your face honesty and his point about how technology companies are trying to differentiate is a great one. I think, however, we should extend this to schools as well. If your school is great, say why, but dissing the competition is no way to compete. If you think your school has no competition, think again. So, read this in light of the arriving and coming competition on the edulandscape and have an honest take on how you should "sell" the virtues of your school. If you can't talk about how great your school is and have to resort to how bad the other one is, prepare for a day when you'll shutter the windows and wonder how they're going to keep the bugs out of your empty building. Wake up and smell the wires burning their way into your student's computers and tablets, great teachers are just a click away and we've all got to learn how to blend and trend our courses, teaching, and to bridge our classrooms to add real value as teachers. It isn't hard as you think but if you just sit and teach like you've always taught, you're setting yourself up for some unpleasant days. You can't do everything but you can do something to improve yourself. Next practices are an important part of your best practice. Always innovate and never settle. Standards are only the beginning, you must have purpose if you're going to be a great teacher. Doug says: "But what I do know that when competitors trash each other, I tend to tune out. And I flat out hate it when I know they are lying - and I will NOT buy from a liar. A salesman recently promoted his video storage service by stating "unlike YouTube, we don't own your movies." That's just not true. (YouTube doesn't own your movies, GoogleApps doesn't own your Docs, CIPA, FERPA, etc. do not ban social media.)"

This permission form has many different tools including weebly, Google dlocs, voicethread, YouTube, Glogster, Xtranormal, Toondoo, and others. I'm not sure that Audacity has to be included as it is a program on the local machine, however. I do like how the teacher asks for permission "I agree to allow my student's work to be used as  a positive example of published work for demonstration or promotional purposes." Some parents are afraid their child will be made to look bad in online examples, this covers that concern although it puts the onus on the teacher to make sure he/she vets examples that are published.

This was a downloadable doc, so I put it into my public Evernote notebook of permission forms and other things about flattening the classroom, this link links to that notecard. This is a permission form for students who are using advanced Web 2 tools, collaborating online, and a media release. If you are in a conservative district, this permission from 2009 may help you.

Review and consider your classroom rules. My best advice is to keep them simple and few and if you want to go into detail, let the students collaboratively write out the details in a google doc or using post it notes as you talk about what kids should and shouldn't do in the classroom. It is great to talk about these things up front because you will understand the "pet peeves" that drive kids crazy about each other (saving yourself time.) I find that spelling out my bare minimum and involving kids in the detaiils gives them ownership.