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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.)"

I love how STEMlab teacher Kevin Jarrett shares what students are learning in his STEMlab. The lab focuses on engineering, science, technology, and math and is such a powerful learning experience. I like this format better than just "technology" lab because it integrates what you're trying to be not just a checklist of point and clicks that will be outdated. "This post is part of my continuing series of weekly lesson summaries. My goal is to give parents & caregivers in our school community the resources needed to extend student learning at home, and to share my professional practice with teacher colleagues around the world in the hopes of improving my craft."

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 website discloses the apps that this school will be using and links to the permission form. It is on the Academic Affairs page. I like the face this presents to the public. Here is what we WILL do and how we WILL do it -- with your permission, of course. Parents have a choice but schools do not - we must offer 21st century tools as part of a 21st century school. There are ways to do this. 

This is a fascinating permission form hybrid because it incorporates blogs, wikis, permission to read certain novels and watch certain videos ALL in one permission form. It would be one that high school literature teachers would want to look at using. I like how it discloses how students are identified. I may adapt something like this.

Here's a google apps consent form for another district. It also references the Network Access Agreement (We call ours an AUP - or acceptable use form) which is an important practice that ensures students know they must use the network in accordance with guidelines already given.

This teacher's lesson plan fully discloses the tools that are being used, the standards, and required permissions. This is a very detailed example, but one that you may have to use for large projects to get approval in your district.

This teacher has permission forms for use of Toondoo, Edmodo, and Glogster, three excellent sites that I also use in my classroom. While I like to combine mine all into one, this is an option for those very conservative districts.

Another website example of disclosures about the use of Google apps from a district in Oregon. This also references their Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) and frequently asked questions about Google Apps, another good thing to include.

There continues to be a problem that not all books in the Amazon kindle store have real page numbers. If students are expected to cite sources and not allowed to use location numbers, then Amazon can expect the pushback seen on this forum post. Meanwhile, a helpful person on the forum has noted how you can know what to read on the Kindle if your professor or teacher says "read page 80-92" - you can dive into the table of contents on the website and save a copy. This is the only solution. It is time for Amazon to get their act together and have all Kindle ebooks display page numbers if there is a printed copy of the book. If there is not a printed copy of the book, there needs to be a consistent reference point or "page" that all can use for sourcing and citing content. "1. Look up the book in the in the Amazon Kindle store (where you purchased it). 2. Click on the book where it says "Look Inside." You want to look at the table of contents, which will have the pages numbers for each chapter. 3. It defaults to the "kindle edition," which does not have the page numbers in the table of contents. However, there is a tab above that says "Print Book." Click on that. 4. Once you're on the "Print Book" display, it shows the page numbers in the TOC. By doing the above, I was able to determine that "the first 26 pages" = Chapters 1 & 2. I used Evernote to take a screen capture of the entire TOC, which I'll refer back to."

This is a fascinating wiki full of myths and truths about ebook readers. It says it is maintained by the users of the site. I've found it to be quiet accurate as I perused this page. If you have questions about ebooks, this is a great reference.

This is an example of a page where students are sharing how they spend schooltime. Each voicethread is a compilation of different students.

Will you help Silvia Tolisano's students by letting them know what screencasts you want them to record? Thank you for taking a moment. This is a great project she's doing for these 6th graders. She does such a wonderful job of helping students develop an authentic audience.

Mike Gwaltney shares how he uses Twitter to make a backchannel.

"Students from all over the world can collaborate in their classrooms and at home to create and publish books using Classroom Authors web based publishing application." Very cool website -- this from the publisher "Our software was developed working with Colombia University Teacher's College and over 40 classrooms with the purpose of engaging students in the writing process through collaborative book publishing." This looks to be a very cool website and another way to have students publish books and have an authentic audience.

Microsoft One Note on the Mac Store. It is free.

A lovely overview by North Canton City Schools about how to go paperless with Google Docs. If you're working towards being as paperless as possible, this is a nice document to get you started. (For some of you out there who don't know this - Google renamed everything "Google Drive" to respond to Dropbox's domination of cloud storage but many of us still call the word processor "Docs".)

Prezi meeting is a tool that students are using in the brainstorming and planning phase of a project. This presentation shares how this works.

Nice examples and instructions if you're wanting to use Google Hangouts for Teaching and flattening your classroom.

If you use Dropbox for automating your assessment and grading there are so many wonderful tings you can do with Sortmy box. For example, if you have a "turnin" folder that all students can access, you could sweep the files out of there and put it in a private folder for grading. Or, you could move all picture folders to a certain place. This is a very cool app for organizing dropbox, expecially if you want to consolidate pictures or videos.