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Excited to be in Virginia on July 17 at TechSplash! Hope you'll join us if you're the area. "The purpose of Tech Splash 2013 is to showcase exemplary examples of technology integration in the K12 classroom as well as focus attention on new and emerging technologies. Date:            July 18, 2013      8-3:30pm Location:     Lebanon High School, Lebanon, Virginia Cost: $25 prepaid, $35 onsite "

This is an intelligent spelling and grammar checker which sits in the background in Office and your browser until you need it. It constantly looks for examples of your sentence on the internet and decides whether it is correct and gives alternatives. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

There's an interesting discussion going on over at lifehacker about the best ifttt "recipes." Ifttt is "if this then that" and is an automation program that does amazing, very cool things. I've integrated it with my wemo, for example, and have it turning off and on my lights in the den and logging when there is action or motion in the kitchen. This is one of those posts you'll want to look at the comments.

Drafts is a handy app for those who who use a variety of tools like Evernote and dropbox. For example, you can jot a note and click a button to send it to Twitter, Dropbox, Evernote and more -- (like if you want to save copies of certain tweets, etc. since it is so hard to get things out of Twitter.) I'm not entirely clear on the workflow automation piece of Drafts after watching this video on lifehacker but am going to learn more about this handy app.

An interesting guide from edutopia for parents that you can share with your parents and PTO. They share a lot of examples of 21st century learning and as you work to build support for these things, this is a great document to share. (Full Disclosure: The digiteen project is listed for middle school - after this was listed, we saw such an inundation of schools wanting to do the project, we created the DigiTween project for kids aged 10-12 and Digiteen is still for kids aged 13+.) There are a lot of other great sites including the World Peace game, information on Skype in the Classroom, World of Warcraft in School and the Digital Youth Network. Download and share.

When you're studying a particular subject, it makes sense to dig deeper. For example, the Civil War Trust has some excellent lesson plans on the Civil War as well as a field trip planner, glossary of civil war terms, civil war coloring book, and more. If you cover the civil war in the US, you'll want to visit this site. If you're studying anything, try searching for the word "lesson plans" in quotes along with the topic with a plus like +"civil war" and you'll be amazed at the results. Many of them align with standards from the states or National Council for Social Studies.

This is an example of a consent form for research for a research student done at the University of Georgia. If you are a researcher, you'll want to check with your university as to the proper way to format and secure permissions, however, as students become researchers, I have questions about securing permission for research. This is an area we need to discuss and understand because students can now be viable, authentic researchers and perhaps may have links to more accurate data collection techniques than researchers. What happens when researchers partner with students to collect data? A whole new world of research is opening up, so research forms are worth collecting.

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.

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.

This four part video series about the "Invisible children" is an excellent model for how you can share what you're doing. The design on this page is fantastic as well. This organization creaed #kony2012 as their 10th film. They understand social media mobilization. This is an important cause and also the example of how the story wouldn't be told if it weren't for good storytellers. We are first and foremost a "social media, storytelling organization" - they think it is fundamentally untrue that you cannot relate to someone halfway around the world.

An interactive White Board (IWB) or SMART Board has the potential to deliver content better than traditional methods of teaching. Why? Because it provides multi-media functional interaction across audio, video, and computer media. It is also ideal for visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners. These qualities of an IWB also promote the dynamic delivery of content (if used to its full potential) in an engaging manner, which allows students to interact with science or math content their self. Examples include: * data manipulation * responding to data * even creating data So with all these attributes - "How are interactive white boards unsuccessfully used in science and math classrooms?" For the most part - not effectively!

Make maths worksheets with this tool from microsoft. Just write one example question and the program will generate more questions of the same type and even provide an answer sheet. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths

Here is an example of a flipped lesson. In this one, "Just how small is an atom" you have the video, then the other materials to the right. This is a public lesson, but you can take it and flip it, make it your own, and make your own private URL for your class. 

Great example of how a teacher uses Prezi in the classroom

Students need to be open and use open content, however, there are still questions that haven't been answered about open content that need to be addressed. How long will it take to bring these issues to the forefront? Will many higher ed institutions have to become irrelevant first? Do colleges realize that there are things they can do that will make them more attractive (intellectual property rights, for example.)

Help your students make their own Android apps with this useful tool from MIT. The site comes with some good tutorials and guides with example projects. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

This is a nice example of students using the discussion tab on the NetGen project. 

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

Finland is an innovator in education and now they're doing it again. Schools need a facelift. If you're building a new school - rethink school. I'd look at the designs. Also, Ewan McIntosh wrote a great "7 spaces of schools" that is in the "Choice" chapter for those of you have bought my book Flattening Classroom, Engaging Minds - he talked about this on a boat in South Africa with me 2 years a go and is an expert to follow in the area of school design. "Finnish students consistently have placed among the top countries on the Program for International Student Assessment, which gauges 15-year-old students' ability to understand and transfer concepts in reading, mathematics, and science. For example, in the most recent mathematics assessment, in 2009, Finnish students scored 54 points higher than their American peers on a scale of zero to 1,000. Pasi Sahlberg, the director general of the Center for International Mobility and Cooperation at Finland's education ministry, attributes the nation's academic achievement to a three-fold approach: quality of the academic curriculum, equity in educational access, "and the third one is the environment. How the environment and design of the school is supporting students' learning. When we combine these three things we can say something about the overall goodness of the school system."