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Thinklink has made some upgrades for teachers. There is an improved student sign up, the ability to organize students by class. You can create image "channels" and interactive albums and you can have a more safe way to find images and use them. I recorded a session on my podcast this week about UDL and Beth Ritter-Guth highly recommends Thinglink to use with students.

Now this site is becoming incredibly useful. Project Gutenberg is taking their free ebooks and aligning with Common Core standards on Share my lesson. If you have ipads and are using Common Core state standards, You'll want to follow this content partner on the share my lesson website to find the lessons that will integrate with these ebooks. You can download the ebooks from the website.

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.

When looking for graphics like for Classroom Rules, I like to do image searches on Google because you can usually find some very brief summaries. Here are some short ideas for those of you working on your wall posters now. Simple is better.

High school topics. Click on a topic and find lessons in that area.

60 Ways To Use Twitter In The Classroom By Category

There are so many ways that you can use Twitter in the classroom but even if Twitter is blocked, you'll find many ideas that you can use on Edmodo or whatever educational networking tool you're using with your students. Great read.

This is a downloadable programme that teaches programming through a virtual robotic rover. Design games and challenges with your robot moving and finding objects. The commands are similar to MS Logo, but the interface and graphics are vastly more child-friendly. It is free for personal use. Found via http://twitter.com/@SheliBB http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

As you know, teachers know everything. But there are some mere mortals out there who still need to ask questions. This is a fabulous site with over 80 specialist areas to ask questions to the cloud. The community will then help you find an answer. The areas include English and other languages, computing, maths, science, history and much more. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Cross+Curricular

Play-on: the boundaries between the real and virtual world have gone for kids, it's all just one big world of play.  Now kids arrange play dates in the playground, swapping their penguin names to 'Play-on' after school in Club Penguin.  The new friends functionality will allow kids to find their friends faster, teleporting them to their friends within Club Penguin, regardless of where they are playing from or what server they're on Supportmobbing: Kidanthropy:  Kidsourcing:  Digilinguists:

I share on this site but it is a great place to find resources. It is the largest network of English speaking teachers in the world and they are launching in the US this year. When I saw this, I thought some of you on break might like to share. I like the site because the resources are free and it is curated.

A ton of resources for the IBoard for these last few days before Christmas. Bookmark them and have them ready to go for next year. Meanwhile, parents at home with kids may find something for a child to play that reinforces a topic that kids are having trouble with at school. We always do math facts over break with my youngest.

Although this was designed for summer, the list has a lot of ideas that parents can do with children over the break. While I do leave time for my kids to have a break, I do try to find things that will encourage their love of learning that I sneak in there kind of like sneaking vegetables into things without them knowing. Have a great break! Teachers might want to download and share with parents headed on break.

A superb cross curricular resources site for all ages. Find hundreds of worksheets, flash games and resources and much more. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Cross+Curricular

Ever wondered why Christmas Reindeer have red noses? You are about to find out with this musical Reindeer Orchestra. Make sure your volume is up. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Winter+%26+Christmas

A great site for finding Music videos online. Just enter the artist to build a playlist. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Music%2C+Sound+%26+Podcasts

One of the things I have as my "big three" this year is the concept of a paperless portfolio using adobe acrobat pro. I'm a member of Adobe ed exchange and am using it to find all kinds of great resources. This page has links to best practices for eportfolios, digital assessment, as well as streamlining admin tasks. Useful resources. The cool thing is you can annotate with video, audio, an text and pdfs move very well onto ipads and devices like that.

Adobe premier elements tutorial videos. I find the one on converting photos into entertaining movies to be interesting.

This is a twitter template. Another tool for offline use for those schools who don't get a lot of access but would like to bring some fun social media style activities into the classroom. You do need to join the free TES site to access these, but it is a great site and I'm finding lots of things to use.

A superb complete course for beginners of French language. Find a complete PDF textbook, videos and much more to get you started in no time. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Languages%2C+Culture+%26+International+Projects