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This is a very honest, open discussion between educators about why diigo or delicious -- I think the fact we can have this conversation within diigo at all says a lot for the usefulness of the tool. Diigo is an emerging tool for social bookmarking and collective intelligence.

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A great way to get started with technology is to join in an exciting project. this project by Susan Silverman was designed using the principles of Universal Design for Learning. I've heard her present and she is a pro. (Along with my friend Jennifer Wagner.)

Susan Silverman creates excellent projects for global collaboration among elementary students.

The online learning congress has named their outstanding award winners. I was excited to see one of my blog sponsors, WizIQ win best virtual classroom provider for the second year in a row. Lots of interesting companies herein the global education community.

the Atlantic asked me to write about why I became a teacher. I left the business world to move into teaching. Not because I had to (I was a successful business woman) but because I wanted to. Please feel free to share your story. Here's mine.

"I went shopping at 8 o'clock one evening in my local supermarket (one of the German chains) and was chatting to the man on the checkout who was moaning about his job and his employer. He says he has to work very long hours (tonight he was going to finish at 1:00am) - longer than his contract says he should; he gets paid for the hours he works but only at standard hours. He doesn't like some of the jobs, they are not really his responsibility but they have to be done. There is a union but they don't seem to be very helpful. His bosses don't always seem to consider the consequences of their actions - the manager was leaving as I was being served and commented that he'd left two bags of garbage on a till further along and they would need moving in a bit. The man serving was the only person on the tills and he said that between customers (there weren't many at this time of the evening) he had to move the garbage and clean all of the tills then when the store closed he needed to work at changing stock and stacking shelves. As the manager left he turned and said, "I asked Matt if he could stay and help you but he gave an unequivocal no!""

The internet is a little like the proverbial elephant that never forgets. Our digital footprints are not like the footprints on the beach, washed away by the next wave or rising tide. Rather they are like footprints left to dry in the wet concrete of the footpath. Permanent. The Digital Citizen will follow six tenets of citizenship.

Another PA parent opts his child out of PSSA standardized testing as a measure of civil disobedience.  Word of caution:  This can very much hurt a school's Adequate Yearly Progress and ultimately the school may suffer.  But, what if this movement spread amongst parents?  What then?  Would the government take over the school?  

We combine performance evaluation with a series mastery quizzes to lock in the essential concepts delivered by the tutorials. As an educator you'll have access to performance evaluation and mastery quiz data. You'll have an online record of each student's performance that can be downloaded for data analysis.

Prominent and transparent learners I can't speak for them, but from reading prominent educational technology bloggers - Will Richardson, Terry Anderson, Stephen Downes, Grainne Conole - I'm left with the impression that they too seek not to proclaim what they know, but rather to engage and share with others as they explore and come to understand technology and related trends. Watching others learn is an act of learning.

"This is a virtual place for folks interested in learning to "operationalize TPACK" (Technology, Pedagogy, and Content Knowledge) using curriculum-based learning activity types ('LATs'), teaching strategies, and performance assessments. The curricula in which we are developing and refining learning activity type and teaching strategies taxonomies appear on the left"

While they left out wearable technology and learning analytics is combined into the LMS category, this is a quick list that you can forward to your board of directors or others who want to look at a few things about changing technology.

Nice article at edweek about the informational texts versus great works of literature debate and what Common Core will do to lit. The one important, practical issue that all parties to this discussion MUST recognize - the classroom time is FINITE. Teachers would love to cover EVERYTHING but it just isn't practical. So, if one thing is emphasized over another, it may push something out. Unintended consequences are happening as people "align" their curriculum to common core standards. As all of the pundits and advocates argue this, it would be telling to sit down with an actual aligned curriculum to SEE what happens where the standards meet the lesson plans and what is actually pushed out - until then - it is all, rhetoric. Give us practical application, we're teachers, after all. From the edweek article: "Until recently, the closest we'd come to a major speech on the nonfiction-versus-fiction question was a piece in the Huffington Post by the English/language arts standards' co-authors, David Coleman and Sue Pimentel, insisting that literature "is not being left by the wayside." The message to rally the troops must have gone out, however. Because since the Coleman/Pimentel piece appeared, the common core's defenders have stepped up to counterbalance the literature-pushout crowd. The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation's Kathleen Porter-Magee, for instance, posted a piece arguing that it's a misinterpretation of the standards to say that teachers will have to teach less literature. In a recent email blast, the Foundation for Excellence in Education-led by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, one of the common core's biggest backers-declaimed the "misinformation flying around" about what will happen to literature under the common standards. "Contrary to reports," it said, "classic literature will not be lost with the implementation of the new standards." A glance at the standards' own suggested text lists, it noted, "reveals that the common core recognizes the importance of b

Use the buttons on the left to play this interactive whiteboard set of tools for some of the best things you can find for interactive whiteboards. This list was made by Theresa Allen and you should share it with all your teachers who use IWB's. GREAT games and tools. Thanks, Theresa.

This is an online art museum for student work. This permission form is used by artsonia, a student online art museum. It is a great place to participate and share artwork. Also, I like how artsonia allows parents to moderate the comments left on their child's artwork. This form also asks for parent volunteers. This is a nice way to share your student's best work.

We all remember science lessons from our school days. Whether the lessons were with the more 'characteristic' teachers in the school, or whether you all released the gas taps when the teacher foolishly left the room, we all seemed to miss the link that science is life! And what an opportunity science teachers have in releasing the magic of life to their pupils, answering BIG questions like "Why am I like my parents?", or "What will my life be like in 2050?", or "Why is Pripyat a deserted town?"

This pitch for the project Perspective Detectives by Cynthia Sandler, one of our current class of Flat Classroom certified teachers completely left me awe struck and excited. Wow! What do you think? What a history project!

An overview of International collaboration on the World wide web. It does mention our Flat Classroom projects, although they left out our biggest projec t- "A WEek in the Life" elementary project which is almost topping 1000 this semester! 

This company is suing @phonedog (name since changed) since he left the company and changed his userid keeping the twitter followers (some 17k he had accumulated.) Expect increasing scrutiny and debates on who owns the followers of people tweeting on behalf of companies.