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Neat twitter visualization site

Create a "pretty" stream of tweets from a hashtag, user, or twitter search. A few animation selections give it some variety, but keep things simple. Might be a nice tool for displaying a visually appealing self-updating stream of tweets for an event.

"But if you ask the experts, they are pretty unanimous that we don't know much. "

Excellent discussion about Blogging in the classroom from Rob Kamrowski on the Flat Classroom Ning. Rob says: "The presenter, Konrad Glogowski, an eigth grade writing teacher, discussed his use of blogs as a "third place" for students to express themselves. The first place being students home, the second school, and the third, a sort of place where they are free to creatively express themselves. At the begining of the year, Mr. Glogowski challenged his students to "grow" a blog. He presented them a visual to assist them in planning their creation and, pretty much, allowed them the freedom to make their own product. He watched as the blogs and classroom community grew. Fellow students commented on one another's blog entries, offering advice and building fellow classmates confidence in their writing. Mr. Glogowski's role as teacher evolved into a reader of work and a partner in learning rather than an evaluator and expert of information. By the end of the year, his students had great pride in their work, bonded as a communtiy, and were better, more confident, writers. The likely hood that they would continue to work on their blogs and writing was extremely high. Mr. Glogowski's strategy and his educational philosophy towards blogging was a success." This person did not attend necc, but watched Konrad present via ustream via Will Richardson's blog. Ascyhronous conferences are so important. Can we make it part of conference best practice?

Overview of Konrad Glowgoski's presentation for necc.

Some students believe they are entitled to grades just for showing up, according to new research, especially if they are paying for their education (like college or private school). On this Radio show at the BAM Radio Network hosted by RAE Pica, she talked with researchers, an anonymous teacher, and I had a small reflection from my own experience about entitlement. It was a fun show to record and is pretty short.

This edudemic list from 2012 still looks pretty up to date. Take a look at all of the places you can snag video. Of course, now, many are curating these into lists on pinterest, clacko, educlipper, diigo, and more, to align with standards, but these are good places to start.

A very useful livebinder by some teachers on QR codes in the elementary school with information and guides. I've found this is pretty updated even though the first page has a description from 2010. Very useful if you want to use them in your classroom or library at the elementary level.

You can screencast and create from your ipad using Explain everything. It currently costs $2.99 in iTunes. Pretty robust editor.

"But even by reasonable standards, the nation's educational outcomes are not in much better shape than they were in 1983. Whether we're looking at overall scores or at achievement gaps, the trend lines for NAEP, the so-called Nation's Report Card, generally show a post-reform picture that looks pretty much like the pre-reform picture - with positive trend lines but apparent slowing after 1990. There is no way to tease those data into showing that test-based accountability reform is accomplishing its key learning goals."

There are many who don't understand this one point. I used to have someone who required me to have beautiful lesson plans. They were detailed. I spent more than an hour a day on them. So much time so that sometimes I felt unprepared when the kids actually walked in the door. When those detailed plans were removed and I was allowed to focus on the content created for the students to use and then keep a grid (I keep links, etc. to what I'm doing) - THAT Was when real innovation happened in my classroom. Things like wikis, blogs, etc. happened after those super-restrictive requirements were taken off my shoulders. I had the wrong audience when I had those detailed lesson plans - my audience was the principal at the time. Now, I still have plans but I keep it in a grid in a book and then keep copies of what I use with students in dropbox and other places. I do far more now than then because my focus is the students. Lesson plans aren't bad. However, if you spend your time making the LESSON PLAN itself pretty and perfect then likely you're not spending your actual time PLANNING, printing, collecting, and creating what you'll be doing with your students. Also, when you do things like #geniushour and 20% time projects, you no longer have a lesson plan but a project plan which is an entirely different thing altogether. Don't fault teachers for this.  Teaching is the hardest job everybody thinks they can do and few really can.

I think this has a pretty good explanation between all the ebook readers. Personally, I'd go with Amazon all the way just because of the pricing and selection.

Google Digital Literacy Tour along with videos. Here are some great lessons and videos and a full curriculum. Just realize that you should involve students in discussions and activities, this is a pretty poor candidate for lecture-based delivery because it is changing so quickly. I use Digiteen but these are great resources. (Hat tip to Theresa Allen for sending this through the Digiteen google group.)

No undoing for you! Face scanning uses the measurements between your eyes and a few other dimensions to determine if a person is old enough to buy something out of the machine. But the fact that it is put on a jello pudding machine is pretty funny to me. Guess junior will need an older sibling tonget that jello for him. Humor aside, there could be use for this in areas served by kids and adults although kids do get around obstacles when they want to.

This is a great presentation to view for two reasons: 1) This author shares why she wants ipad 2's in her classroom and the reasons are pretty unique. 2) She uses Author stream which boasts it can "do more with powerpoint" - is this an alternative to slideshare? Interesting tool.

The great firewall of china comes to the US via Bing. It looks like Bing is filtering Chinese language searches in the US to match more what someone would see INSIDE China. This is pretty disturbing but also points to the challenges of creating different "filters" by country and also knowing where people are coming from (due to the use of proxies.)

I read Joel Comm's book Twitter Power and it has been one of my longtime favorites on the topic. Here he talks brutally about the negatives of social media. I admit the topic caught my attention. I"ve just found that if I'm brutal about who I follow and make sure they're real educators, I'm usually pretty happy with my stream. I unfollow junk as soon as it is evident it is junk. Ultimately we all must guard who we follow or we might just find ourselves following the garbage truck.

If you're dealing with leadership transitions in your district, Miguel Guhlin has penned a pretty epic post. In it, he is blunt about the ups and downs of working with great leaders, and "hatchet men." IN the post, he also includes steps to making staff development actually work and his frustration to be asked to read books that no one else read or implemented. This is a great post and one that leaders should read (so they can be visionary) and staff and teachers should read (so they can find wisdom for making it through tough transitions.) Every transition is tough - I've been through several myself during my 12 years and even when the leader is a very good one, it is hard to do and endure because so many people take their "eye off the ball" and the ball is learning in the classroom. Drama in the front office should be kept at a minimum so classroom learning can be kept at a maximum.

Jane Hart has her list of 100 Top tools for learning 2013 based upon her 7th survey. This is usually a pretty good indicator and I would agree with it for the most part.

Don't let the title mislead you, but yes, there are many uses of Minecraft in schools.This versatile, compelling but pretty low bandwidth tool gives us so many things Second Life never did - and with minecraft.edu it is affordable for most of us. This list is trending on Twitter which just shows how many people are interested (or how many people don't read to know it isn't really 1001 ;-) You might just find one way to teach coding in your classroom for the Hour of Code coming up.

I knew a lot of very smart, very academically successful kids when I was growing up. I went to CTY which was a rather humbling experience, and then I went to pretty high-powered college.