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"As early as the fourth grade, girls perform better than boys on standardised tests in reading and writing, and as they get older that achievement gap widens even more, according to research published by the American Psychological Association."

"A superb platform for creating online books. Add pictures from the bank of images or from your computer. Browse the extensive library of books created by the community."

I love Carol Lieber's book "The Advisory Guide" (published by Educators for Social Responsibility) Make it matter by making it a core function of the school. We don't have traditional Parent-Teacher Conferences here. We have Parent-Student-Advisor conferences where teachers all write narrative report cards which are then processed / talked about / reviewed by the parent, student and advisor together. This makes the Advisor the primary link to the families, which goes a long way toward really making the power of Advisory tranparent to families (and teachers.) If a child gets in trouble, advisors are looped in immediately. Our college counselor works with the advisors so that they are the primary school-based adults to help students make decisions about their college process. Kids should never be the implied object of their own education.

I'll be spending time to AJ Juliani, Steve Mogg and Rosie Esposito from Wissahikon school district. Here's a copy of their Graduation project required to graduate from their school. I think all schools should have graduation projects. There is information and manuals if you want to look into this for yourself. I saw this in Evansvlle High school as well. This can be part of your genius work. "As part of graduation from Wissahickon High School, every senior is required to complete a graduation project.  The projects include research, writing and an oral presentation to assure that students are able to apply, analyze, synthesize and evaluation information and communicate significant knowledge and understanding.  This is culminating project in one or more areas of concentrated study under the guidance and direction of the high school faculty. "

This is a 'must try' iPad app where you can design a 3D creature. Tap, drag and pinch your creation until it is just right and then 'paint' it with the patterns you want. It's a great resource to use alongside creative writing or science work. If you have access to a 3D printer you can even fabricate your design. Download the app at https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/123d-creature/id594014056. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

Another one of my students has been writing and sharing on the Kindle Kids Corner. Here's an interview she did about trends in Young Adult fiction and I agree with so much of what she's written. This is another example of how authentic projects can transform a student. This happened to come out of one of my favorite kindle book sites - Kindle Nation Daily and an email conversation I had with the author Steven Windwalker (penname.) 

I love this project created by one of my students to help children be unafraid to go to the doctor. She has a youtube channel called Pediatric Videos with one video having more than 50,000 views (the one on CT scanning.) Her dad is a pediatrician and filmed everything while supervising her and helping her write the script. Her little brother was the patient. This is a fantastic example of a passion based project.

VocabularySpellingCity has a new summer word study program that allows children to sharpen academic skills as they play. These simple assignments are a daily workout for the brain, building literacy skills such as vocabulary, spelling, and writing.

If you have something on the ballot in your state and want to have more information, go to ballot pedia which explains the initiative and lets you know who is paying for and against this. This is another method of wikis and collaborative writing playing a role in more open government and transparency. Students could run a student version of this sort of site, or -pedia sites on all kinds of things.

Important and well written

Excited to be heading to Kendallville, Indiana this summer on June 13 to keynote the second day of the Knight-Time Technology Conference about how to influence change in the 21st century, how to flatten your classroom, how writing is being reinvented and how you can use it in your classroom and differentiating instruction with technology. It will be exciting. If you're interested, this it the link to find out more information.

Jure Klepic nails it in his critique of the Forbes 2013 list of Social Media influencers. If you're clueless about social media, don't make a list. Jure says "It seems that today everyone thinks they can write and preach about influence, even though they have no clue as to what influence is. In order to rank people on the ability to influence we need to understand influence, not just define it. When people just try to define influence they come away with something as useless as what is used in this post. The real definition of influence is quite simple -- influence is the power to sway. But understanding influence is far more than just knowing this definition. Understanding influence in contemporary online world means understanding contemporary notions of identity and identity construction. Identity, ideas of person and self are cultural constructs; they are ideas and values that are part of our culture. So the real question here should not be who will make the next Forbes list, but how can the author of an article about influence omit the names of so many of the brightest and best thought leaders in the field? "

"This checklist includes all the important aspects of an Outstanding Lesson Plan Template, but in a checklist format so that you can make sure every aspect is covered, but write your plan in your own format, e.g. chronological. I stick this above my desk so I can refer to it when planning."

An English resource that takes students through writing four different types of poetry. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/English

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

"The History Engine is an educational tool that gives students the opportunity to learn history by doing the work-researching, writing, and publishing-of a historian. The result is an ever-growing collection of historical articles or "episodes" that paints a wide-ranging portrait of life in the United States throughout its history and that is available to scholars, teachers, and the general public in our online database." Via http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2012/04/history-engine-explore-stories-of.html

This SAT prep program is free and has more than 60 lessons in math, reading, and writing. It also includes a score projector. This is something parents CAN have their children do to prepare for the test (unless you want to get my FAVORITE book for this -- SAT prep for dummies .) 

A set of lesson plans for grades 6-8 from PBS to help students understand and reflect upon those who are deaf. This is integrated with writing as well.

creating infographics online

Another infographic maker that I've tested is easel.ly. I could not use this at all in Chrome but in Firefox it was a nice graphic maker. This is more for narrative story type graphics than Infogr.am, in my opinion. There are several basic themes to choose from and you edit and add your own graphics. Another tool you could use with students although if you want graphics that have a lot of data you should go with infogr.am. I found Easel.ly to be very simple to use with a quick sign up process, although it was totally unresponsive in Chrome, so make sure they are using IE or Firefox if you pick this tool. I recommend this tool for writing teachers, bloggers, and as a nice way to graphically organize stories, etc. Cost: free