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An excellent list of airplay enabled apps - although this was out a bit before the current Apple TV, I'm finding that these are some of the highest rated apps on the store with some very cool video capabilities. For example, the free ShowMe app combs your networks and serves up video that your friends are watching -- not to your ipad (although that is possible) but to your TV that is enabled with the Apple TV. I'm finding the Apple TV higher quality than my Roku box, although I'm keeping my Roku box because it has Amazon and my Apple TV does not. If you get an Apple TV, make sure you set up Remote and download some of these apps.

Kyle Dunbar is running a virtual book club. The first book is Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds. This website includes a blog that talks about the takeaways and the recordings that they are discussing. Please feel free to join in and mark your calendars - they are meeting on Tuesdays at 7:30 pm. I hope you'll join in. It is vital that you and I both connect with other classrooms around the world. Students are the greatest textbook ever written for each other - they need to connect and learn from each other. You'll meet other educators and model the kind of learner you want your students to be. If you want your students to innovate YOU must be innovative. If you want your students to collaborate YOU must be collaborative. Here's the schedule: January 7th - Meet the Flat Classroom, Chapters 1 & 2 January 21st - Connection and Communication, Chapters 3 & 4 February 4th - Citizenship, Contribution and Collaboration, Chapters 5 & 6 February 18th - Choice and Creation, Chapters 7 & 8 March 4th - Celebrating, Designing, Managing a Global Project, Chapters 9 & 10 March 18th - Rock the World

Google alerts is how we monitor our school brand. We use "Westwood Schools" +Camilla - this way it shows us everything for our school name and in our city. You can deliver to a feed or to email (many like email.) This way it will search and find things and email you when it finds it on the web. Lifehacker has an article on the creative uses for Google Alerts that you should read if it is your job to protect your brand for your business, school, or your own personal brand.

BlogBooker is a free site that turns your blog into a PDF book from all the blog's entries and comments. It works with WordPress, LiveJournal and Blogger blogs. It is very simple. You export your blog (slightly different process for each blog service - BlogBooker has instructions for you) and then upload it to BlogBooker. It then assembles everything into a high-quality PDF file. This can take a few minutes or longer depending on the size of your blog. This is a great way to print your BlogBook or make an archive/backup of the blog. It could also be useful for students and educators as a way to save a blog as a portfolio item.

This is a superb classroom management tool where you can track the behaviour of your class and keep them motivated. Simply click on the child and assign them a positive or negative behaviour point. You can also track their reading and spelling ages and make your own customised data set. Use this information to help you arrange the children within your class. You can have multiple classes on your teacher's account and you can share data with colleagues using different accounts. The data is encrypted to ensure data security. The system works on the majority of web enabled devices. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Classroom+Management+%26+Rewards

Looking for a safe way to text your students/athletes/club members or parents? Remind101.com allows you to instantly message a class of students or their parents from your computer. Teachers never see students' phone numbers and students never see theirs. It's easy. Set up a class Give your students the randomly generated number to join by text message. Once in your class, you can message the group and even schedule messages for later.

Researchers should use Google Scholar Citations. This is like Google Analytics for your paper or article. You can create links to your work, update your profile, add links to coauthors, and then track how often your article is cited. The modern researcher should definitely set this up.

An amazing augmented reality app for Android and iPad. Bring animation to still objects, make your children's written work come to life and make dragons fly around your school... through your camera at least. Share your creations with other users to make geo-location designs which will interact with anyone with the app. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

Not sure how I missed the April announcement that Read it Later has been rebranded as Pocket but I kept seeing "pocket" in my RSS readers, Zite, etc. and got curious. Pocket (theh competitor to instapaper) allows you to save websites you see on your mobile device to read later like a magazine on devices like your ipad, droid device, kindle fire, or even your web browser (if you read on your laptop still.) I've seen many use this on their laptop and send it to Pocket or Instapaper to read on their ipad later.

So, you want to know how to edit Wikipedia? There's a course for you. We are delighted to announce a new round of our free online course, "Writing Wikipedia Articles: The Basics & Beyond" (#WIKISOO). The course runs from 25 February - 8 April 2014, and is now open for enrollment. As many of you know already, WIKISOO teaches the nuts and bolts of Wikipedia. We focus on building and improving articles related to Open Education. Enrollment is open to all. We'd especially like to invite past students to re-register: your knowledge and experience will be valuable to your fellow students, and it's also a great opportunity to deepen your learning about Wikipedia and OER. WIKISOO students learn about the values and culture that have driven hundreds of thousands of volunteers to build Wikipedia. Through your work in the course, you will join an effort that has generated millions of free articles in hundreds of languages since 2001. The course covers the technical skills needed to edit articles, and also offers practical insights into the site's collaborative norms and social dynamics. You will graduate with a sophisticated understanding of how to use Wikipedia both as a reader and as an active participant. Sign up is free.

This is an easy to use animation tool. Choose your objects from the bank on the site or upload your own. Then drag your items into place and select a point on the timeline and move the object again to set how the animation moves. You can include photos, shapes and text. Your creations can be published and shared or embedded online. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Video%2C+animation%2C+film+%26+Webcams

Must read letter over at Edweek from a mom of one child who died at Sandy Hook and one who survived... if you want to be affirmed and remember why you teach, this is the post you should share with everyone. "Your courage will support students who are left out and overlooked, like the isolated young man who killed my daughter. At some point he was a young, impressionable student, often sitting all alone at school. You will have kids facing long odds for whom your smile, your encouraging word, and your willingness to go the extra mile will provide the comfort and security they need to try again tomorrow. When you Google "hero," there should be a picture of a principal, a school lunch worker, a custodian, a reading specialist, a teacher, or a bus monitor. Real heroes don't wear capes. They work in America's schools. "When I asked my son's teacher why she returned, she responded, 'Because they are my kids.' " Being courageous requires faith. It took faith to go back to work at Sandy Hook after the shooting. Nobody had the answers or knew what would come tomorrow, but they just kept going. Every opportunity you have to create welcoming environments in our schools where parents and students feel connected counts."

Plan now to join in on an "hour of code" December 9-15. Even if you don't have computers or have limited access, there are options for you to host an event. (As a bonus, educators who register will receive 10GB of free storage for Dropbox.) Plan an event and plan now. There are great tutorials and information for all ages about this event December 9-15. Join in. "Even if you aren't a student, you can take the Hour of Code yourself during Dec. 9-15. And you can help us recruit others to join the movement - at school, in your workplace, in the community. If you are an educator, host the Hour of Code as an activity in your classroom. If you're an organizer or employer, host an Hour of Code event as a team-building exercise, after-school activity in a club, or elsewhere in your community. Click the appropriate tab, and start planning your Hour of Code!"

Ransomware is a new kind of malware. The worst Ransomware to hit in some time is the Crypto virus. This virus encrypts your hard drive and you have to send them a $300 certificate (untraceable) so they'll give you the encryption key to decrypt your drive and get your data back. In an interesting twist, the US government disabled the servers running this ransomware scan and now all of the people with the virus have no hope of getting their decryption keys. This is another reason you should be very careful NOT to open suspicious attachments even from legitimate sounding sources. (Many of these messages appeared to be from Fedex and UPS.) The greatest internet filter ever created is the human brain. Educate teachers and others - not through fear but through a skeptical empowerment that always thinks before it clicks and especially before it downloads.

If you want to record your Google hangouts and post to your YouTube channel, you need to get started with "Hangouts on Air." HEre's the page to get you started. Note that Google plus isn't available for Apps for education so you'll need to use your personal or another gmail account with a Google plus profile if you want to record and share your class hangouts.

In contrast to the digital footprint you use for your personal learning network, this focus is on the online digital footprint students' use in your science or math classroom. The power of a well designed digital footprint brings the capacity to transform a classroom into an online learning community. Within this community your students use digital tools to create and develop a personal learning network.

What is your life as a reader like? Do you read for work, pleasure, instructions or emails? What is your favorite author and/or genre? What is your favorite reading spot? What did you like to read when you were the age of your students?

How Cramberry Works Using Cramberry to study is simple. First, you create a blank "set" of flashcards. Cramberry will prompt you to give your set a name. All of your flashcards are stored in sets. Once you've created a blank set, Cramberry will help you add cards to the set. Adding cards with Cramberry is as simple as it is with traditional flashcards: just type in the text you want on the front and back of the card, and click on "add another card" to add another card to the set. Once you're satisfied with the amount of cards you have in your new set, click "finish". Once you've set up one or more sets with the cards you want to study, actually learning them is simple. Click the title of the set from the home screen, and you're off! Cramberry will present you with the front of a random card. Try to guess what is on the back of that card, and then click on the button to find out if your guess was correct. If it was, click "correct". If not, click "incorrect". As you continue studying, Cramberry will keep track of which cards you know, and help you learn the ones you don't.

New Diigo Pioneer badge

If you want more "bling" for your blog -- Diigo has a new program to recognize educational pioneers using Diigo. Since the beginning, Maggie Tsai has listened to educators (not just me) in amazing ways and this is great. If you have a classroom diigo group, then log into your teacher console and snag your "diigo educational pioneer" badge - I'm going to get mine!! We use diigo groups for all of my classes and we have tag dictionaries based upon the major topics we cover.

Grab your passports! Pack your Travel Trunks! Starting this month, October, and going all the way to March, we'll be sharing Travel Trunks showcasing six continents! Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America. Here on the Book-A-Trip wiki, we'll even share information about Antarctica. As your class explores the Travel Trunk for a continent, you'll be able to visit the Book-A-Trip wiki to share what you've learned! It's easy to do and a great way to find out what other students learn that you may have missed. Plus, your parents can visit too - I bet they know something about the continents...or do they? Let's get going!