LIstening to Lauren Ferro talk about Gamer Types and how it relates to designing games for education in the OOC Hangout now. #gamifi-ed - Great article to read about this. They are relating player types to personality types as they design games. The four main types are :killers, achievers, explorers, and socializers. This is fascinating.

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.

What is going on with Mars? Certain times of the year dark streaks are appearing on the Mars surface that has scientists baffled. It isn't water. It contains iron. Join the mystery with your students as this is going to be a cool one, whatever the answer.

The mechanics of games that gamers use as they plan games and design them. I've learned about this from Ray Yan from Digipen in the Gamifi-ed OOC last week.

This website tracks deals and freebies for Kindle books. You can also upload your Wish list and it will tell you when the price drops or it goes free. It is really one of the easiest websites for tracking and finding good reading deals (that are worth your time.) Very cool site.

If you want to play my BAM Radio show in your Chrome browser, here's how you do it.

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.)

Having problems with Google hangout? Send this information to your network administrator with port information for the firewall that they'll need to know.

You can put graph paper on an Excel sheet. Here's how. Very cool.

Here are some vocabulary terms that you can teach your students relating to the Winter Olympics in Sochi via EnglishTeacherMelanie.com - very cool site.

This has to be the coolest app ever. Create a quiz on Quick Key and then you can print out a bubble sheet. Snap a picture of the quiz with your iphone and it will grade it for you! Wow. Just remember that if all you do is bubble in - you're probably not testing very well. Hat tip to Richard Byrne's Awesome Facebook page for this one! (Free Technology for Teachers)

Writing contest for Kindergartners through third grade from PBS.

So if you have wordpress and have several thousand posts, there are ways to reshare that content.

Get your artists to create a Doodle 4 Google! Entries are due March 20. Start doodling. They also have a Teachers Pack and other things that you will need to help participate. Remember that only one application per student is allowed but you can have an unlimited number from your school. The 50 state winners will be flown to Mountain View, California. I went there for Google Certified Teacher training and it was awesome.

This awesome website was found by my students. It is called "getting tricky with wikis" and has every trick you can imagine for making a wiki do cool things. I love how my students found this. I was in my classroom and kept going "wow, how did you do that." so, after two days of this project, they were blowing me away. That is because they've learned how to search for and find tutorials. Bookmark this one if you use wikispaces.

February 11, the Special Interest Group for Mobile Learning #sigml will be hosting tweetchats during the day about a variety of topics. Sylvia Martinez and I will be talking about the maker movement at 5 pm that day. Sylvia is coauthor of the amazing book "Invent2Learn" -- a must read for those interested in the maker movement. There are many others including Scott Merrick, Susan Wells and more who are sharing that day.

CO14 is happening this weekend and so many great people are presenting. It runs from February 7-9 and is free. My session is sharing how writing has been reinvented as I share the 9 tools that have changed how we teach forever (a sneak preview of my book coming out in May.) If you teach writing, work with curriculum or teach, feel free to join in. The session is at 8 am EST on Saturday morning, February 8. Anyone can join. Lots of amazing presenters are speaking so check it out.

A coding game for little kids. I don't know about teaching them to program before they learn to read, as it claims, but I do know that many are ready and moving head to teach their kids to code and that is awesome.

A website to share with health and PE teachers with games, videos and other activities to promote fitness.

Microsoft has announced an initiative as part of the ConnectED movement in the US. Here are the details: "Windows 8.1 Pro Operating System: One of the most powerful and flexible operating systems for education, it provides the ability for students and teachers to use education apps and Microsoft Office, search for information across their device and the web, and is optimized for touch, education apps, research, productivity and digital inking, critical keys to better learning outcomes. Office 365 Education Communication and Collaboration Tool: Email, sites, online and offline document editing and storage, IM, and web conferencing capabilities for all you students for free. Plus 5 copies of Office for free for more than 12 million students at qualified institutions. Partners in Learning Network Teacher Training and Resources: Partners in Learning provides educators with a network of nearly 1 million educators from 136 countries. It offers them a forum where they can share ideas, find free lesson plans to inspire classroom learning and develop professionally. Bing for Schools Ad-free search: An ad-free digital literacy platform aimed at helping students learn important digital skills based on access to a connected computing device, daily common-core aligned lesson plans, and a safe, private environment where search history will not be mined for data. Student training and resources: Microsoft IT Academy: For roughly 2,000 high-needs schools, Microsoft is providing academic institutions and their educators, students, and staff with digital curriculum and certification for fundamental technology skills. Affordable Broadband from EveryoneOn: A critical component to connected learning, Microsoft's non-profit partner EveryoneOn is offering home Internet service for as low $10 to the 36 million Americans living in low-income communities."