Google for Educators launches Geo Education today! Cool. It includes information on Google EArth, Maps, Sky, and Sketcup and lesson plans from teachers. It also includes tips on getting started with these tools in your classroom. As you plan your summer PD, Geography teachers simply must get this on their list for fall!

Geo Education launghces today

Free book for teacher and librarians -- it is supposed to be a good book, available to download free.

If you want a free copy of this book and are a teacher or librarian, follow the instructions on this page. Interesting idea. This book is by Cory Doctorow about altnernate gaming and this is a novel that argues that hackers and gamers are the USA's "best hope for the future." Download the book for free here, or you can request the book for your school. I haven't read it yet -- have any of you?

Voting in yet ANOTHER blog award.

I've heard of like 4 of these blogs up for the best educational blog. Maybe I'm just as out of it as I feel.

Conference for educational bloggers -- too bad it is in the waning weeks of the school year.

Join thought leaders in education policy and national politics to discuss how the Internet is changing the discourse of education reform, and how those changes are affecting the 2008 presidential election. ED in '08 welcomes ed-bloggers and political bloggers to take part in the discussion. I'm glad the "thought leaders" in American can come, however, the timing of this conference precludes most teachers I know from even considering coming we're all in the "home stretch" and rarely are we able to leave the classroom, especially this time of year. I would hope that one day the edublogosphere would truly level us so that teachers would be included in these discussions. For, until that happens, I doubt we'll find any truly relevant change for the classroom.. just more buzzwords and "programs" that don't suit today's student. Hint: If you want reform, ask some good teachers or at least include them in the discussion. There are some big picture thinkers out there that ARE teachers in the public classroom.

Program during May to promote effective comments and communications in the blogosphere.

the 31 day comment challenge is a program to promote effective, meaningful comments run by several amazing edubloggers -- this is an example of something that those interested in facilitating effective communications should discuss and participate in.

This post is one I made on blogging - I'm going to update it, but it is still one that I think is useful for bloggers.

Tips on how to blog.

Information on the skills that bloggers should use to increase traffic and contribute to their field of interest.

Excellent overview by Bud the Teacher on what is happening at the National Writing project events this weekend and reflections on the areas he is wanting to learn more about.

This is the best example of how professional development works.

I love this post. This is how Web 2.0 spreads. I want to quote from the author: "Then I showed him wikispaces and the lightbulb went off. In a voice full of what I can only describe as awe, he said, and I'm paraphrasing him, "This could change the way we teach." (Cue the heavenly music). While I was showing him each tool, we discussed how he could integrate it into his teaching practices. I know I probably overwhelmed him, but he's excited and energetic. He left with a brand new Google account and having created his classroom wiki. That and he's vowed to share what he's learned with his fellow teachers. Here's hoping this goes viral - if at least a little." I love it. It is the one on one time and the lights go off. This is how it works best. we need to have more one on one time planned in order to promote change. People want the attention -- no one likes to feel like an underappreciated cog in an overworked machine.

Opportunity for teachers to become involved in a global collaborative project by being a judge. Definitely a best practice to review.

This fascinating project needs judges (oh and horizon still does too!) -- hat tip to David Warlick for this link. The student web site entries are due in tomorrow (April 2) for the 2008 competition, and ThinkQuest needs people to judge these entries. To be a judge, you must be employed as a teacher or have a minimum of five years experience in the field of education; be proficient in the English language; and be able to, and have the time to evaluate and score websites based on the provided criteria.

Tutorials about how we share video and overcome the "youtube barrier."

This page outlines how we are sharing video on the Horizon project this year. After literally hours of testing to overcome the "youtube barrier" we have worked out how to use Ning as our video sharing and embedding platform. Using tools like a firefox plug in that allows downloading of any video AND zamzar, these 7 videos literally show you how you may "snag" and edit any video. Just remember to follow copyright laws when you do this. This innovation was quite an epiphany for us and the videos were our effort to make it easy and take the video sharing aspect of the project out of the teacher's hands.

This webinar is Monday about Web 2.0 and I'm co-presenting. If you attend, you'll receive a 3 month free trial subscription to Atomic Learning. Preregister here. This will give you access to the series I did on Web 2.0 and how to set up an RSS reader, etc. Also, the new one I've done on Flattening your classroom will be available as well.

This webinar Monday has free three month subscription to Atomic Learning attached to it.

Business people and management should read this article about the transformation of business by using workplace communities. "Workplace communities are designed to solve workplace-related challenges" -- they focus on tasks. I would find it interesting to see a business REALLY use technology to change things. Having the business in a business network (OK a NING) and let people tag their posts with the business related PROBLEMS they are having and blog, video, or photograph it-- the tag cloud would tell the business IMMEDIATELY what the problems are in the company. The problem with this model is that there are few corporate executives who REALLY want to know the problems within their organizations. They don't want to be problem solvers, just opportunity creators. However, when managers open their eyes (and I'm a former General Manager myself) and see that two things give business opportunity: problem solving and innovation. And they are directly related. True innovation solves problems. Read this article and think about how you may solve problems using the networks you may now create. If you don't want everyone to know, keep it private and only allow people in your company in.

Using mashups is going to become an essential skill, I believe. Students should understand what they are.

Microsoft Popfly lets you make mashups and build web pages without knowing code. I am to the point I don't teach the detailed web site creation coding I used to. I teach RSS, embedding, creating wikis, uploading media of all kinds, but I just don't know how important coding is any more at the basic level. I want to spend some time tinkering with this.

Information on popfly and windows live writer and how it may be used in the classroom. Cool post.

This is a fascinating blog post about how Alfred Thompson used PopFly to create a mashup activity for a classroom demo for teachers. He also took this document from word into Live writer to make a blog post. It is important to look at many ways to do things. I found this information very insightful and cool.

I spent the day with Emily Vickery, the teacher/administrator at Montgomery Academy in AL, responsible for their PD. This is her wiki, where she shares with others at the school what they are doing. We talked about using RSS and diigo to give links. She is doing great work and will be presenting at NECC on July 2nd -- her students are going with her!

Wiki from Montgomery Academy-- teaching others at the academy how to use 21st century tools.

Intel Mashmaker is a tool that you download and "mashup" sites together. It is supposed to allow average everyday people to be able to mashup google sites, flickr, almost anything with what programmers call an api.

This is an amazing description of what is happening at Suffern Middle School, one of the leaders in the digital revolution.

Kevin Jarrett talks about his week at one of the leaders in innovative technology, suffern Middle School. An excellent read to see what this digital revolution is all about. Wow!

Conferences are setting up social networks as a best practice. As these handy sites go mainstream, effective use of such networks seems to be increasingly an important understanding for students as behavior on these sites is very different from the "social" social networks in their personal lives.

Excellent article for conference organizers from David Warlick. He has some great recommendations and links to the works from a conference in California this week. Conferences are setting up social networks as a best practice. As these handy sites go mainstream, effective use of such networks seems to be increasingly an important understanding for students as behavior on these sites is very different from the "social" social networks in their personal lives.

Link to page for bloggers to get Brittanica for free.

Link to the page for bloggers to get Brittanica for free from Brittanica webshare.