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Socrative has even more cool features. Richard Byrne gives an overview on on of my favorite blogs, Free Tech for Teachers. "Socrative's new image option could be great for asking mathematics questions that are diagram based. The image option could also be great for world languages teachers to post a picture of an object that students have to identify in the language that they're learning. And the new automatic grading option could save you a ton of time that you can then invest in something else. "

There's a new "cable tv" in town... YouTube. That's right. YouTube may be launching paid premium channels this week. It will be quite interesting to see what happens if a video goes viral behind a paywall and if the free-for-all online video network will disenfranchise its netizens or if youth will take their game elsewhere. Of course, YouTube must continue to monetize and make development of content worth it for their content creators, but it will be interesting to see what happens, particularly with new networks like Vine cropping up around sharing video.

A nice reflection on what is happening to reading with Common Core. I find the overemphasis on literary nonfiction problematic, unless, the fact that math and history are primarily nonfiction allows literature to remain 60-70% fiction, however, for those schools who just have "reading" in literature (that would be sad), this is going to have issues. This is a great read. "The CCSS mandates that by the end of high school, 70% of what students read should be informational texts -- specifically, complex and non-narrative literary nonfiction. Furthermore, students should be able to identify central ideas and articulate their development, summarize, analyze, draw inferences, identify an author's purpose, evaluate the effectiveness of rhetorical features, and figure out the meaning of words. In short, the CCSS has reclaimed a technique popular in the 1940s, close reading, or sustained interpretation of, in particular, the wording of a text."

This is a truly amazing iPad app and 'soon to be launched' download for PCs which replaces a whole TV crew and studio. Capture your video and audio use like adjusting the sound levels, an in-build teleprompter and green screen effects to make spectacular footage. Edit your video directly in the app and add images, websites and Twitter feed as cutaways sections of the screen. You can publish online and export to YouTube. Download the app at https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/touchcast/id603258418 http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Video%2C+animation%2C+film+%26+Webcams

As much as possible my wife and I try  and engage our children in as many different activities as we can; whether it be rock pooling on South Wales beaches in the rain, feeding the animals at a local farm or watching the fantastic Balloon display at Bristol Balloon Fiesta...

Scott McLeod has pulled out a set of five slides about education from the Flickr pool about "Great Quotes about Learning and Change" that are worth reading. They would make great fodder for discussions. My favorite is the first one. "The danger of lectures is that they create the illusion of teaching for teachers, and the illusion of learning for learners." Albert Camus

Don't collect personal data in Google forms!

This is a link to San Diego Zoo where you can view live video feeds of animals in their enclosures, including elephants and pandas. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Science

A fun strategy game where players must cut ropes to feed the little creature. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Educational+Games

Evernote and Moleskin announce the new smartnotebook which is very cool. While you can already snap pictures of notes to Evernote - this notebook has small dots that adjust the page to make it square and remove distortion. It includes stickers that will tag the pages for you and add emphasis and included in the price of the notebook ($30) is a free subscription to Evernote premium for 3 months. I love evernote and while their tech support leaves a lot to be desired (it took me 6 months to figure out how to fix an installation glitch which was answered by another user on their forum after Evernote kept telling me just to use Revo uninstaller) -- it can't be beat for usefulness - that is why it is one of the few apps I am willing to pay for. I'll definitely be asking for this notebook for Christmas to try it out. Hope the price comes down a tad, though.

Winner of the most influential post for edublog awards. A great post teaching children how to comment on posts. Educators around the world refer to this post.

Transmitting data via LED lightbulbs tops this list of 8 technologies from mashable.

27% of photos taken this year were taken on smartphones. I am not sure why schools are banning cell phones and buying cameras.

As some of you experience Microsoft's super cool Kinect system for the first time, you'll be thrilled to know this tool is being used in school as well. Here, my go to Microsoft blogger And dear friend Alfred Thompson gives an overview of Kinect in education.

Many educational journals like this one have RSS feeds to notify you when new research comes out. If you want to keep up with research, I highly recommend you use an RSS reader. I use Google reader on my computer and Mr. Reader on my ipad (because it integrates with Diigo.)

Great article by Seth Godin. We need to apply this to education. If people remember the last thing - are we giving them a great final experience in high school. Most likely -- no. "[One really important amplification: Research shows us that what people remember is far more important than what they experience. What's remembered: --the peak of the experience (bad or good) and, --the last part of the experience. The easiest way to amplify customer satisfaction, then, is to underpromise, then increase the positive peak and make sure it happens near the end of the experience you provide. Easy to say, but rarely done.]"  - Seth Godin

A great tutorial on how to set up a Twitter account from @mrrobbo . He targeted the information to PE teachers but really, any teacher who wants to start using twitter would benefit from this. If you are a PE teacher, you'll want to follow @ThePEGeekApps to find new apps to use in your health and physical education courses.