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Dr. Bonk's new book is out and it is excellent (yes, I have a preview copy.) It has a delightful overview of what is happening with technology and global collaboration (and includes flat classroom and also a sidebar about how Dr. Bonk and I met at GAETC two years a go - kind of humorous.) Excellent book that I highly recommend, or you may want to take a look at these webcasts, webinars, free resources and podcasts about it as well. Dr. Curtis Bonk is also known a s Travelinedman

Excellent overview of Rupert Murdoch's taking on of Google and that they should not index his sites, even though he can easily opt out of indexing, that they are somehow demonetizing his work by searching since he wants to "reduce his audience to those who will pay" not "increase his audience." This is a fascinating read and case study for those following Fair Use.

One of my students turned up this information that Facebook is working on controls to help kids under 13 use the service. It is no surprise that 7.5 million Facebook users are under the age of 13 and that 5 million of THOSE are 10 years old or younger. COPPA, while set up to protect children, is actually keeping them from participating in society as they want to. This infographic and information is worth sharing as you educate your students. If you want until they are 13 to talk safety online, that is too late. "Last June, Consumer Reports magazine said they had unearthed "several disturbing findings" about children and Facebook, including: 20 million minors had used Facebook within the year prior to their study. 7.5 million of those users were under the age of 13 and not permitted to use the site. 5 million of those were 10 years old or younger. 1 million children had been harassed, threatened, or subjected to other forms of cyberbullying in the year prior."

You might think this is dumb, but I don't for one reason. If you look at the various senses, smell is one of the most powerful. I recall reading a study stating that if students smelled a certain smell in math class and smelled that same smell as they took the math tests, that they scored better. You can literally recall a smell years later. It is one of the most basic senses. So, although some think the smell-o-vision talked about in this Gizmodo article is "dumb" I know that there will be applications in education (and sales, most likely - just travel to the mall and smell the smells they pump out front of a Cinnabon or Starbucks.) Smell is powerful but it will likely be a bit more time until the practical applications come to market.

Wesley Fryer is not only a great educator but a great man. Here he shares how he and other men went into the Cushing Oklahooma correction facility and helped dads record messages to their children for Father's day. What a great thing to do. Part of my own faith is the forgiveness that we can receive and as people we must forgive and encourage those who have made mistakes. If you don't make a mistake ignore this post, if you do, then consider bringing something like this to your area. Great work, Wes. I hope our PLN's share this message far and wide. "This is a 14 minute video reflection by Wesley Fryer, who volunteered with Redeeming the Family on May 15, 2013, at the Cimarron Correctional Facility (prison) in Cushing, Oklahoma. Oklahoma currently has 17 prisons, and Cimarron is one of three which is privately operated. Corrections Corporation of America has owned and operated this prison commercially since 1997. Last week Redeeming the Family volunteers assisted 50 incarcerated dads to record video messages of love for their children, which will be mailed to their children before Father's Day on Sunday, June 16th."

This is a discussion to have with all IT integrators. Many adopt the attitude of leaving the hibernating bear alone. After all, eventually, the resistant teacher will come out of the den ready to enjoy the springtime of learning? No. Not necessarily. But technological change is as much emotional and psychological as it is instruction. If you don't first have the teacher in the mood to learn, you'll be struggling. So, be careful of labeling the teacher as resistant in the first place and be willing to teach and encourage the teacher wherever he/she is. This is a nice article from Elena Aguilar. Check out part 2 after reading this one.

Can you design a school to promote healthy eating? There are things every cafeteria can do (read to the end.) This is a big problem and something we need to address. Every school should have a fruit basket near the checkout. It is a no brainer, but do we? "Just walk into the cafeteria and you can see this is no ordinary elementary school. "One of the most striking differences is the openness of the eating space," said pediatrician Dr. Matthew Trowbridge, who also consulted on the project. Students can look into the area where the food is prepared, and they can look outside to a planned school garden, where vegetables will soon be planted."

Nice article at edweek about the informational texts versus great works of literature debate and what Common Core will do to lit. The one important, practical issue that all parties to this discussion MUST recognize - the classroom time is FINITE. Teachers would love to cover EVERYTHING but it just isn't practical. So, if one thing is emphasized over another, it may push something out. Unintended consequences are happening as people "align" their curriculum to common core standards. As all of the pundits and advocates argue this, it would be telling to sit down with an actual aligned curriculum to SEE what happens where the standards meet the lesson plans and what is actually pushed out - until then - it is all, rhetoric. Give us practical application, we're teachers, after all. From the edweek article: "Until recently, the closest we'd come to a major speech on the nonfiction-versus-fiction question was a piece in the Huffington Post by the English/language arts standards' co-authors, David Coleman and Sue Pimentel, insisting that literature "is not being left by the wayside." The message to rally the troops must have gone out, however. Because since the Coleman/Pimentel piece appeared, the common core's defenders have stepped up to counterbalance the literature-pushout crowd. The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation's Kathleen Porter-Magee, for instance, posted a piece arguing that it's a misinterpretation of the standards to say that teachers will have to teach less literature. In a recent email blast, the Foundation for Excellence in Education-led by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, one of the common core's biggest backers-declaimed the "misinformation flying around" about what will happen to literature under the common standards. "Contrary to reports," it said, "classic literature will not be lost with the implementation of the new standards." A glance at the standards' own suggested text lists, it noted, "reveals that the common core recognizes the importance of b

As some friends and I have been talking on my Facebook fanpage about how much grading and planning we're doing over Winter break, Chris Fancher shared his wish for teachers on the page which relates. While I don't agree that kids are "{products" I do know that I have to spend quite a bit of extra time to have any hope of considering myself a good teacher. It is a thought provoking read challenging us to be more. WE're all getting so much out of Twitter (many of us are) and the off-time things we're doing and sharing, so you might want to think about it and read his post. Chris says: "My wish for 2013 is that the 2 or 3 teachers who read this go out and find someone on their campus who they can get together with outside of "normal" hours.  Then these same teachers need to get on twitter and find a group of teachers who is on twitter at times they are on and are willing to interact and help with plans and ideas.  Then these same teachers need to pick one day a week when they can devote to a twitter chat and start being an active participant. My wish is that every student has a teacher who is willing to do whatever it takes to make sure they are receiving the best education available. "

I totally agree, students should learn programming and be exposed to it. I love Kevin Jarrett's STEM lab and what he's doing. Read this and discuss. It doesn't matter if you don't know how to code or if your teachers are afraid they are going to have to learn. Make it a priority. If you want to add volleyball, you find someone to coach it. If you want to add programming, find someone to teach it, it is that simple. I think this model of "everyone integrates" is great b/c everyone SHOULD integrate but to think or fantasize that technology integration is the same as teaching Computer Science is to think that a kind who can skate is ready to drive a car - not even in the same ballpark.

There continues to be a problem that not all books in the Amazon kindle store have real page numbers. If students are expected to cite sources and not allowed to use location numbers, then Amazon can expect the pushback seen on this forum post. Meanwhile, a helpful person on the forum has noted how you can know what to read on the Kindle if your professor or teacher says "read page 80-92" - you can dive into the table of contents on the website and save a copy. This is the only solution. It is time for Amazon to get their act together and have all Kindle ebooks display page numbers if there is a printed copy of the book. If there is not a printed copy of the book, there needs to be a consistent reference point or "page" that all can use for sourcing and citing content. "1. Look up the book in the in the Amazon Kindle store (where you purchased it). 2. Click on the book where it says "Look Inside." You want to look at the table of contents, which will have the pages numbers for each chapter. 3. It defaults to the "kindle edition," which does not have the page numbers in the table of contents. However, there is a tab above that says "Print Book." Click on that. 4. Once you're on the "Print Book" display, it shows the page numbers in the TOC. By doing the above, I was able to determine that "the first 26 pages" = Chapters 1 & 2. I used Evernote to take a screen capture of the entire TOC, which I'll refer back to."

This is how you link to a specific starting point in a YouTube video. Basically, just add #t=XmYs to the end of the video URL.  X is the number of minutes and Y is the seconds you want skipped when the video is viewed.

Right after posting this, I realized there is now a Share option on the YouTube site that you can use to make this even easier. While viewing the YouTube video: 1) pause the video at the point where you want others to start watching, 2) click the Share button, 3) click options (directly under the link), 4) put a check in the Start at box, and finally 5) copy the link provided by YouTube. Note that you can also type in the start at time as minutes:seconds. The #t part of the link that makes the video start at the spot you specified is included in the link.

Quora is a website where people ask questions. It seems that it is growing in popularity. Some talk about pinterest, however, with the wiki-type of answering system, this slick way to ask and answer questions is going to be a platform that becomes familiar. This information is how to get started on Quora. This is the kind of website educators seem to be getting into.

This is a fun, cute, social 3D island world designed especially with children in mind. Children make an avatar and follow a quick tutorial and explanation of safety rules. The children can take their characters on quests, play educational games and interact with other users of the site. A fabulous feature of the site is that users are encouraged to 'make and do' offline as well. These activities can be uploaded to a scrapbook and multimedia blog. Offline activities also generate points in the game. The scrapbook is defaulted to private and no photos of children will be approved by moderators if the scrapbook is public. All the usual safety features are in place, including a 'report' and 'block' other users button. The basic account with most features is free, but there are optional 'paid for' extras. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

Finland is an innovator in education and now they're doing it again. Schools need a facelift. If you're building a new school - rethink school. I'd look at the designs. Also, Ewan McIntosh wrote a great "7 spaces of schools" that is in the "Choice" chapter for those of you have bought my book Flattening Classroom, Engaging Minds - he talked about this on a boat in South Africa with me 2 years a go and is an expert to follow in the area of school design. "Finnish students consistently have placed among the top countries on the Program for International Student Assessment, which gauges 15-year-old students' ability to understand and transfer concepts in reading, mathematics, and science. For example, in the most recent mathematics assessment, in 2009, Finnish students scored 54 points higher than their American peers on a scale of zero to 1,000. Pasi Sahlberg, the director general of the Center for International Mobility and Cooperation at Finland's education ministry, attributes the nation's academic achievement to a three-fold approach: quality of the academic curriculum, equity in educational access, "and the third one is the environment. How the environment and design of the school is supporting students' learning. When we combine these three things we can say something about the overall goodness of the school system."

A new study shows most professors are afraid of elearning and the growth of online courses. I predict that in 4-5 years the same will be true of traditional classroom teachers. The fact is that we all must be innovative and learn to teach in blended and online environments. Change creates victims and victors - with great change comes great opportunity. The one thing I can promise is if you do nothing and ignore it, you'll not be on the winning side. Learn. Connect. The Flat Classroom is a fact and it is here -- we're doing it in k12 and it is about to grow exponentially. After schools flip they're going to flatten. One leads to the other.

Many students are not globally competent. This includes geography, current issues, and how to connect globally and is all what flattening the classroom is about. It is essential that your students connect with the world. This infographic is one to share with your school board and parents, both of whom are often reticent to connect students because of fear. They are asking the wrong questions. Not, "what are we keeping out" but "who are we bringing in?" Where are we connecting? It is time to flatten the classroom. (See flatclassroombook.com for more info.)

I'm speaking Monday at 4 pm as part of Blackboard Collaborate's distinguished lecture series. It is a free webinar and this is the link to go to to register. This is what and how I teach my students online and prepare them to present online. Every student is required to present online twice a year in my computer science class and once a year in my 9th grade computer fundamentals. IT is just as important as face to face presenting and in some ways could be more important as it could potentially have more reach for my students.

This is a course for Spring Branch isD which uses a blog as the framework. I also love how 9 hours of professional development is being given for the educators in this course. We need more embedded PD that gives teachers an opportunity to embed their learning in their daily activity. Embedded PD is the key to transformational learning. While there is a time and place for getting away, we have traditionally only used that "away" method when we also need to use the "learn right here" method of delivery as well. Take a look at what Karen is doing here as you evaluate your pd delivery methods.