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There is no reason to deny that WordPress is world's favourite blogging software and there are many sites out there who publish great wordpress tutorials, following these tutorials one can easily learn wordpress in no time. Here is my list which is divided into different categories, each list is arranged in way that it goes from basics to advanced level. Hope you have a great time learning them.

I've been turning tweets that have had the most shares and favorites into photos for two reasons: 1) to test photo makers and 2) to satisfy my own curiosity if it is true that pictures travel further than text these days. Here's one that reached almost 100,000 people on Twitter. The exact tweet was "My wish for children is 1 to 1. Every 1 to have 1 person who loves them. Be the one, teacher. Be the one." Hope this encourages you as you share.

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.

"Investigators determined that intervention to counteract friends' influence may have more of an effect in junior high than in high school, and that parents remain influential on smoking behavior through high school - indicating another possible intervention target. "Based on social developmental model research, we thought friends would have more influence on cigarette use during high school than junior high school," said first author Yue Liao, M.P.H., Ph.D. "But what we found was friends have greater influence during junior high school than high school. We think the reason may be that friends' cigarette use behavior may have a stronger influence on youth who start smoking at a younger age. During high school, cigarette use might represent the maintenance of behavior rather than a result of peer influence."

Testing students over material that is NOT in the curriculum is not fair. I think that states should have a way to mark things not covered and just take the hits across the board for not having it in their curriculum instead of causing children to suffer through feeling ignorant. Common Core may be great, however, if it isn't in the curriculum it is unfair and shouldn't be done. What can we do? Do we cause children to stress out unfairly because adults can't get their act together or it takes time to change the curriculum? I don't know the answers, but the thought of a child looking at a test and knowing that some things didn't happen in the classroom and the impact of "feeling dumb" that will happen just turns my stomach, literally.  From the NEw York Times. " And they are likely to cover at least some material that has yet to make its way into the curriculum. The new tests, given to third through eighth graders, are intended to align with Common Core standards, a set of unified academic guidelines adopted by almost every state and goaded by grant money offered by the Obama administration. They set more rigorous classroom goals for American students, with a focus on critical thinking skills, abstract reasoning in math and reading comprehension."

"But even by reasonable standards, the nation's educational outcomes are not in much better shape than they were in 1983. Whether we're looking at overall scores or at achievement gaps, the trend lines for NAEP, the so-called Nation's Report Card, generally show a post-reform picture that looks pretty much like the pre-reform picture - with positive trend lines but apparent slowing after 1990. There is no way to tease those data into showing that test-based accountability reform is accomplishing its key learning goals."

Texas is going to cut down testing. This is a wise move for many reasons. Some states are cutting out teachers and the same time increasing spending on test taking. Such decisions harm learning no matter what test you take. ""Testing companies are in the business of making a profit, but let's not confuse their mission - their mission is to create as many tests as they can and then grade them at as little cost as possible," the chairman of the Senate Education Committee, Dan Patrick, Republican of Houston, said Tuesday at a hearing on a comprehensive education bill that would reduce the number of high-stakes tests students must pass to graduate."

There are some cool new features in the Kindle app - in addition to xray and notebook (previous feature upgrades) you have multi-colored highlighting, brightness sync across devices and a prompt to rate a book when finished (I like this one because, perhaps, more REAL people will rate amidst many book reviewers who are either biased for or against an author for undisclosed reasons.) Update that iOS or Droid Kindle app or whatever device it is on. 

COPPA is a reason that many schools shy away from having any children under 13 participate in online sites, however, NeoPets is a website that has done this. This is a copy of their COPPA consent form. In here, you can see how they've tracked and worked with this permission. It does require the parents to fill out and fax or mail the form in to NeoPets to allow children to use the communications portion of the website. This would be a website to review if you're looking at creating a portal or service that allows kids under 13 to post and communicate in ways that tracks their data. I am wondering if Facebook would eventually do something like this or if they will continue to create an environment that encourages children to lie to get on their platform. (i.e. under 13 not allowed)

"A talking mat to encourage reasoning in maths lessons through oracy. The mat features a range of sentence stems to guide children."

"During one of the standard visits to see family and friends recently, I came across a childhood game that had captured the imaginations of many a youngster in my generation…Scalextrics! A friend of mine had bought the classic car racing game for his five-year old son and I could not turn down the opportunity of a race…with the reasoning of showing my 11-month old daughter how it works ***cough, cough***."

Reddit is increasingly a site where technology news breaks as well as having a tight integration with top technology sites like Twit.tv (they use Reddit to curate topics for the show.) This app is the highest recommended app for using reddit on the ipad and for that reason I've installed it.

Julie and I spent some time with Silvia Tolisano talking about global collaboration, telling the story of how the flat classroom started and why we kept it going and the reason for the book. Also we snuck into the things shared in the book that we hope will help those involved in global education make it scalable and consistent. Probably the most fun was our discussion near the end about how Silvia and I "met" online and how we covered ISTE2006 from afar on our computers (pre twitter.) it was a fun talk.

What will people say about you as a principal or leader when you are gone? Here is a touching post written by a technology teacher in mourning. I also want to point out that this is one case that spammy comment scumbags make me mad. Add your kind comment of condolence so a good person can be remembered well. I hope the author will take off the spammy comments. (This I one reason I love Disqus, which can be added to just about any blog. I stops the comment spammers cold.)

I love Goodreads and now have a reason to go back more often. Here is how you can integrate it into your Facebook with the new Open graph service. This may become the book review mechanism of the future, linking with our friends.

Jenny Luca writes a powerful post about why her school has students blogging and creating efolios.

Volkskwagen agrees to turn of blackberries after hours as part of a union agreement. While I don't know a lot of teachers connected via blackberries,I do personally know the complexities of global collaboration in schools. We must learn to balance work and home and know when to disconnect but then again, a work environment can become so fast paced that everyone seems to expect the others that they should work 24/7. Yet another reason to advocate checking email 2-3 times a day - let everyone know when you will be available and stick to the schedule.

"For these reasons, the U.S. Department of Education's Connected Educators initiative is launching Connected Educator Month in August 2012. Throughout August, there will be coordinated opportunities to participate in events and activities in dozens of online locations to develop skills and enhance one's personal learning network."