Lots of research starting to come in that smartphones make great study helpers and curricular delivery tools. This from the Jacksonville daily news: "Onslow County students using smart phones in math courses not only outperformed their peers in math but also went on to take additional math courses. A Project K-Nect Evaluation Report, prepared by Project Tomorrow for Digital Millennial Consulting, noted that Onslow County Project K-Nect students - including students at Southwest and Dixon high schools - were more likely to achieve proficiency in algebra and algebra II than other students in their school district or state in the 2008-09 school year. Numbers for the 2009-10 school year will be released later this year."

Congratulations to Honor Moorman for her winning a PBS Teachers Award for her work with Flat Classroom.

Online collaborative research project by Dr. Leigh Zeitz with his masters students. Great sample for those looking for examples of this type of project at the masters level.

These are the revised wiki rubrics that I highly recommend using. They are on Flat Classroom 10-2.

This is how most teachers grade the wiki for this project.

Interesting how my quotes from my kindle are aggregated in one place on Amazon's website. This whole tweeting from Kindle thing is fascinating. Love the theme of this site "Read. Review. Remember."

Children have more access to cell phones than "books on paper." My answer - redefine books and deliver all educational content via handheld. Stop defining the future of our children with the tools of our past.

A website that many teachers are using to match up with other classrooms and skype and videoconference between them. Several teachers in Maine are doing this that I know of including Cherrie MacInnes. Great place to go!

Are your studetns ready to become eco-heroes? Sign up for this. "The Siemens Foundation, Discovery Education and the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) are partnering again this year to educate, empower and engage students and teachers nationwide to become "Agents of Change" in improving their communities through the Siemens We Can Change the World Challenge. This year the Challenge expands to high school, by inviting students in grades 9-12 to join the effort to meet the environmental challenges of our age. This new phase of the Siemens We Can Change the World Challenge kicks off today at an exclusive screening of Discovery Channel's new documentary LIFE at Philadelphia's renowned Franklin Institute in conjunction with the NSTA National Conference."

How students are linking to improve the world. Students studying social entrepreneurship as a video topic may want to view what they are doing here.

Article written in India newspaper about the Flat Classroom and Flat Classroom conference held in Mumbai. I loved this quote: "To become what the project aspires won't actualise without delivering on imperatives of access and inclusion. Consequently, the idea 'How can I include those who are not like me' underlined most discussions at the conference. There, says Davis, Web2.0, far from being a cultural flattener, is "a culture enhancing tool. It lets students who don't travel, travel virtually, and makes them see where cultural disconnects are happening." For a first-hand experience of these gaps, participants visited Akanksha and Aseema schools that reach out to the underprivileged. One Australian participant came back and told her remote virtual classmates: "Today I stepped through the gaps between the rich and the poor, from Aseema to ASB.""

My ninth graders have completed a module documenting how to do various tasks in OpenSim, the virtual world we use that is hosted by Reactiongrid. This wiki has the links, instructions, and other pages with tutorials on how to do various items. I was assessing this today and thought I'd pass it along as there is some great information to show you how to do things. (If you are a beginning second lifer you may also learn some things.)

Share this with your students who love video games. I love how Alfred shares his thoughts on the transition from gamer to game designer. This is a huge market especially as education moves to gaming platforms as well.

This blog post is from one of Microsoft's bloggers and helps students understand what is required to create video games versus just playing them. Fits in well with Flat Classroom.

Lots of my friends here on this agenda -- @Parentalla (Aparna Vashisht) {Her mother took us around India and is a delightful person} Kevin Jarrett @kjarrett, Lisa Nielsen @InnovativeEdu Mary Beth Hertz @mbteach Chris Lehman - @chrislehmann to name a few. So much fun! Also, my friend George Haines has his 8th grade students speaking - looking for them on the program as well. Of course Ivanka Trump and Anne Curry are also on the list. Have fun and good luck everyone!

This is upsetting. Flash mobs have traditionally been a lot of fun -- now they are violent teenage rampages. Some cities are outlawing them!

I love this article from Pennsylvania about Suzy Nestico's class participation in the Flat Classroom project and the Flat Classroom conference. Many in pennsylvania have struggled because of their restrictive rules. Suzy gets it done. "The Flat Classroom Project, cofounded by Julie Lindsay, Beijing, China and Vicki Davis, Camilla, Ga., speaks to the very heart of Pennsylvania's Classrooms for the Future initiative and 21st Century learning, Nestico said. It utilizes technologies such as a Ning and Wikispaces that allow students to collaborate with other students around the world to peer edit and design a variety of multimedia, despite location and cultural barriers, much like how the real world is starting to work. Each student works with an international partner to create a multimedia presentation based on one of the 10 "Global Economic Flatteners," as described by Thomas L. Friedman in his book "The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century." Nestico learned of the Flat Classroom concept while completing her master's degree in education at Wilkes University, and felt it would give her students an opportunity to explore cultural and political issues without ever having to leave home. After participating in the projects with multiple classes over the past year-and-a-half, new doors opened and, now, students are beginning to meet face-to-face, she said. Students are not just doing education, they are living it, creating it, and ultimately, reshaping what it will look like for others in the future, Nestico said." Great byline that gets to the heart of what we're doing.

While this article starts out about a lawfirm in Birmingham UK that is going to "track down people who make anonymous comments about companies online" it becomes an amazingly poignant article on the very nature of the Internet today and the push pull between anonymous commenting and accountability of the commenter. Push pull between free speech and online identity and brand protection. One person in this article claims that this sort of thing is the sign that the "wild west" of the INternet is coming to an end. Oh dear, I hope someone invents a new one if somehow anonymous commenters are now going to risk such! Also love the article's discussion of the Streisand effect wherein Barbara protested the sharing of some photos of her eroding beachfront which caused a stir and more people looking at the photos than if she had left it alone. This article is going to be a must read for Flat Classroom students and would be great for college-level discussions as well.

Important article that would make a great video story for someone predicting how the Internet is changing - with commenters being hunted down by companies!

If you want to know how one of the pro's makes and publishes podcasts, here is Wesley Fryer's how to - a must read for anyone working in this area of technology.

Another Comic location. This is supposed to have animated comics also as part of this.

New comic making web app which also has an i-pod compatible app. This lets you combine drawings, photos, and ready to use artwork to create caricatures. This is great. You can also mash up regular backgrounds with caricatures in the foreground.

Love how Tara in Bangkok, Thailand used Wordle to introduce books and then mashed up the words in voicethread. What a fascinatingly creative way to use these tools!