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Tchat is an excellent place to have a live tweet with other educators about a topic. Here you can ask questions, share websites, share ideas, and interact with other individuals in live time.

Tchat is an excellent place to have a live tweet with other educators about a topic. Here you can ask questions, share websites, share ideas, and interact with other individuals in live time.

Lacie, I also have t chat on one of my lists! I decided not to share it, assuming that you would. It really is a great tool. It makes it so much easier than just trying to follow along on your everyday twitter feed. Tweet chats can get going pretty fast and can get hard to follow, this makes it a little easier by putting it in it's own little world to follow along with.

Blog to follow by Devin Schoening, Instructional Tech leader in the Council Bluffs Community School District.

Steps to integrate technology in the classroom, apps, websites, lessons. IWB, computer, laptop cart, mobile devices.

This is a great resource! I actually just found this website today myself. I will have to follow them on Twitter. I like this article because it puts the ideas into a bulleted list. This way you can see the main points they want to make. I have found that I really like that about articles on Edutopia. What a great, teacher centered, article!

Alexis, I think this is a great resource for integrating technology in the classroom. I really like that it includes specific ideas and examples. While this resource is primarily aimed at teachers, the examples are definitely aimed at developing student activities. As a teacher, this is a great starting point for beginning technology integration. Edutopia seems to be a great resource overall, and I enjoyed looking through some of their other articles as well!

article discussing different ways in which twitter can be used in the classroom

Sarah, Thank you for sharing this article. Twitter exploded last year in my district, especially at the high school, as a form of communication for everyone. The middle school, where I am primilary at, is slowly catching on. However, I LOVE Twitter as a professional resource. I think it is like a social bookmarker. I can share the websites, and then go back when I have time to explore them more. I agree this can be used in my library to be an effective communication tool for both students and staff. I believe this resource can be used for both students and staff, but they have different purposes. As a professional, using hashtags can be very benefical to find information. It can also be a great way to network, using the Twitter Chats that go on all around the United States and the world. Students can use this to communicate. For example, the students wanted to have a blue out in honor of a student who has cancer at the football game last night. They asked the opposing team to join them in wearing blue to honor a young man who is fighting for his life. They did, and they donated an additional $425 because they found that information on Twitter! I am not aware of other resources that do that same thing. I believe Twitter is unique with their limit of 140 characters and the strong hashtag movement they begun all throughout the internet world.

Emma, are you in Clinton? I heard about the "blue out"! I like to use Twitter for mainly professional use, but that varies from anywhere between retweeting professional articles to reminding the study body to buy their yearbooks. I try to throw in some personal stuff every now and again just to show that their teacher is an actual human, too. :)

Social media in higher ed from recruitment to classroom use including a study using social media for an Italian course.

Thanks for sharing. I like the example of how the Italian teacher used Twitter to promote confidence in her students. Very cool! I think that social media is a great tool for both teachers and students, and I have been trying to use social media more in my own classroom. The tough part for me is that my students are in 6th grade, and I'm not sure that they are old enough to be using social media. Most of them have Instagram, but not Twitter or Facebook. I use Twitter and Facebook to reach out to parents who want to keep up with what's going on in my class, but my students want me to create an Instagram account! I'm trying to figure out how to make 2 Instagram accounts (one for professional use, one for personal use). I don't think I am able to do this, so I haven't reached out to my students via social media yet. Our form of "social media" has been Google Classroom.

Interesting article. I totally agree with the importance of "branding." I know our school newspaper is working right now on rebranding itself to get more recognition, and social media is a big part of that. We try to have a strong presence on our yearbook's Twitter account so that we can build followers and get more kids involved. I also think that we as educators have great things going on in our classrooms and schools daily, and that a school that embraces social media has a leg up on being able to show themselves off! Our principal always says that kids and families "vote with their feet," meaning "Are they coming to our school or going to another school in town?" When we can show off the good things about our school on social media, I think that gives us an edge. :) Thanks!

Richard Byrne is a teacher who blogs about different technology tools that are out there for teachers. His tips are usually quick reads and very easy to follow. He posts approximately once daily. Excellent resource!

This site has great resources that can be used in my classroom. One post from this blog is about "How to share videos through Google drive". At times students have an assignment where they have to create a video and it would be easier for them to submit the video to me through Google drive instead of posting it on a public site. This resource could be equally useful for teachers. Teachers can share videos with students or with colleagues through Google drive. Similar resources could be dropbox and learning management systems such as e-learning, Canvas or Blackboard.

This is an awesome blog for teachers! It seems that most of these tools can easily be used for teachers in the classroom. I would definitely like to use some of this technology anyway. It really is geared towards educators and it is nice that they are quick to read for those teachers who don't have much free time.

Blog to follow for ideas to incorporate more and improve practice.

Techissues

This helps me organize my hashtags to find information.

1. I would use TweetDeck in my classroom in terms of finding and following people/organizations on Twitter. I personally do NOT want to follow my students on Twitter, however :-) 2. I think the resource is mostly for teacher use. While it could be used by students, I am not sure how I would integrate a tool like this into my classroom instruction (especially since I cannot control what is posted by others to make sure the information is appropriate to my audiences). 3. There are other resources that can do similar things - a cursory search of the App Store provides access to both free and paid alternatives.

I can see this being used in the classroom to help send out updates on what is going on that day. I believe that this could be used best for teacher usage to mainly do pictures and to give recognition to someone that might have done something cool and unique that day.

This is a great learning website that is completely free. They have various educational topics for all different age groups.

I also just recently started using Khan academy with my students. Even though we follow a constructivist approach to teaching math, this resource has been helpful for my kids who need procedural examples. Plus sometimes it is more engaging to listen to someone else teach it!

I do like the free aspect of Khan Academy - due in part to funding by The Gates Foundation. I love the variety of topics available, and the ability to engage in "hip pocket learning" whenever I wish. Honestly, I am sad that Bank of America has become a sponsor of Khan Academy, however. It seems like they would have less of an interest in learning for learning's sake.

This is a great blog to follow, if you are worried about becoming boring in the classroom. Shawn will raise a lot of common questions and situations that occur in education and make you think about challenging the status quo. It is also a great resource for educators who are moving to a standards-based or competencies based grading system.

Think Thank Thunk - Dealing with the fear of being a boring teacher - Jeremy Cooper This looks like a great blog! Very captivating! Shawn Cornally states that he "helps run a competency-based high school" so, based upon that, I'm sure that many of his posts deal with high school level material. However, as an educator, good is good, across the board. So, I'm excited to read about his ideas even though they may not directly pertain to my grade level. I think this could be a great resource for educators to gain new ideas within the teaching realm. You might also enjoy marvelousteachermusings.com. Many of her posts are on the lighter-side, but she still brings some great ideas to think about. I particularly like her post on July 28 "If Teacher's Planned Inservice Training". Enjoy!

a list of 100 lesser-known tricks to help with everything Google

I agree, Megan! Emma, happy to hear you are moving to Google Apps for Education. I made the switch my first year of teaching and haven't looked back! Google has so much to offer, and for free usually, that the possibilities seem endless. It has totally revolutionized how I thought I'd be teaching!

Google has so many hidden tricks that nobody knows about! Being aware of these can help you use Google to the most of its ability. I would definitely use this since I want to use Google in my classroom. I have found out how wonderful Google is, and I didn't know some of these tips! This is for teacher use for obvious reasons. There are many lists of things out there, but this is a less known topic so there probably aren't too many.

Using Pinterest in the classroom for things like group projects (brainstorm and organize) and communicating with other instructors to gather ideas.

I think this article will be useful for my classroom. I use Pinterest now and we are working on maybe having a district pinterest page or links for people to follow and gather information from. I think of this article as more of a teacher article. I'm not sure how many students use Pinterest but in the education field this is huge.

I agree that I could use this article for my future classroom because I am already familiar with Pinterest, and the article provides tips for using Pinterest with other teachers as well as students. This article as a whole seems to be geared toward teachers because it is specifically about applying Pinterest to the classroom, but on the topic of Pinterest as a whole, students can also use Pinterest to share ideas with one another and possibly look at some of the boards of their own teacher. For instance, the article states that teachers could create a Pinterest board to share with students so that students could simply use resources from the board to begin writing instead of wasting time researching. The only other site that I have encountered that could be used for similar purposes is Diigo because teachers could also bookmark articles on this site to share with students in the same way that they could with Pinterest.

Provides a list of the 14 best educational blogs to watch in 2015. The blogs range from technology, 21st century skills, eLearning, instructional practices, Web 2.0 tools, and general resources.

Thank you for this source. People are always asking who should I follow. This list is a great place to start. Teachers will enjoy looking at these and expanding their PLNs.

A collection of blogs, articles, and videos from Edutopia around the topic of social media tools in the classroom.

A collection of blogs, articles, and videos from Edutopia around the topic of social media tools in the classroom.

I thought this was a very in depth article, with a lot of information about using social media in education. If I were really wanting to get a foundation of understanding about using it in my classroom effectively, I think this would be a great place to start. I think I would use this effectively, because I would be able to start educating myself on the topic and hopefully find some blogs to follow to keep updating me on the topic. I believe this is mostly an educational tool for teachers. They could also find good articles and share them with their parents, so the parents can understand the strategy of using social media in the classroom. I have seen other resources that explain social media, but I feel as though this a very through compilation.

good ideas for high-interest, engaging lesson activities

These strategies are great suggestions. I especially like the idea of four corners. I feel like I could use it when I have students do current technology articles. I also like tea party, that would be a great way to introduce a careers research assignment, giving each student a basic definition of a career in the field and having the "tea party" before they choose their topic. I feel that this is geared towards teachers looking to improve their classroom and shift more toward a learner-centered room. As the blog states, it is also a great resource for teachers who have especially active students.

I was pleasantly surprised by this article! When I first clicked on it I expected it to be elementary based like so many engagement articles are. But then I realized it was for secondary so good for me! The main thing I pulled out of this article was the idea for crowd sourcing. It seems like a simple concept but I had never thought of it before. I think this is a great resource for teachers and I plan on using the crowd sourcing technique on Tuesday!

This page goes over the general idea of instructional practice and goes into lesson planning and has tools to help

A guide on how to use instructional practices.

A guide on how to use instructional practices.

Here are some major characteristics/ suggestions for a 21st century teacher, which all teachers should strive to be, some of the points could start an interesting conversation

This is one of the best lists I have seen for 21st-century teaching! I think that this article could be used in any classroom as ways for teachers to transform their practice. Some of the ideals I think are a little hard to achieve... for example, going completely paperless would be difficult, particularly in the early years when students need to learn handwriting. But this is a great resource for teachers, regardless, to get ideas on how to challenge themselves and adapt their teaching to the needs of their learners in today's age. I am not aware of any other list that is as comprehensive as the one you shared; I like this list!

This is a great article, I have many articles from Edutopia bookmarked as well. Any teacher could learn from this list of characteristics and suggestions. Although I do not think that as a future teacher I would be able to follow all of these I believe many are possible.

Maybe your child is one of the thousands hooked on Minecraft, a video game that lets players build with textured cubes in a virtual 3D world. Players can also explore seemingly endless worlds and time. I am working on this for another class as well, so expect more on this!

Maybe your child is one of the thousands hooked on Minecraft, a video game that lets players build with textured cubes in a virtual 3D world. Players can also explore seemingly endless worlds and time. I am working on this for another class as well, so expect more on this!

My friends got me into minecraft, and it is an impressive game. I like how the article doesn't just focus on using it like an art tool like I've seen other articles, but how it can teach different skills. Of course, minecraft doesn't follow the same rules as the real world such as physics. So its real job is to just get kids interested from a young age and perhaps learn more about how they really work. Another way I've seen minecraft used educationally is to introduce kids to working cooperatively on a joint server. So they know how to behave online and solve problems diplomatically.

Create a lesson that is built around a video. Students get to interact with the video as they watch it.

Nikki, I have this same page bookmarked on my Diigo, so I definitely find it very useful and inspiring. I think Ted talks are a great resource that we can use for our students! They have so many different Ted talks on very different issues, and being able to watch a video for a quick 15 minutes can catch the attention of the students. I also feel as though the Ted talks I have watched have been very inspirational and done very well! I would definitely be able to effectively use these resources in my future classroom. I believe this resources if for teachers to use and share good Ted Talks, but then those teachers are expected to share with their students. I would recommend following Ted Talks so you can see when they post new and similar videos.

This is brilliant! TED talks are so widely known and used in so many different walks of education! The ability to create and share lessons across such a well traveled network of people is phenomenal resource to help you find what you really need to get your things done. I am glad you bookmarked this!!