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"A survey of 2,462 Advanced Placement (AP) and National Writing Project (NWP) teachers finds that digital technologies are shaping student writing in myriad ways and have also become helpful tools for teaching writing to middle and high school students.  These teachers see the internet and digital technologies such as social networking sites, cell phones and texting, generally facilitating teens' personal expression and creativity, broadening the audience for their written material, and encouraging teens to write more often in more formats than may have been the case in prior generations.  At the same time, they describe the unique challenges of teaching writing in the digital age, including the "creep" of informal style into formal writing assignments and the need to better educate students about issues such as plagiarism and fair use"

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"The world of educational technology can be intimidating. Bloggers help make sense of this ever-changing industry with wit, insight and tactical advice. EdTech is proud to recognize this latest crop of the top K-12 IT bloggers."

Google Forms is one of the potent services Google provides for free for its users. Using Google Forms, you can very easily and without the need for any advanced technology knowledge create all kinds of forms to use with your students from contact forms to quizzes and polls. Since its inception a few years ago, Google Forms has undergone some major updates and the last one in this regard is enabling users to embed pictures and images into forms.

"Using tech tools that students are familiar with and already enjoy using is attractive to educators, but getting students focused on the project at hand might be more difficult because of it."

"ou don't need a degree in rocket science to know that visually organized data appeals more to students than plain text-based scribble. The visual stimulus is quickly captured by the brain and requires way less processing to understand and code it than written text. As teachers, we need to capitalize on this and try to include as many relevant visuals as possible. One way to do this is to use these visual alternatives to Google Docs. The web tools below have almost the same collaborative features Google Docs provide and they also have an added feature which is that of capturing and organizing data visually."

"Distraction is the dominant currency in our digitally focused culture. I personally find it hard to concentrate when being plugged on particularly when the task I am working on is so important that it requires a high degree of mindful consciousness like for instance scribbling few pages  on my thesis, writing a journal article, doing a literature review...etc. Anytime I embark on one of these tasks I always make sure to turn off WiFi and put my phone on flight mode. My brain can't handle the distraction coming off these devices."