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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"

By middle school, children spend more time with digital media than they do with their teachers or even with their parents, according to a recent study. Is the internet a good teacher? Apparently not.

Gaming, wikis, blogs, social media, interactive polls and QR codes: just some of the technologies that teachers are bringing into the classroom. The dizzying pace of tech evolutions offers some challenges as teachers and administrators race to keep up with the latest tools.

An emerging group of leaders in Canadian education has attracted thousands of followers. They've made Twitter an extension of their lives, delivering twenty or more tweets a day that can include, for example, links to media articles, research, new ideas from education bloggers, or to their own, or simply a personal thought. At their best, edu-tweeters are adeptly leveraging Twitter to brand themselves, to reinvent teacher PD, and perhaps to accelerate the transformation of our Canadian education systems. Twitter is being used to extend formal PD conferences beyond their venue to followers on Twitter in real time; it's facilitating informal discussions ("unconferences") among educators with common interests; it's allowing best practices to "go viral" on the Internet; and it's allowing innovative classroom teachers to challenge the status quo.

"You are never alone when teaching online. As a writer and teacher, I'm here to share my experiences and insights so that you will not hit the ground. We all know there are a lot of great articles out there on the web that talk about what you should do when you teach online. But sometimes what a new online teacher really needs is a list of what NOT to do when teaching online."

"Twitter chats are such a great way to stay connected and informed in your professional circle, and education is no exception. Through education chats, you can find out about new methods for teaching, tech resources, even jobs for teachers. Most chats are held weekly, and offer an opportunity to have a regularly scheduled conversation with like-minded educators."

"Twitter is turning out to be the most useful for teaching resources; it was cited by 66 percent of participants. Pinterest came in second at 38 percent. LinkedIn, taglined as the "world's largest professional network," is referenced by a mere 11 percent"

Collaborative Sharing

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"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."

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.