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"There are new web 2.0 tools appearing every day. Although some of these tools were not originally meant for use in the classroom, they can be extremely effective learning tools for today's technology geared students and their venturesome teachers. Many of these teachers are searching for the latest products and technologies to help them find easier and efficient ways to create productive learning in their students. More and more teachers are using blogs, podcasts and wikis, as another approach to teaching. We have created a list of 100 tools we think will encourage interactivity and engagement, motivate and empower your students, and create differentiation in their learning process. "

Twitter Resources for Teachers You've heard the buzz on the Twitter phenomenon. Everybody seems to be hooked by this micro blogging service. It's been a catalyst for marketing in multinational companies, personal branding for entrepreneurs, and a simple advertising tool for the small businesses. Professionals from the education sphere seem to be catching up to the trends of technolgoy. Whether you're innovating teaching strategies for the university or looking for education jobs online, Twitter is one versatile venue where both teachers and students converse meaningfully. Don't take our word for it, here are some expert guides and tips on how to use this magnificent social networking site to your learning advantage. Articles on Twitter In Education 1. Teaching Twitter to the Teachers - To use twitter effectively, you need a reason to start with. 2. Twitter Tweets for Higher Education - Doing a little online searching (emphasis on the little), the author of this blog has found the following items related to Twitter and education. 3. 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Education - Blog By Carol - Based on a list by Chris Brogan - 50 ideas for using Twitter in Business. 4. Using Twitter as an Education Tool - Are you using Twitter yet? If not, you may want to read how other educators are using Twitter as an education tool. 5. Twitter Transforms Teaching - Twitter's now tapped as a teaching and learning tool with opportunities to motivate students and advance achievement. 6. Teaching with Twitter - Steve Wheeler's 10 top uses of Twitter for education. 7. Twitter Professors: 18 People to Follow for a Real Time Education - 18 people Lon S. Cohen (writer and social media strategist. He is @obilon on Twitter) following for a real time education. 8. Educational Tool: Twitter - 'Twitter in the Classroom' techniques by Christine Morris. 9. Twenty-Five Interesting Ways to use Twitter in the Classroom - Excellent presentation by Creative Commons 10. N

"iSchool: a closer look at Manhattan Beach Unified's iPad pilot program email Does Manhattan Beach Unified's iPad pilot program represent the future of education? Kindergarten students at Grand View Elementary School use iPads two times a week. Photo by Alene Tchekmedyian Kindergarten students at Grand View Elementary School use iPads two times a week. Photo by Alene Tchekmedyian Just before 8 a.m. one recent Tuesday, Andy Caine wheeled a waist-high cart into his second-floor history classroom at Mira Costa High School, as the Beach Boys' "I Get Around" played faintly in the background. On the syllabus for the day: the First Amendment. As the first period bell rang, Caine unlocked the cart. "Come and get 'em," Caine said to his class of seniors, and stood behind his podium, on which he's pasted a sticker reading, "Think for yourself. Question Authority." The students put aside their pens and notebooks and lined up at the cart to pick up an unconventional tool that school districts across the nation have been implementing into classrooms. Each student grabbed an iPad and returned to his or her seat. Caine is one of 43 Manhattan Beach Unified School District teachers chosen to try the $500,000 iPad pilot program, which started last fall. At Mira Costa, two English, math, science and social studies teachers use iPads, along with eight science teachers at Manhattan Beach Middle School and 27 teachers of different grade levels at each elementary school. The district purchased 560 student iPads (32 gigabytes and costing around $700 each), in addition to iPads for pilot teachers and administrators. A quarter of the pilot costs are grant funded, while the district supports the rest. Later this year, the School Board will decide whether, and in what capacity, to continue the pilot. Caine and pilot teachers implement iPads into their curricula two to three times a week, a total of 30 to 90 minutes. "I would use them every day if I had the po

Apps Taskonomy: Digging Deeper into the Application of Apps he iPad (or iPod touch or iPhone) with its apps opens many new opportunities for learning. At the same time, it offers a slightly different wrapper for older learning opportunities. Both can be worthwhile, but it would be a shame if teachers missed the former for the latter. And, if past experience and research is any indication, educators are much more likely to co-opt the new technology to accomplish the status quo. This activity is designed to help teachers think through both opportunities and to categorize those apps that lend themselves to either or both. Teachers will start by exploring a variety of apps, some that lend themselves to learning content such as math facts or spelling words and others that can be used in open ended content creation such as storytelling or photography. Then, teachers will examine a set of lessons that use these apps. Finally, teachers will use a "taxonomy" such as Bloom's Taxonomy, SAMR, LoTi, ETaP, Prensky, etc. and attempt to classify/categorize where the apps fall. Most likely teachers will need to contextualize the app to a particular use/activity. Ideally, teachers will realize that in most cases it is not the app itself, but the use that detrmines where it falls and that the apps belong in multiple places.

My goal is to create the ultimate teacher resource that is free for everyone! Have Fun Teaching is updated on a daily basis with new worksheets, songs, videos, flash cards, coloring pages, fun activities and blog articles released every day. Unlike other web sites for teachers, Have Fun Teaching is created by a teacher and it offers high quality songs for learning with content-rich lyrics for kids. HaveFunTeaching.com specializes in fun worksheets, coloring pages, songs for kids, educational videos, fun activities, and teacher tools. ColorMeGood.com is another website that I have created that offers over 6,000 free printable coloring pages for kids! This is the largest selection of coloring pages online with thousands of high quality, full-page coloring pages.

"Teachers Guide on The Use of Wikis in Education guides, social networking tools, wikis in education Med kharbach Today's guide is about Wikis in education. This is the 14th guide we are publishing here and there are more coming on the way. We . in Educational Technology and Mobile Learning, are very much hoping that by the time we finish posting all the series of guides we have been working on, our readers ( most of whom are teachers and educators ) will have already acquainted themselves with some powerful web tools to integrate technology into their education. As I said in earlier guides, we will also publish a free ebook containing all the guides we have written plus several other surprises for teachers, so stay tuned."

"The rest of this week I will be running workshops on Google Docs and Google Sites with Kern Kelley and Alice Barr as a part of Google Apps Bootcamp NH. For the Google Docs section I will be using my guide to Google Drive and Docs for Teachers. For the Google Sites section I will be using a brand new guide to Google Sites for Teachers. Google Sites for Teachers was designed as a guide for new users of Google Sites. I have designs for expanding it to include more advanced features in the future. You can view the 47 page guide as embedded below. "

"Multiple measures of student performance, more school innovation among their suggestions From staff and wire reports Mar 3rd, 2010 Print this article Teachers also said administrative support, not more money, motivate them to succeed. Teachers say administrative support, not more money, will motivate them to succeed. In one of the largest national surveys of public school teachers, thousands of educators agreed that today's students aren't college-ready when they graduate from high school. Teachers' suggestions for solving this problem include clear, common standards; multiple measures of student performance; and greater innovation, including differentiated instruction and more use of digital resources."

"10 Ways for Teachers & Students to Build Websites The lines between blogging platforms, website platforms, and wiki platforms are not always clear. I have a somewhat simplistic explanation that I give to teachers who don't have a web presence yet, but want to create one for their professional work. Here's the explanation: websites are good for providing a static resource of information, blogs are good for frequent updates and communication, and a wiki is great for collaborating on the creation of a reference site. For the teacher who wants to create a website, here are ten good platforms to try."

"10 Places for Teachers to Collaborate and Communicate Online Posted on Sunday, November 22, 2009 No Comments Related: guestpost, schools, technology Collaboration and communication is one of the most important aspects of teaching and education. If you are looking for tools and sites that can be used to communicate and collaborate with other teachers, parents, and students, you can find many quality resources online. Here are 10 free sites and tools to try throughout the school year."

About Edmodo is a private micro-blogging platform built for use by teachers and students for use in the classroom. The problem with traditional web 2.0 tools in a k-12 classroom environment is concerns over privacy of the students. Edmodo has been built with the privacy of students in mind. Edmodo provides a way for teachers and students to share notes, links, and files. Teachers also have the ability to send, alerts, events, and assignments to students. Edmodo also has a public component built by allowing at the teachers discretion to post any item to a public timeline at the teacher's discretion.

"a place where Teachers help other Teachers. TeacherCast is designed for both the seasoned teacher who is searching for some great resources as well as the teacher who is a unsure how to start incorporating newly developed 21st-Century skills. We are here to help you get to know the latest websites and apps that are driving today's classrooms. We want to help you learn how to use these technologies to enhance your teaching and better engage your students."

Glog for organizing some Web 2.0 Teacher Tools that I thought teachers in my building should start utilizing. I linked to several videos explaining what they were and how they worked. I also linked to several other presentations, websites, publications, etc. that listed several Web 2.0 tools that teachers should and could be using to make life easier. Feel free to pass it along to your staff.

Wow this is amazing!!

"Ever wonder what it would be like if we let our students pick the tools we use in class? This collection of web 2.0 tools is just that- a list of tools and ideas for what students see as being useful for their learning in and out of school. To begin the project, 8th grade students were engaged in a conversation about what school would look like if all of the rules we currently had were disbanded. They were no longer bound by walls, schedules, age restrictions or standardized tests. No technology was outlawed. It was a bit of a hurdle for them...after eight years of the current school arrangement, it was difficult for them to imagine anything else. With a little encouragement and a push they rose to the occasion, and here are the tools they think we ought to consider using. As this is a dynamic site, there may be some entries in need of editing. We will get to them! We left the duplicates in for emphasis as well as different points of view. Enjoy!"

"My Top 10 Web Tools as A Teacher"

Preston Girls' Secondary College Reading Wiki to show and share with students and teachers how web 2.0 tools can inspire students to respond to set texts in a more creative way. Making book trailers Filming their own '60 second recap Making animotos Creating toondoos Using Flickr to make a showbag Developing a glog Creating a Google Lit Trip Making a Prezi Creating VoiceThreads and responding in Twitterature style are just some examples of how students can creatively respond to a book. Each link explains how the tools can be embedded into the curriculum and shows examples of how other people have used these sites to develop a book response. Some responses are better than others and it would be good to discuss with students beforehand what made certain examples better than others. For some of the presentations, students may need a Flip camera (such as 60 second recap) however the rest of the presentations could use photos and images from the internet. A lesson on Creative Commons and Wikimedia before students are let loose would help them understand their responsibilities in terms of selecting appropriate images and music to use. Once finished, students could show their presentations to each other and have them critique their work. Permissions allowing, presentations could also be uploaded to the school website or shown on parent information evenings or parent/teacher nights. Challenge: My challenge to you is to ask students to use one of these tools (can be in conjunction with a written response) in their next text response.

"A Science Teacher Shares Tech Resources For Teachers, Parents & Students"

There are a tremendous amount of websites out there now (usually referred to as web 2.0) which allow users to create content. You're actually on one right now…a blog. With all of these resources, they offer tremendous promise for classroom application. The trick is to pick a few and begin to infuse inside your class. From time to time, you will see our TCI bloggers refer to, or even use, sites. For techies, web 2.0 is like breathing. They can't imagine life without it. For many teachers though, it can be overwhelming. We've worked to create a quick guide to some of the more popular web 2.0 sites out there. This guide will give you basics on how to get started and how they can be used in a great TCI activity. Feel free to download and share this document with colleagues. If there's another site you feel we should really take a look at, please let us know! We're always on the hunt for great new tools for teachers

"20 Useful Websites and Tools for Elementary School Teachers Posted on Tuesday, August 25, 2009 comments (8) Related: guestpost, schools, teaching, technology Engaging students in an elementary classroom can be difficult. But there are a lot of sites online that can help. Here are 20 useful sites that offer lesson plans, web apps, and other aids for elementary school teachers: "

An Immersive Event for Principals and Teachers The Apple Summer Learning Institute 2010 gives principals and teachers hands-on opportunities to experience how technology is helping transform learning. Led by members of the Apple Professional Development team, each principal and teacher will have the opportunity to experience the latest Apple learning tools - MacBook, iPad, and iPod touch - first hand, for the duration of the event. Over the course of two days, educators will discover how Apple products can help engage today's learners, enrich core curriculum, and build student competency like never before.