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"The debates about schools and social media are a subject of great public and policy interests. In reality, the debate has been shaped by one key fact: the almost universal decision by school administrators to block social media. Because social media is such a big part of many students social lives, cultural identities, and informal learning networks schools actually find themselves grappling with social media everyday but often from a defensive posture-reacting to student disputes that play out over social media or policing rather than engaging student's social media behaviors."

Wesley Fryer post on blocking

"Hopscotch allows kids to create their own games and animations. Kids unleash their creativity with this beautiful, easy-to-use visual programming language. Inspired by MIT's Scratch, the Hopscotch programming language works by dragging and dropping method blocks into scripts. When you're done with a script, press play to see your code in action! As you get more advanced, you can add more objects and use custom events, such as shaking and tilting the iPad, to run your code. Why coding? By the year 2020, there will be a projected 1.4 million computer jobs but only 400,000 CS students. Computer Science is among the highest paid college degrees and programming jobs are growing at 2x the national average. Many of the best coders fell in love with programming as kids at the age of 8, 10 and 12 years old. With Hopscotch, kids can build and perfect their own creations while while obtaining an understanding of the fundamentals of computer science. Learn more about us at http://www.gethopscotch.com and read our blog at http://blog.gethopscotch.com. "

Looking for something to hang on your wall that will catch the mind as well as the eye? These Hang Ups should be just the ticket. We've collected dozens of quotations, grouped them by topic, and created colorful, printable, 8.5" x 11" Adobe Acrobat files that are ready to use. All you do is print 'em out and hang 'em up. Four sets are complete: "Lines to Learning" - musings on education and knowledge "Horizon Lines" - thoughts on greatness and achievement "Writer's Blocks" - quotations about writing and poetry "Goal Lines" - inspirations from sports Use the "send to a friend" button at the top of this page to share these quotes with your colleagues, and check back frequently to see what's new here!

Wesley Fryer-Blocking in schools posts

Presenters in our 2009 conference are following a new set of procedures to DIRECTLY upload their files to both DotSub and Blip.tv, where their videos are converted / transcoded into Flash versions (on both sites) and into m4v (iPod compatible video) and mp3 (audio only) formats on Blip. Use of these two websites as the exclusive sources for presentations this year may pose more accessibility issues for teachers at schools where content filters block most or all video sharing sites like these. For that reason, organizers have created an accessibility survey we invite you to take and share your experiences this year accessing K-12 Online Conference materials both at work and at home.

"Does your school or school district provide a moderated, interactive web platform for video sharing among students as well as teachers? While education-specific video sites like Edublogs.tv, SchoolTube, and TeacherTube can and are being used by learners around the world to share video interactively (as well as YouTube and YouTube EDU) there can be a number of benefits when schools provide "homegrown YouTube" video services. Often school district network administrators are loath to unblock / open access to YouTube. A homegrown video sharing site can be moderated and controlled (an extremely important word in the lexicon of IT directors) in ways a public video sharing website outside the school network cannot. Bandwidth limitations are often cited as the reason video sharing sites in schools are blocked. While software and hardware solutions exist to limit the percentage or total amount of bandwidth allocated to services like video streaming websites, many school networks are not presently configured to implement these types of imposed limits. "The fight to unblock YouTube" even for teacher access and use is an uphill struggle in many schools, but the case for a homegrown video sharing site can be less contentious."

Wealth of resources on "How-To" for podcasting.

"Learn How To Podcast 101 Learn How To Podcast 101 is a video tutorial with more than 120 minutes of instruction that will help you lay a solid foundation for setting up a podcast for future success. This podcasting tutorial will give you all the building blocks to help you understand what is needed to launch your podcast properly."

Really INTERESTING article about teaching in a 1:! situation. Standing in the back, I watched the screens. The students had seen me come in, and a few clearly clicked away from the screen they had open as I entered. I am, after all, their principal. Our excellent teacher was lecturing. Our excellent students were note-taking, almost all of them typing notes into word documents on their laptops. We are, proudly, a one-to-one laptop school; we are also, proudly but somewhat controversially, a largely unfiltered internet access school (we do block porn and gambling sites, but not social media or gaming).

"t is good to question what we see, as all too often we adhere to the life script that everyone else is happily playing out - for me Eli Pariser's book The Filter Bubble helped me to once again question what we take as the truth, in his case the internet that is presented to us. But what if there is a school filter bubble?"