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I remain very, very concerned with the notion that all we have to do is let the kids connect with the world.... There's a fallacy there, and my experience with how much really deep teaching of digital ethics we've had to do at SLA to counter all that the kids come in the door thinking about the digital world.

# Ning, a social networking system which lets you create a community * An example: The Falmouth Kids Global Climate Change Institute is a unique opportunity for teachers and students to communicate and collaborate with a global audience as they study the causes and effects of global climate change. This project was designed to inspire teachers to empower students to use Web 2.0 tools in contextual learning environments

To start with, the game is completely FREE (I love that word). Better than that, this is a perfect game simulation for middle school and high school teachers looking to provide a reflective learning experience for students interested in how the environment is affected by choices made by local or state government concerning energy production and use. It combines the addictiveness of Lemonade Stand with the deep control and management tools of SimCity. With only 150 turns to create a thriving economy and growing population based on realistic environmental practices, I thought I would be presented with simplistic choices, and be railroaded into some pre-scripted "save the Earth, reduce energy consumption", but I was happily wrong.

I can say without hesitation that all my traditional educational experiences combined, everything from grade school to grad school, have not taught me as much about learning and being a learner as blogging has. My ability to easily consume other people's ideas, share my own in return, and communicate with other educators around the world has led me to dozens of smart, passionate teachers from whom I learn every day. It's also led me to technologies and techniques that leverage this newfound network in ways that look nothing like what's happening in traditional classrooms.

Chris Harbeck and Darren Kuropatwa are mathematics teachers in Canada; Chris at Sargent Park School, a junior high school in Winnipeg and Darren at Daniel McIntyre Collegiate only a few blocks from Sargent Park. In April 2008 they brought a few of their students to Manitoba for the Pan-Canadian Interactive Literacy Forum to speak about their learning experiences in their respective math classes using Web 2.0 tools. Listen to Chris and Darren and their students speak.

This page lists direct links to sites that I believe are the best on the Web for learning and teaching. I have omitted sites and lists that are specifically for teachers. This page is designed for student self-access.

Welcome! to our award-winning Educator's Network. Click here to find over 300 standard-based lessons, school greening tips, grants for teachers, and more than 25,000 teachers to share ideas with. Sign up here to recieve updates from the Teacher's Network.

The thoughtful/reflective effort it took to write this has made this one of the most powerful things I've done for professional development as a teacher.

"Climate change will continue to be taught in geography across key stages 1-3 in England, after education secretary Michael Gove scrapped plans to take it off the national curriculum. The move represents a victory for a number of campaigners, teachers, environmentalists and scientists, as well as energy secretary Ed Davey, who had lobbied his fellow MP to reconsider his decision to remove the topic from the geography syllabus. In a letter to Gove in May, Davey wrote, "As you'll be aware, there has been a significant number of responses, both from academic experts and the public, calling for climate change to feature explicitly in the geography curriculum. I am writing to express my strong support for such a change." In the draft guidelines of the national curriculum, published in March, it appeared that climate change had been omitted from geography altogether, and instead, would be taught as an aspect of chemistry. Many said this move was reducing the threat of climate change among under-15s. Within days, thousands of people had signed a petition on Change.org, set up by 15-year-old West London student Esha Marwaha, which called for Gove to reconsider his position. To date, the petition has attracted over 31,000 names."

The Climate Change Collection is a suite of science education web-based resources covering natural climate dynamics as well as human impacts on the climate system.

While most districts are still tackling Web-based collaboration tools from pedagogical and security perspectives, a large number of teachers are already out there using these tools to supplement instruction, engage learners, and encourage their students to become producers of information, as well as consumers of it. In other words, they're experimenting. And here are some of the free tools they're using to do it.