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"Recently, I tried to explain to a teacher from another school how we are trying to use iPads BEYOND apps. We have over 100 apps on our school iPads and introduce our students according to age level to a variety of them, but the focus of the use of the devices NEEDS to remain primarily as a tool for: exposing students to skills, characteristic of a "modern learner" critical thinking personal learning transformative learning workflow fluency anytime/anywhere/anyhow creating"

"Tutorial Designer" is one of the six roles, Alan November lists in his Digital Learning Farm that empower student learners and describes in his book 'Who owns the Learning?. Take a look at the examples below of students: sharing what they have learned in class sharing beyond their classroom and their parents sharing with a global audience in mind."

"The Situation: I am working with Middle School students (Grades 6-8 - 11-13 year olds) at Graded, The American School of Sao Paulo, Brazil. One of the vision of our division is to create student blogfolios (Digital Portfolios on a blogging platform) to encourage and support sharing and documentation of learning artifacts and to receive authentic global feedback. We are just at the beginning of our journey to use the blogs to document and reflect. Specifically… Our 8th graders have written a "This I Believe" essay, which they are "upgrading" from a text base essay to a video or audio presentation using images, video or sound to not just "enhance with technology" but to truly transform a reader's/viewer's experience."

"If you want globally connected students, you need globally connected teachers who are capable of communicating, collaborating and connecting to experts and peers from around the world. These educators are harnessing the power of global connections for their own learning in order to bring the world to their students."

"Part of my work, at my school, is to create a framework for our Middle School that will take (already) blogging students from Elementary School and prepare a smooth transition for them, as they move on to High School. I am looking BEYOND the one classroom or one specific teacher blogging with their students."

"In Part 1 of Literature Circle Discussions, I shared 6th Grade Humanities teacher, Emily Vallillo's well structured and organized Literature Circle lesson. In Part 2, I shared the upgrade of traditional lit circles to a new learnflow which included filming the discussion to annotexting the film with behavior's observed and metacognitive reflections on student blogfolios. DUE to the sharing of their work on their blogfolios and the dissemination on Langwitches blog as well as via my network on Twitter the learnflow did not stop, a new learning opportunity arose, when Author, founder and co-director of Habits of Mind, Bena Kallick made contact. Students and teachers are getting a taste of and are being reminded that learning in a connected world is never over… The simple fact of documenting and taking the time to publish "what we are doing in class"… is connecting us to a world of learning opportunities."

"Humanities teacher, Shannon Hancock, at Graded, the American School of São Paulo, read and worked through The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo with her 8th grade students. Not only did they read the text, learn about literary elements, but also learned to articulate and discuss in a professional manner the text with their peers. Shannon chose to use the Socratic Method, specifically a Socratic Seminar (Inner/Outer Circle Fishbowl) to hand the learning over to her students. She stressed to them: " Educators don't need to have all the answers, it is about asking the right questions.""

"It is the responsibility of all educators to model good digital citizenship for their students. Especially when it comes to copyright, plagiarism and intellectual property. The waters are murky. Not being familiar with online digital rights and responsibilities (hey, teachers did not grow up with the Internet being around), educators are wading through uncharted waters (hey, I did not know that I could not just google an image to use. If someone puts it up online it is free for the taking). That does not mean they can close their eyes and pretend life is the same or that the same rules apply to online versus offline use of copyrighted material with their students."

"Mark Engstrom. 8th grade Geography teacher and Assistant Principal at Graded- The American School of São Paulo, has redesigned his entire course. Students move through the modules of this blended learning course on Geography at their own pace. They build out content knowledge using a Personalized Map (through google maps) and the content delivered through this Digital Learning Farm method will be curated so that they can build out multiple pins on their map. This content is then used as content knowledge to increase their understanding of the region. He wanted to experiment with a different type of note taking to add to students' documentation of gaining subject specific content knowledge."

"What Do You Have to Lose? was a blog post I wrote 4 years ago… It is a new idea for many classroom teachers/students to move from writing, reading and "doing" work, not only for themselves, supervisors/parents or for a monetary compensation/grade, to share their work openly and freely with others. The idea of putting oneself "out there on the internet" (on a larger scale than the teacher lounge) and publicly "brag" about successes, admit failures, ask for help or document one's learning and teaching process, feels unnatural and even scares many of them. A lot of water has gone under the bridge, a lot has changed in terms of technology… It has been 4 years and my belief in sharing to amplify teaching and learning has grown stronger, even when the work I share gets taken, plagiarized and used for profit by others. I am continuing to make the benefits of documenting (for reflection, metacognition and connection purposes) visible, but the documentation can not be the end all. The next step must be sharing and disseminating that documentation. It is about sharing conversations, resources, model lessons, student work, reflections, innovative ideas, action research, etc. Sharing in service of benefiting the educational community and advancing eduction. Sharing in order to be part of a network that supports each other and and pushes thinking forward. Without individual parts, there is no network. The more parts, the larger and stronger the potential network. In the last few weeks, there have been many examples at Graded, the American School of São Paulo, that show the power of sharing and the ripple effect it created: Teaching others you will never meet Authentic audience Feedback Personal Branding Remix & Added Value Building a Personal Learning Network"

"There is a difference between Social Media IN schools and Social Media FOR schools. There is a difference between Social Media IN schools and Social Media FOR schools. While social media in schools deals primarily with policies around how to use (or not use) social media in the classroom with students, social media for schools is about storytelling and getting their stakeholders (teachers, students, administrators, parents, community) to spread these stories."

"Students from Jacksonville, Florida/USA and Binyamina, Israel recently celebrated Jerusalem Day together. A true opportunity to share Language, Culture & History via Skype. A grandfather in Israel shared his memories of the Six Day War (1967) of liberating Jerusalem. The Rabbi from Florida explained what Jerusalem means to Jews outside of Israel. Students sang songs, played instruments and practiced English and Hebrew."

"Ask yourself the following questions. Then ask these questions of your faculty and administration. * Is global awareness and education important to students who do not and most likely will never own a passport? * Should/is "Global Awareness" or "Global Competencies" (be) taught as a (required) separate course/subject? * Do you infuse culture BEYOND food, music, games, festivals, language or art? * Do teachers need to be globally connected in order to connect their students?"

"This post title is "Teaching Information/Research Skills in Elementary School", but this post is as much for adults and older students. Many adults are overwhelmed with the quantity and new kind of media that is available and accessible through technology. Older students in High School and College might not feel overwhelmed, but have never been taught how to navigate, evaluate, save and retrieve the information that they are seeking."

"Alan November tours his hometown of Marblehead, MA and comments on the historical global vision of his community. Alan challenges us to think about the emerging role of "student as contributor" and to globalize our curriculum by linking students with authentic audiences from around the world. "

" Part I of Using Social Bookmarking in Schools and with your Students attempted to point out the skills and literacies involved and required when using social bookmarking tools to its full potential. I looked at the revised Bloom's Taxonomy as well as 21st century skills to see where social bookmarking fit in."

"I remember when I placed in the top three of an international writing contest for students in German schools abroad. My essay "What is typical German" was published in a magazine. I was proud as I could be to have my work "published" for the first (and only) time as a student. Times have changed…"

"Difference between social and academic commenting. You could create a blog for your young students, in order to allow them a safe online space where your young students can socialize and "practice" in an online environment. This type of blog fosters a virtual kind of classroom community that can spill over (positively or negatively) into the physical classroom as well."

"You are reading another post in the series "The Digital Learning Farm" based on Alan November's work of "The Digital Learning Farm", which he also outlines in his chapter of Heidi Hayes Jacobs' book "Curriculum 21"."

"Images like the following ones, visualize for me the urgency for all of us to become information literate to wade through the incredible, ever increasing, amount of information being created and shared with the world."