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2. Reward Positive Behaviors While you will at times have to discipline children for improper behavior, remember that rewarding positive behavior is ultimately far more effective in the long run. A great many Emotional and Behavioral Disorder students tend to take any discipline as a personal attack. Because of this, unfortunately they learn very little from it. Try and celebrate the successes of these students more than you reprimand or punish their mistakes. When these students receive positive feedback and rewards, they start to see that there is a positive benefit to good behavior. They will then start to see you as more of an ally than an adversary, and this will in turn motivate them to want to behave and do well in your classroom.

Be ready to do something different if the network is down or if all of the laptops seem to be acting up. (Also trust your kids, sometimes it is easy for them to figure out something that seems impossible to you.)

1. 3-D printing: Once considered a far-fetched

2. Personalized lessons

. Social lesson sharing

#5. Use a document camera for sharing student work. #6. Skype with another teacher on campus in front of the classes. It's a fishbowl strategy of sorts that models video conferencing norms. Discuss the topic together. Share work in which you have pride. In no time, students will be able to videoconference with each other with similar poise. #7. Take a photo of an interesting location with your cell phone, email it to yourself, and use it the next day to help teach a concept: descriptive writing about a setting, for example. Show students you are thinking of their learning even outside of the classroom. After all, learning shouldn't end at the bell. #8. Be transparent with your Google searches. Use Google Advanced Search while on the LCD projector and use Think Aloud to share why you are using the keywords that you are using. #9. Look at the law on copyright infringement together as a class. Revise some multiple choice reading comprehension questions to assess their understanding of this vital informational text. Voila! Test prep that applies to the real world! #10. Present your lesson using a Powerpoint or a Prezi (2). Better yet, initially create it with input from the class so they can see how you assemble it. Now you're discussing content and methodology.

It used to be that my students learned to write by writing on paper. Sometimes they wrote in notebooks and sometimes they wrote on single sheets, but no matter how they wrote, I was the intended audience. In most cases, I was the only person who ever saw that writing. Sometimes their parents would take the time to read through their notebooks and papers as they came home or at the end of the school year. Sometimes they would read their writing aloud to the class. But in most cases, unless I posted their writing on a bulletin board in the hallway, a very limited number of people had access to that writing. Wow! Has that changed! Now, my students regularly write on their blogs, not just for me, but also for their parents, grandparents, other relatives, friends and potentially the whole world to see. When they write a tweet, they have the potential of all of our Twitter followers seeing what they write, and since many of our followers are classroom groups, that number is potentially far higher. Not exactly the same as writing in a notebook. Their audience now exists in places they have never been and may never visit.

Collaborize Classroom -- A free online collaborative platform designed to complement classroom instruction with additional activities, assignments and discussions that can be accessed online.

Cool Math -- A collection of games that are designed to be safe to use in the classroom, covering a variety of math subjects as well as reading, science and geography.

First In Math -- A schoolwide resource that teaches kids as young as kindergarten basic math skills via online games. Kids are encouraged to keep playing by earning stickers and other rewards from their teachers.

A number of workshops and articles are available that explain why it is useful for teachers to use technology in the classroom. Many workshops are easy to understand and feature a lot of visual aids. The workshops show teachers and students how to use email, word processing software, and how to create blogs, among other information. Workshops also show how using technology encourages learning.

The web is a wonderful tool for students in the classroom. Students can use the Internet to find information for a project or paper. The web also provides a place for students to create documents and files and to store those files. Online games help students learn in a fun and engaging manner.

The Difference Between Technology Use And Technology Integration

Using technology for learning makes sense. Technology creates access, transparency, and opportunity. Any smartphone or tablet is media incarnate–video, animation, eBooks, essays, blog posts, messages, music, games.

Integrating technology into a high school classroom isn't a one-step process. "You can't just slap a netbook [computer] on top of a textbook and say, 'Great, now we have technology," says Bob Wise, former governor of West Virginia and president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, an advocacy organization.Wise says that digital learning starts with teachers, whose performance is enhanced by technology—not the other way around. That's also the idea of Digital Learning Day, which the Alliance is spearheading.

ning practices," says Sarah Hall, director of the Alliance's Center for Secondary School Digital Learning and Policy.

Blackboard SMU uses the course management system Blackboard.  For help creating Blackboard courses and learning the basics, consult Academic Technology's Blackboard help page, as well as this Blackboard online tutorial. Access your Blackboard courses here. Presentation Software Sometimes it's helpful to provide visual aids to complement teaching, stimulate discussion, or allow out-of-class teaching. Tools designed for this purpose, such as PowerPoint, can be used well or used badly. Click here for resources that provide advice for thoughtful use of PowerPoint, as well as a few additional presentation tools. Classroom Response Systems ("clickers") One way to encourage student engagement is by using electronic devices that allow students to record their answers to multiple choice questions and allow you to instantly display the results. The anonymity encourages participation, and their answers help the teacher know when further discussion is needed.  Use of clickers can also serve as a catalyst for discussion.  Click here to learn more about using response systems effectively.

Converting a Face-to-Face Course to an Online Course Teaching online, whether in a hybrid course or a wholly-online course, requires different techniques and different tools.  Without the F2F contact, professors will need to be even clearer about setting and articulating expectations for digital work and participation.  Encouraging interaction between professor and student and among students is an additional challenge, as is monitoring student learning as the course progresses.  The online environment requires the use of basic technologies to digitize course materials as well as mastery of the university's learning management system.  And various tools like Skype allow synchronous communications, while blogs and Twitter can encourage asynchronous interaction.  Here are some ideas to get you started.

As a member of a large online community of educators through Twitter and other social media outlets, I know how much of an impact the Internet has had on educators and their classrooms across the world. I was not surprised to read that 92% of teachers "say the Internet has a 'major impact' on their ability to access content, resources and materials for their teaching." As an urban educator, I was also not surprised to read that only 21% of teachers in high-income schools said that lack of access to digital technologies is an issue for their students, while 56% of teachers in low-income schools reported this an issue for their students. Cash-strapped school districts and districts with a large number of high-needs students do not have the resources to provide schools with digital technologies, such as classroom projectors, that many more affluent schools would consider commonplace.

Too often we look for a single solution when it comes to technology, yet our needs constantly evolve.

Now, we have a multitude of options for how we provide access to class resources, collect student work, and archive learning

Cloud-based solutions, such as Google Drive, iCloud, and Office 365, regularly dot the landscape.