This article shows that students are doing better academically in classes where laptops have been implemented. The article believes the using laptops during school helps increase concentration for students, as well as motivation. I know some classes even in college banned laptops, but I believe we all learn differently and should have the opportunity to use whatever resources we can if it will help improve our educational experience.

This blog explores the idea of using Facebook for education purposes. It always goes over some pros and cons of it. The blog has links to some interesting articles related to this topic including one about a professor using Facebook to teach a class at Penn State. I really found this blog valuable for the debate about Facebook in education. I personally support some of these methods like using it for important notifications in regards to safety alerts.

While I believe we can all agree some students abuse having a cell phone in school, this article provides a good argument against a policy that would ban cell phones anywhere in school. I believe for safety reasons all students should be allowed to at least bring their phone to school. We cannot promote advancing technology if we ban it from our schools!

This article talks about a program to implement net books to be available to all high school students. The school is taking it to the next level trying to figure out a way to ensure all students have affordable access to internet. I think it is a very good idea to take technology to the next level by helping students get access to internet at home. Students need a way to be connected if the school wants to take learning to a new level.

Many of my posts and others have focused on applications for iPhones or the Android. I have found a good list of applications for students for the BlackBerry. I had a BlackBerry before I made the transition to Apple, and would of loved to been able to use some of these tools. The list includes planning tools, grade tracking, flashcard tools, and more!

I believe that PowerPoint is often overused, and as Learning Technology students we should be exploring new and exciting tools. This handy list provides several other presentation resources besides PowerPoint. Even though PowerPoint is listed as the top, I am eager to try some of the other tools.

This blog shares an overview of using an iPad in speech therapy, and gives links to other resources to look at to get more ideas about using technology with speech therapy. I went through speech therapy in elementary school and middle school, and believe it could have been much more fun and effective if technology was implemented better. However, those resources did not exist in 2000. This is a good start though for learning more about the iPad technology for this field.

This is a great application to be able to follow what the congressional committees and both bodies of Congress are doing each day. It even includes schedules for each day Congress is in session. When I interned in the US Senate, this would have been a great application to use instead of printing schedules each day. I know of several people working in politics who use this application.

It seems that there is applications on the iPhone for everything! This article announces the release of the first application for Sociology. I did not know about it during my sociology studies, but I believe any application for academics could be powerful tools for students.

Since I am doing my final project as a sociology lesson, I wanted to research technology for sociology education. This website includes links to videos and activities for teachers to use for sociology lessons.

This blog features a list of why this teacher uses a flipped classroom. One of the key points made was that flipped classrooms have been used for centuries in Humanities classes which is where my interests are. I am a big fan of flipped classrooms.

This blog post in History Tech shares several great tools for the iPad and iPod that educators could use. The most interesting tools I feel would be helpful for a Social Studies Teacher would be the US Historical Documents as well as the World Fact Book. My favorite Web 2.0 tool on this list which I have used is the My Congress application where you can learn more about those who represent you in the United States Congress. This tool would be great for government classes! All of these resources appear to be very helpful for educators.

This article covers three applications on smart phones that are great for mind mapping. The applications on the iPod, iPod, and Android are free, but the BlackBerry application costs $17. I have never used a mind mapping tool on my phone, but this article is very interesting which helps explain more Web 2.0 tools.

The Center for Teaching History with Technology is a great tool that uses resources that we have worked with in this course including Google Docs, Wikis, blogs, and more. The Social Studies resources include games, activities, plans, and mores. While I am not an educator, I think it is important to implement these types of tools in the classroom.

Teacher Vision provides free tools for educators, and the website is even divided by discipline. I looked over the Social Studies page as that is my interest. They have lesson plans, Power Pont's, and more.

I stumbled upon this neat article that looks about teacher to student communication 2.0 where communication is done with cell phones that are free to students in a school in Canada. The pilot program in a 10th grade class helped improve grades and attendance. One teacher even used the cell phones to send out a daily journal topic before class. I was very surprised by this article because this idea never even occurred to me as a way of communication in education with students. I personally think it is a good idea for high school students because it can allow for students to increase how they are connected to their education, and hold them more accountable. I thought the school took the right approach with a strict policy being explained right at the start of the pilot. I am very curious what the teachers in the class think about this program.

This blog lists some helpful applications for the Android phone. I posted about apps earlier which was more centered for iPhones, so I found this to be interesting. I do not have an Android, but I know many people who do. The list includes apps for record keeping, storage, graphing, measurements, flash card building, and more. There was even the mention of Wolfram Alpha which we learned more about in our most recent class. This blog can be very helpful for educators and students that have the Android.

This article talks about many different resources available to teachers to use in the classroom when YouTube is not available as some school districts block it. The only one I have used is Hulu because I enjoy catching up on television shows online, but looking over this list makes me realize there are many tools for showing videos to students. I think it would be easier to use one of these instead of showing an old video tape on the television for several reasons including you could post the links online so students who miss class can watch them which is not always possible when you use regular videos.

This is a great page that shows different applications for the iPhone that are designed to assist educators. They include test generators, plagiarizing catching tools, and organizational tools. I also noticed that Moodle is on here, and I want to download that to make my time at Harrisburg University easier as I live with my iPhone. I have not heard of many of these applications, but they look like helpful resources.