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"A feature that has long been request by educators has finally arrived in iPad 2: video mirroring. Video mirroring shows exactly what's on your device's screen on a second display, like a projector, television, or monitor. We're used to video mirroring with laptops--many teachers do this everyday. iPad 2 requires either the Apple VGA Adapter or Apple Digital AV Adapter. The VGA adapter connects to most projectors while the digital adapter connects to HDMI, which is common on newer televisions. Apple Digital AV Adapter also outputs sound while the VGA adapter outputs only video to the display."

The Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project attractively displays the text of Shakespearean plays, enhanced with definitions, images, audio and video to support and enhance reading of the play. The Canadian site has many extraordinary curricular features (and a couple of cool games!) including The Learning Commons offers a bounty of guides and courses.

"Great literature is essential to learning in any classroom, but in a 21st Century learning environment, texts become a centerpiece for classroom discussion, critical thinking and deeper understanding. And as you adapt to the new school year (and the new Common Core standards), the literature in your classroom can become an essential component to your students' success"

Social media tools can help break the barriers set by the walls of schools. Learning and communicating outside the school hours with technology aid is a modern adaptation of education that has showed great results. This post looks at some web tools that provide school-specific tools that are just as powerful in facilitating the communication inside the student-teacher-parent triangle as the more famous popular social networking sites..

"The Victorian Department of Education recognises the importance of flexible work options and family friendly work practices in maintaining a diverse, adaptive and high performing workforce able to meet current  and future needs."

Some useful ideas that can be adapted by most teachers.

Teachers won't be redundant in the new technology rich learning economy, but they will need to adapt as conditions change, becoming guides and mentors rather than instructors. summary via Judy O'Connell

"The "Unplugged" project, based at Canterbury University,uses activities, games, magic tricks and competitions toshow children the kind of thinking that is expected of acomputer scientist. All of the activities are available freeof charge at csunplugged.org ... This paper will explore why this approach has become popular, and describe developments and adaptations thatare being used for outreach and teaching around NewZealand, as well as internationally."

The author of the post has culled a bunch of ideas from different teachers who have shared their approaches to using QR codes in a classroom setting. Once students are equipped with a device that can read QR codes and they know how to scan them, it is easy to adapt the ideas here to use a classroom.

This paper addresses the competences needed in 21st century life especially in relation to civic participation, and the educational requirements to foster them in young people. New technologies are widely used by young people for informal social interaction, video game-playing and giving voice to their views. Incorporation of these practices into the classroom has been fairly slow, despite their manifest potential for promoting agency and civic engagement. The paper argues that this is in part due to the need for a cultural shift in education to accommodate them. Currently, many competences young people will need for the future world of interactive technology and 'bottom-up' information, communication and democracy are mainly being developed through informal practices. These competences, which include adaptability, managing ambiguity, and agency are discussed in relation to civic participation. 

Single standards are notoriously difficult to overcome or dislodge, even when they become ludicrously inefficient,

Save Stories, Photos, and Videos on a Collaborative Timeline. A free tool for building a collaborative family history project over the internet, this timeline generator can adapt to fit a timeline of anything It goes beyond blogging to permanently capture life's stories in words and photos. You can publish or share the stories privately with family and friends.

"This lively RSA Animate, adapted from Dan Pink's talk at the RSA, illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in the workplace."

Learning styles are a way to help improve your quality of learning. By understanding your own personal styles, you can adapt the learning process and techniques you use. This site is dedicated to helping you better understand learning styles, as well as providing an easy way to discover your own styles.

"What Makes a Great Teacher? Image credit: Veronika Lukasova Also in our Special Report: National: "How America Can Rise Again" Is the nation in terminal decline? Not necessarily. But securing the future will require fixing a system that has become a joke. Video: "One Nation, On Edge" James Fallows talks to Atlantic editor James Bennet about a uniquely American tradition-cycles of despair followed by triumphant rebirths. Interactive Graphic: "The State of the Union Is ..." ... thrifty, overextended, admired, twitchy, filthy, and clean: the nation in numbers. By Rachael Brown Chart: "The Happiness Index" Times were tough in 2009. But according to a cool Facebook app, people were happier. By Justin Miller On August 25, 2008, two little boys walked into public elementary schools in Southeast Washington, D.C. Both boys were African American fifth-graders. The previous spring, both had tested below grade level in math. One walked into Kimball Elementary School and climbed the stairs to Mr. William Taylor's math classroom, a tidy, powder-blue space in which neither the clocks nor most of the electrical outlets worked. The other walked into a very similar classroom a mile away at Plummer Elementary School. In both schools, more than 80 percent of the children received free or reduced-price lunches. At night, all the children went home to the same urban ecosystem, a zip code in which almost a quarter of the families lived below the poverty line and a police district in which somebody was murdered every week or so. Video: Four teachers in Four different classrooms demonstrate methods that work (Courtesy of Teach for America's video archive, available in February at teachingasleadership.org) At the end of the school year, both little boys took the same standardized test given at all D.C. public schools-not a perfect test of their learning, to be sure, but a relatively objective one (and, it's worth noting, not a very hard one). After a year in Mr. Taylo

Adapted from Kathy Schrock's Blooming iPad @Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano

If you're an Australian teacher then you should definitely have this page in your Bookmarks/Favorites. As they say: "Through its Copyright Advisory Group, the Australian Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) has published a Creative Commons information pack online, a bundle of eight documents that distills the basics of CC licensing and the philosophy behind it. This pack is a great resource for educators and students, and we encourage you to use it in your schools by adapting it however you like. The info pack includes concise and concrete answers to simple questions, like: What is Creative Commons? How to Find Creative Commons Licensed Material How to Attribute Creative Commons Licensed Material and more. Find all documents at their Smartcopying website, "The Official Guide to Copyright Issues for Australian Schools and TAFE." All of them are licensed CC BY, the most effective and open license for open educational resources."

Hazel Edwards is a Melbourne based author who writes books and scripts for children and adults. Picture book 'There's a Hippopotamus on our Roof Eating Cake' is her best known title which has been continually in print for 28 years and adapted for stage, radio, video and puppetry as well as widely translated.

SCAMPER is an acronym for another of those interesting thinking tools used to spark creative approaches to a situation or problem. It is a checklist designed to force one to think about and look at things in different ways. This post is interesting because of the visual approach that the author takes to Substituting, Combining, Adapting, Modifying or magnifying, Purposing, Eliminating or Reverse/rearranging.