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Story telling is one of the most ancient and powerful forms of human expression. In today's media rich world, there are an abundance of digital tools that allow students to express themselves through digital narratives in ways that would have been impossible only a few years ago. This presentation will introduce participants to the tools of digital story telling, provide rich examples of student work, and help to provide context to the relevance of story telling in curriculum and instruction.

Microsoft has some great Teacher Guides available. The guides have teaching tips and step-by-step instructions on a variety of topics and tools and technologies. The guides are all free and downloadable in PDF form. Topics include: Critical Thinking in web searches, Windows Movie Maker, Free tools from Microsoft, Digital Storytelling, Microsoft Office, web apps, OneNote, Bing and Mathematics, and Accessibility in the Classroom. The guides are easy to use and read and a great resource

You may have never tried project-based learning, or you may teach in a purely PBL environment. Whatever your background, you'll find that PBL can be a powerful instructional approach. Here are ten reasons why.

We showed you how to run OS X Lion in a virtual machine on top of Snow Leopard, but it seems everyone wanted to know the opposite of that: how to run Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard in a VM on top of Mac OS X Lion. Follow our instructions and you'll be up and running in no time.

In a heutagogical approach to teaching and learning, learners are highly autonomous and self-determined and emphasis is placed on development of learner capacity and capability with the goal of producing learners who are well-prepared for the complexities of today's workplace. The approach has been proposed as a theory for applying to emerging technologies in distance education and for guiding distance education practice and the ways in which distance educators develop and deliver instruction using newer technologies such as social media.

From Robin Good: Beeclip EDU is a web app which allows anyone to easily combine images, video and texts to create instructional scrapbooks, moodboards, collages or portfolios. Images can be easily searched and imported via Google Images and Flickr, and text can be easily added in a number ways. Visual objects can be positioned and personalized on the page and final scrapbooks can be downloaded or printed. Free to use. Can be tested without registering.

Post from @medkh9 "Digital citizenship is a key component of the technology and media literacy. We should not only teach our students how to be  good citizens in the real physical world  but how they can be good netizens of the online world  as well.Today's learning requires alot of use of technology and most imprtant of all, our students are using technology on a daily basis- text messaging, blogging, Facebooking, Twittering, watching videos, gaming and networking. They live in two different but interconnected worlds. What they do online can have a severe repercussions on their real life if not properly instructed on digital safety issues and this is where digital citizenship fits in."

"Google Apps are a suite of productivity tools designed to help students and teachers work together more efficiently and effec­tively. It is a multi-purpose platform with myriad educational and instructional benefits."

Infographic - Feedback please - some very useful tips/ideas for obtaining feedback from students

"Rachel Langenhorst helps teachers in her district find solutions for those issues. She used to teach social studies, but is now the K-12 Technology Integrationist and Instructional Coach at Rock Valley Community Schools in Iowa. "Really be cognizant of the digital tools you're picking and why you are picking them." She put together a list of favorite digital tools for the social studies classroom and shared them during an edWeb webinar. She emphasizes that, as with any classroom technology, teachers need to be careful not to just substitute a tech tool for an analog one. Instead, technology should be used to enhance classroom learning in ways that wouldn't be possible otherwise, including expanding learning beyond the classroom walls."

"CommonSense Media blog post introducing Lesson Flows, Darri Stephens shares that the framework redefines the traditional lesson plan by integrating digital learning tools and content with pedagogical intent. Quite simply, you can discover tools on Graphite and then align them to each part of your lesson -- the hook, direct instruction, guided practice, independent practice, and wrap-up -- thinking with purpose about your lesson redesign. Lesson Flows are excellent tools for teacher librarians to use as they design technology-rich collaborative projects with classroom teachers."

"CommonSense Media blog post introducing Lesson Flows, Darri Stephens shares that the framework redefines the traditional lesson plan by integrating digital learning tools and content with pedagogical intent. Quite simply, you can discover tools on Graphite and then align them to each part of your lesson -- the hook, direct instruction, guided practice, independent practice, and wrap-up -- thinking with purpose about your lesson redesign. Lesson Flows are excellent tools for teacher librarians to use as they design technology-rich collaborative projects with classroom teachers."

"Jon Bergmann talks with Vicki Davis (CoolCatTeacher) about flipped learning by which he means moving direct instruction to the individual space so the classroom space can be freed up for collaborative projects. Listen now to find out more about this pedagogical method."

"Technology, as an instructional tool, can be especially powerful when used to conduct formative assessments because technology has the ability to provide feedback in a very timely manner"

"Theories and Models of Learning for Educational Research and Practice. This knowledge base features learning theories that address how people learn. A resource useful for scholars of various fields such as educational psychology, instructional design, and human-computer interaction. Below is the index of learning theories, grouped in somewhat arbitrary categories. Note that this website is an iterative project and these entries are a work in progress;"

Animated Explanations is a website "full of animated movies, interactive tutorials and instructional videos, all free for you to view and to embed in your website".

Good for ESL/EFL and dsylexic learners of any age.\n\n"Each of the mini games features easy to follow instructions, cute and colorful graphics and an easily identifiable learning outcome. The difficulty ramps up with each level completed, and there are five levels for each of the three mini-games. If you've got a child of your own who is just starting to learn how to use numbers - 1 2 3 Sheep! is a fun way to help improve their counting skills."\n\nBacked by an online assessment system...\n

In this issue we present articles that push the boundaries of research on digital cultures, teaching, and technologies in fruitful and generative directions.  Researchers and practitioners in this issue present case studies and analysis of practical classroom use of copyright literacies, learning management systems, mobile/cell phones, social video, Twitter, and Google Reader.  The articles demonstrate how the affordances of digital culture have shifted our understandings of how pupils learn as content can be accessed, designed, and shared.  Despite the affordances of digital culture, teaching and learning-with and through digital technologies-requires effective pedagogy.  Digital technologies are not 'teacher-proof' tools; they require thoughtful and thorough integration into pedagogy, in a manner that reflects carefully articulated instructional and learning goals

I've been rereading parts of Understanding by Design and Preparing Instructional Objectives over the past few weeks. Not really trying to "master" the content (since I've been using it for a few years), but to see if I can glean some insight on how to bring it to the students I'll have in class in a few weeks.

A great site of free instructional videos on a range of topics.