(via @MrWejr) "I often hear that students with little home support NEED extra incentives to get them to read.  The staff of Kent school, with over half of our students at or below the poverty level, have worked hard to prove this theory incorrect. It is not about pizza parties, book bucks, and stickers - it is about creating the conditions for ALL students to develop a love of reading."

(via @pernilleripp) "As a proponent of student blogging I am often asked what it "does" for my students.  The thing is, it does quite a bit. "

(via @JonathanEMartin) "This post could be almost infinite: there is most certainly an extraordinary array of options for videos which expand educators' understandings and inspire advances in 21st century learning.  But curation is about choice and selection, and while I know I will leave out many, I thought I'd offer up a set of 15 of my favorites for your consideration for video screening at at back-to-school or beginning-of-the-year faculty meetings (and/or parent and board meetings)."

(via @rmbyrne) "If you have ever found a website that you really like and wished that there were more like, Websites Like is a website you should try. Websites Like helps you find sites that are similar to your favorites. To find similar sites just enter the url of a like that you like and let Websites Like suggest similar sites to you."

(via @shellterrell) "The first days of class are very important for helping our students begin to build relationships with their peers. Getting to know you activities are fun and help us ensure we have a semester full of lasting memories."

Great suggestions from @ShellTerrell on activities to get to know your students

(via @medkh9) "With the advance of mobile technology into our life, the notion of professional development has been radically reshaped.To grow professionally is no longer limited to a certain geographic setting with a predefined set of resources, we can now learn wherever we are and on the go. No more boundaries and this is certainly one of the biggest advantages in embracing this kind of technology."

(via @rmbyrne) "This collection of resources for locating music and sounds licensed for re-use is one that I am sharing with the group."

use better search terms

"From 2005 up to this moment, thousands of educational blogs have seen the light and educators from all around the globe have been experiencing with this medium in their teaching.In this regard, I deemed it important to pause for a while and create an easy and simple guide to remind you ( in case you are an experienced blogger ) and walk the new teachers ( excited about how to use blogs in their classroom ) through the different procedures and pedagogical implications behind the use of blogs in education."

(via @rmbyrne) "In the list below you will find some map creation tools that don't require registration. And, of course, all of the tools on this list are free for teachers and students to use."

(via @rmbyrne) "These are some of the many things that you can do with Subtext: using Subtext you can read ebooks, annotate ebooks, create quizzes about ebooks, and write blog posts about the ebooks you read. You can create private and public book discussion groups and build bookshelves for your groups.

(via @rmbyrne) "Clipboard's basic structure is similar to Pinterest in that users create private and public boards to which they can save content from the web by using the Clipboard browser extensions and bookmarklets. Clipboard does have one feature that makes it slightly better than Pinterest. That feature is the option to save Flash-based games and apps on your clipboards and using them as fully-functioning games and apps within your clipboards."

(via @rmbyrne) "ReadCube provides a place for students to save and annotate scholarly documents. Through ReadCube students can search Google Scholar and Pub Med. Students can also import to ReadCube PDFs that they find elsewhere. The video below offers a short overview of what ReadCube can do."

"To watch web videos without the comments and garbage, just drag the button below to your browser's bookmarks bar. On any of the supported video pages, click the bookmark button to watch in peace."

I'm always nervous when I show a YouTube video because the comments are often, well, inappropriate. This bookmarklet cleans out the mess and leaves just the video so i can feel much more comfortable showing it in class.

"The site shows very nicely how to construct the airplane. First, you have a 3D representation of the final product and then an animation that takes you through the steps required to build the plane. This is definitely a resource for fun and inspiration."

Via @dougpete - This is a great site to assist the boys in constructing their own paper airplanes.

"Folks with website can easily make a feed for their website using a service like Feedburner but if they have no feed, I am now using Page2RSS to create a feed to add to my RSS subscriptions. Since I use Google Chrome for my primary browser, I installed the Page2RSS extension. For those of you using other other browsers, you can get a bookmarklet on the Page2RSS website. Of course, you can always just go to Page2RSS, paste in the URL for the feedless website, and the site gives you a feed URL to add to your subscriptions. "

I use my Google RSS a ton for professnal learning. Occasionally, I come across a site without an RSS feed. This is not a problem anymore thanks to this post from Wanda Terral.