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Blogging and tweeting save time. Simply in writing down what you are doing and thinking, you are improving your work through self reflection. Sharing it with the world leverages this incredibly powerful hive mind that takes crappy lesson plans and ideas and spins them into pure gold often in less time than it takes to google up a halfway passable idea yourself.

We talk a lot in schools about wishing we were somehow more supported by our communities, but schools also need to be more encouraging of that relationship. To address this, Zolt envisioned, and made real, In2Books, ePals’ flagship literacy program. In a nutshell, In2Books selects a carefully screened volunteer, let’s say a business exec from AOL, and pairs that professional with a student to discuss books through letter writing that is teacher-guided and teacher-approved. It’s as simple as that. It’s book buddies brought into the 21st Century.

My school rewards kids that read 20 minutes per night for a month with an assembly. It's your average chaotic school event: Ice cream, raffles, cheap useless prizes, etc.A student returned from his first reading reward party last Thursday, beaming. His eyes were just about popping out of his sockets and the creases in his forehead were cavernous. He cornered me and rambled for some time about what he was going to read next, and how there's no way he'll miss the next party, and other such "And then...and then...and then..." fourth grader speak.On the way out the door, shortly after, he said to me, "You know, I'm not in it for the prizes." I smiled, thinking what was coming would be a brownie-point winning, "I'm in it for the enjoyment of reading," or "I just like to read."Instead, he finished, "I'm in it for the ice cream."Sigh. Happy birthday, Dr. Seuss.