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"Pinterest, a social sharing website that allow users to create and share virtual bulletin boards, has been the darling of social media over the past year. Its primarily female user base continues to grow by leaps and bounds. While you likely know teachers who have free Pinterest accounts, you may still be wondering if you belong on yet another social media site. "YES!" (Uttered quickly and with much enthusiasm!) And here's why. While Pinterest is exploding with fashion boards, trendy home decor, and to-die-for travel destinations (that sadly don't fit my budget), it also includes many boards for educators. Pinterest, heavy on visual appeal, can serve as a great resource for such areas as: classroom decor, language arts. content areas, lesson plans, technology tools, professional books, and much, much more! Your boards can also be a resource for students (age 13+ according to Pinterest regulations), teachers, and parents. If you're a newbie to Pinterest, listed below are a few must-know terms and how-to's. With a few quick tips, Pinterest can help you organize the internet jumble of resources for teachers and students. If you're a full-fledged addict, er, Pinterest Pro, skip to How Educators Use Pinterest or simply download today's Pinterest Cheat Sheet that also includes many ideas for boards."

"The use of primary sources as an instructional tool in the social studies classroom will engage students, encourage high levels of learning and raise test scores. But with so much to do and so little time, how can teachers know what strategies and resources work best?"

"The driving force behind the Web 2.0 revolution is a spirit of intellectual philanthropy and collective intelligence that is made possible by new technologies for communication, collaboration and information management. One of the best examples of collective intelligence in action are the wide range of social bookmarking applications that have been embraced in recent years."

Sophia is a free social teaching and learning platform that offers academic content to anyone, anywhere free of charge. The website, which has been described as a mashup of Facebook, Wikipedia, and YouTube focused solely on education, also lets educators supplement their teaching methods with tools to create a customized learning environment in a private or public setting. Sophia uses Web 2.0 tools and methods to create a credible, crowd-sourced platform where information is organized in "learning packets"-bite-sized tutorials tagged to specific academic subjects or topics, including standards-aligned objectives.

"Here are over 100 ways that different social technologies (and tools) are being used by learning professionals worldwide - compiled from the comments of those who have contributed their Top Tools for Learning in 2009. "

"I have been working with 5th grade for several weeks to upgrade "The American Revolution", a unit in their Social Studies curriculum. Along the Way I blogged about individual lessons"

Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) uses properties listed in the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places to enliven history, social studies, geography, civics, and other subjects. TwHP has created a variety of products and activities that help teachers bring historic places into the classroom.

"Getting the school year started right can mean calling home with a positive message, stepping out of your comfort zone or simply asking for help. The connections you make in August can serve you well through the trials of K-12 education. You never know when you're going to need help -- from an encouraging smile to a better way to assess a standard. While the Internet and social media are great, they are merely tools to connect you with the people behind all of the accounts. With so much to do, it can be easy to push collaboration back, but this can have a long-term erosive effect on your happiness in teaching. The earlier you start, the easier it becomes. "

Dipity is a free digital timeline website. Our mission is to organize the web's content by date and time. Users can create, share, embed and collaborate on interactive, visually engaging timelines that integrate video, audio, images, text, links, social media, location and timestamps.

"The "Poetry of America" initiative is part of the Poetry and Literature Center's 75th Anniversary celebration. Through two features, "Poetry of American Identity" and "Poetry of American History," this initiative explores how poetry connects to the following themes: immigration and migration, work and industry, social change, and peace and war."

"In the social web each of us becomes a node of information. We are allowed to connect to friends, people, sites, information. We are allowed to consume, produce, share, learn, recreate, remix, and be as large or as small a node as we want. Education in the 21st Century is not about consuming information (it changes to fast), it's about creating new knowledge from what we know, what we think, and what we are passionate about."

Student-owned learning in social studies

"Having students work in groups reaps a bounty of benefits, including boosting students' social skills and upping the number of "happy campers" in the classroom. "

comprehensive three-volume curriculum created by Renee Hobbs is available online. This is the 18-unit curriculum developed for Maryland State Department of Education and Discovery Communications, Inc. You can download the PDF files with lesson plans and reproducibles for each unit and use the videos to teach media literacy in conjunction with social studies, language arts and health education.

" mmerses students in local heritage, cultures, landscapes, opportunities and experiences; Uses these as a foundation for the study of language arts, mathematics, social studies, science and other subjects across the curriculum; and Emphasizes learning through participation in service projects for the local school and/or community. "

"In this spirited, accessible poetics of new media, Rushkoff picks up where Marshall McLuhan left off, helping readers come to recognize programming as the new literacy of the digital age----and as a template through which to see beyond social conventions and power structures that have vexed us for centuries. This is a friendly little book with a big and actionable message."

The NSDL Middle School Portal project is evolving! You can still rely on the NSDL Middle School Portal web site for high-quality resources but now through the Middle School Portal 2: Math & Science Pathways (MSP2) social network you can connect to colleagues and share knowledge within and beyond the MSP2 community.

"Whatever you do the first year will be a trainwreck (compared to the nice and tidy sit-and-get PD). So from the beginning, everyone should be aware that it's all a work in progress-just like the profession itself. Perhaps the greatest potential here is in the chance to personalize professional development for teachers. The above ideas are too vague to be considered an exact guide, but an "exact guide" really isn't possible without ending up with something as top-heavy and standardized as the process it seeks to replace-or at least supplement. Instead focus on the big ideas-personalizing educator training through self-directed and social media-based professional development."