"There's no better way to find out fast what, if anything, is happening in the world, from your backyard to the other side of the Earth." I wonder if all users would agree with this post and/or some of the comments posted in reply...? I am especially curious about student perspective.

"Use engaging videos to create customized lessons. You can use, tweak, or completely redo any lesson featured on TED-Ed, or create lessons from scratch based on any video from YouTube. Watch the video to learn how. "

" 375 Free eBooks: Download to Kindle, iPad/iPhone & Nook This collection features free e-books, mostly classics, that you can read on your iPad/iPhone (purchase), Kindle (purchase), Nook (purchase) or other devices. It includes great works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. To learn how to load books to your Kindle using the links below, please watch this video. This other video explains how to upload epub files to a Nook."

"Disp Recorder lets you easily record anything that happens on the screen of your iPad: navigating through the Home screens, changing options in the Settings app or working in another app such as GarageBand or Google Earth. It will even record a Keynote presentation complete with the virtual laser-pointer etc - an option for having students record a presentation of their work to share with their peers."

"If you have a blog or website it can be a good idea to include a panel displaying your recent tweets. The process of adding a stream of tweets to your blog is now much easier with the addition of a widget maker in Twitter."

What can you add to this?

"We've now posted a user guide to help you get started with the bookmarking tool Diigo. This brilliant service allows you to save, tag and search your own bookmarks. Diigo also lets you create public lists of links and share your bookmarks with other people in groups, such as the #VicPLN Diigo group. Diigo is the perfect way to share bookmarks within your faculty, your class or your learning network."

"Great teachers in this second decade, will need more than subject knowledge to have value. In the 20th Century, it was arguably the most important quality of a teacher. "She knows her stuff" was a common student endorsement of a quality teacher. But "knowing your stuff" won't be sufficient any more. Wikipedia knows it's stuff, too. Better than you do, no doubt. The differentiator of success for a teacher will be the way you creatively translate knowledge to the lives of your students, the way you inspire them to discover knowledge themselves, and the way you infuse the learning process with joy."

"Picture this: A student is at home, listening to my biology podcast and a question comes to mind, that she thinks would be of benefit to the community of fellow listeners. She wants to contribute to the podcast by asking her question in her own voice (like talk-back radio) and hear the question discussed on next week's episode. I have investigated and tried quite a number of options. Some of the best include K7, Skype Voicemail, Google Voice and iPadio and CinchCast. But none of these were ideal for the purpose. Some are expensive for students. Some are expensive for me. Some don't work in Australia (yes - I'm looking at you, Google Voice). Some are cumbersome for my purpose, and let's face it, if it takes much any effort, students won't use it). Enter SpeakPipe. A new service that is just what I've been looking for."

"A teacher's role in the classroom is to supply direction, maturity and wisdom. It is to raise questions, inspire endeavour and lay down challenges. A teacher brings purpose to the lesson. But to be effective in an iPad classroom, she must relinquish control over the tools used, allowing students to share the responsibility and joy of discovering and sharing solutions to achieve that purpose. I'm not saying that teachers are absolved of their professional responsibility for learning to use the technology. But they should admit to being learners, and not let that fact stop their students from using the device in unforeseen ways, in the pursuit of the class goals."

"Sometimes it is easier to show someone how to use a program on his or her computer than it is to write directions in an email. If you're the go-to tech help person in your school, Screen Leap could prove to be a handy little tool for you. "

great videos from math teacher

I have become interested in the idea of 'flipping' the classroom since I first read about it on Karl Fisch's Fischalgebra blog (see resources at the end of this post).  He describes how he makes eight to ten minute 'mini-lessons/lectures' for his students which they have to watch at home as 'homework'.

"As you are watching, ask yourself: What changed by using, in this case, the iPad and ShowMe app? Could the same [learning] have been accomplished by keeping students' illustrations analog? Was there differentiation potential? Can this type of "activity" be used as an assessment to replace/upgrade traditional assessment? Are the movie clips potential artifacts for digital portfolios? Could these movie clips be part of a variety of student work at a parent-teacher conference? Was any learning amplified by placing it on the classroom blog to share with families? What skills were practiced? What literacies were supported? Was it worth the extra time investment, the learning curve?"

"Kindergarteners learn by doing - using iPads to create and share their story. Park Tudor School Indianapolis, IN"

"The search giant said the move was the first step in transitioning from an "information agent" to a "knowledge agent." "The Knowledge Graph enables you to search for things, people or places that Google knows about - landmarks, celebrities, cities, sports teams, buildings, geographical features, movies, celestial objects, works of art and more - and instantly get information that's relevant to your query," Amit Singhal, a senior vice president at Google, wrote. Google is going to roll out the new feature slowly, but some users should begin seeing the feature this week. In practical terms, what's going to happen when you search on Google is that you'll see a separate "knowledge panel" on the right side of your regular search results that presents information about whatever your searching for."

"The following table lists the search operators that work with each Google search service. Click on an operator to jump to its description - or, to read about all of the operators, simply scroll down and read all of this page."

"6 Examples of Using Twitter in the Classroom"

"Check out our collection to find a wealth of Twitter chats that are great for all kinds of educators."