"In the digital age, kids need to have an understanding of what it means to be a responsible digital citizen. They need to learn the technical how-to's, as well as a more global comprehension of how to navigate the online world. To that end, Melbourne educator Jenny Luca made a commitment to help her students start blogging and to create ePortfolios. Here are five reasons why, at her school, these skills are now a high priority."

student created "how-to" video

"As teachers, we all know that we should create time to reflect on our professional practices… we need to experience the process of reflecting, in order to be able to guide our students… ….but what get's cut the easiest from our schedule if there is little time available? How can we see reflection as a high priority item on our never ending list of things to do? How can we get into the habit of making reflection time?"

"Evaluate websites with variations and extensions of skills you use to evaluate print materials."

"It is a different time for teaching and learning. The unfortunate reality is that much of what we do in schools and in our own teaching practice is still grounded in thinking that has ruled the day for more than a century. " So what can we be sure of? Well, we can be sure that abundance brings a host of opportunities for learning, and we can be sure that if we are going to make sense of those opportunities in ways that benefit our students, we're going to have to unlearn and relearn much of our own practice. In short, it has to start with a willingness to reflect on what the larger changes mean in our own learning.

"Coming up with the right question involves vigorously thinking through the problem, investigating it from various angles, turning closed questions into open-ended ones and prioritizing which are the most important questions to get at the heart of the matter. "We've been underestimating how well our kids can think." "We've been underestimating how well our kids can think." Rothstein said in a recent discussion on the talk show Forum. "We see consistently that there are three outcomes. One is that students are more engaged. Second, they take more ownership, which for teachers, this is a huge thing. And the third outcome is they learn more - we see better quality work.""

"Students who view mathematics as only memorizing facts and procedures are often unsure of when or how to apply what they have learned. "

a thought provoking blogpost about Where's The Authentic Audience? The author takes a closer look at the buzz word circulating among blogging educators and classrooms and asks tough questions: What happens when there is no audience coming to your or your students' blogs? She elaborates her point by reflecting on the importance of quality work, connected teachers, give and take, writing with an audience in mind, digital literacy and humility."

"o piggy back onto my last post about Alan November's call to make students contributors to their own learning, I wanted to share the "Skype Jobs" of my students."

"Student pairs or groups will research and report on an important historical figure. This could either be done to review people already studied, to seed background knowledge of upcoming people, or just people the students are interested in. Students will use the project to learn about or practice wiki page creation with the basic elements of text, images, and hyperlinks. They will also get an opportunity to explore writing their own questions, which will become the core skill in later inquiry projects."

"Your personal footprint-and to some extent your school's-is most likely being written without you, thanks to the billions of us worldwide who now have our own printing presses and can publish what we want when we want to."

"Feel free to contact any of the officers for comments, questions, suggestions or even additions to the newsletter or website. We would appreciate hearing from you! "

Pick-A-Path Narrative Writing Project "This year we are co-operatively working on developing a pick a path narrative piece of writing. We have to work together on our main plot but then independently work on the different paths our readers can choose to take. "

"What would you have asked? Imagined Interviews Subject: Social Studies - American History Grade: 4th-8th Time Frame: Depends on prior tech experiences, but about four class periods, plus homework. [1 class period for research (and homework). 1 class period to draft questions and responses and script their interview. 1 class period to tape interviews. 1 class period to edit interviews.] Summary: Students will imagine they have traveled back in time to the civil war as a reporter. They will have the opportunity of a lifetime to interview an important historical figure of their choice. As their interview will run on a local news broadcast, their edited questions and answers can take no more than 2 minutes to show. (This could obviously be modified to any period in history, American or otherwise.)"

"Chapter 18. Circle of Knowledge"

documentation & reflection prompts

"The learning model that supports artists and inventors, scientists and musicians is a powerful framework that can support the work of readers and writers in our classrooms. When you hear the word workshop, what do you think about? What space do you envision? What tools would you expect to be surrounded with? How do you see the time being used? How would that image change when you put the word "reading" in front of it? The day to day routine of Reader's and Writers Workshop can be broken down to a number of activities, which can be arranged according to your own time table and students. Lessons will vary, depending on your grade, your class needs, but the workshop structure remains the same across grade and content areas."

"Our Journey of Discovery"

"Awesome cloud-based information management tool that enables users to collect, highlight, access and share a variety of information, on a variety of devices."