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"We recently launched a new version of Google presentations with many new features to help you create beautiful presentations together. We've added the new editor to our Docs demos to make it easier to test drive your presentation building skills. Check out the new animations and transitions, get artsy with drawings, and show off your masterpiece to a friend or colleague. You can share the link in the demo with others and work on the same presentation together. No login required. No Google account needed. Just go to docs.google.com/demo to take it for a spin."

"Google Docs, which is now a part of Google Drive, now has more than 450 fonts available to all users. To access all of these new fonts select "add fonts" from the bottom of the font selection menu that you've always used. Selecting "add fonts" will open up a new menu in which you can mix and match fonts to your heart's content."

"7 New Things in SMART Notebook 10.7"

"School maths lessons: Pupils 'scared to ask for help'"

"Social Media History Becomes a New Job Hurdle"

Presentation.io is a new service that is designed to help your audience follow along with your presentations. Presentation.io does this by allowing the members of your audience to see your slides on their laptops, iPads, and Android tablets and watch them change when you advance your slides. This ensures that everyone is on the same slide at the same time. Presentation.io includes a backchannel that allows your audience to comment on and ask questions about your slides. To start using Presentation.io upload a PPT or PDF to your free Presentation.io account. Presentation.io then gives you a URL to distribute to your audience. When the members of your audience open that URL they will be able to see and follow along with your presentation. When you're done with your presentation just click "stop presenting" and the synchronization stops. Presentation.io's free service allows you to share your presentations for 48 hours then you'll have to upload them again.

introducing mindset experiments

eQuizShow is a free tool developed by a junior high school teacher in New York City, Henry Wilson. Henry designed eQuizShow to be a tool that teachers can use to create Jeopardy-style games online. Unlike similar tools you do not have to download or upload any PowerPoint files to use eQuizShow. On eQuizShow you can build and display your quiz completely online. To build your quiz just enter a title, an administrative password, and your question categories. eQuizShow will then generate a grid on which you can enter questions and answers. If you don't have time to build a quiz or you just need some inspiration, browse the eQuizShow gallery.

Problem Attic is a free service that allows you to quickly create practice tests and flashcards for social studies, language arts, mathematics, and science.Problem Attic makes it easy to create practice assessments and flashcards. To create your practice tests on Problem Attic you simply create a new document then browse through questions and pin them to your document. After you have pinned all of the questions that you want in your document you can arrange the order in which they appear in your document. Finally, before printing your document you choose and set the page formatting.

ClassBadges is a new service that aims to help teachers and students track their achievements big and small. Using ClassBadges teachers create goals for their students. When students reach their goals teachers assign a badge to them to keep in their student profiles. Teachers can create goals for things like completing a large research project, for perfect attendance, or for completing an informal learning activity with their parents while visiting a local museum.

TED has a brand new education site that I am excited about.  TED-ed is a collection of educational video lessons that have been animated.  These lessons can be used as a supplement in any classroom.  Each video on the TED-ed site has an associated lesson, a Quick Quiz with multiple choice comprehension questions, Think which asks questions to help students think more critically about what they have watched, and Dig Deeper which helps students to explore the topic further.  In addition to the videos, TED-ed gives educators the ability to "flip" videos.  You can use, tweak, or completely re-do any lesson that is featured on TED-Ed, or even create lessons from scratch based on any video from YouTube. 

MentorMob is a site for creating learning playlists. Within a maximum of 10 "steps" you can lead your students through the learning process focused on any topic. Since playlists can include links to websites, to files you've created or to pop quizzes you'll have a variety of media at your disposal to support student learning. At the MentorMob site, create an account then browse the learning playlists already created by other educators. You'll find that some authors have shared their work publicly so that others can save their playlists and be able to edit them. While you're exploring the MentorMob website, be sure to also check the MentorMob blog where one of our recently created playlists is currently being featured. Creating your own learning playlist couldn't be simpler. Begin with some basic information: a title, description, category and tags. Next, you'll decide who will be able to view and edit your playlist - these can be changed later if you'd like to start by keeping your work private while it's in development. The plus sign that you find next will help you create the first step which can be a web link, a file or a pop quiz. Keep in mind that the links could lead your students to anything on the web such as videos, online polling tools, Google forms, interactive sites, or articles. Enter a title and description for each step you create as well as a representative image. Save your work and you're ready to create a new step.

Through Google Docs Demos you can try out the presentation, spreadsheet, drawing, and document tools of Google Docs without signing into a Google Account. Getting everyone in a group signed-up for an account can be time-consuming. If you're trying to introduce new users to Google Docs, Google Docs Demos could be a good way to get everyone trying the tools as quickly as possible.

They sound like something out of science fiction, but Bitcoins are getting just a little bit more real every day. They're intangible and invisible, but bitcoins recently attracted some real investment capital from the Winklevoss twins, who first dreamed up the idea for Facebook - or so their lawsuit argued. A bit of background: Bitcoins are a virtual currency system. They were programmed by an anonymous programmer(s?) in 2009. There are a limited number of possible bitcoins that can ever be traded-21 million-and the "coins" become available incrementally. That process is crowdsourced (anybody can mint bitcoins) but it requires solving complex encryption problems. Most bitcoin miners have an army of computer hardware to do the work for them.

An online library of free videos for learners everywhere - our goal is to gather a set of resources to help you learn just about anything, meet people who make a difference in their communities, and even discover new parts of the world.

100+ Google tips for teachers