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"Along the way, Marcus explores the basic elements of music and how it evolved culturally and biologically. He dives deep into the popular "ten thousand hours" theory of mastery, developed by cognitive psychologist Anders Ericsson, "the world's leading expert on expertise," and examines Ericsson's second, lesser-known prerequisite for expertise - the notion of "deliberate practice," which describes the constant sense of self-evaluation and a consistent focus on one's weaknesses rather than playing on one's strengths. In fact, the practice of targeting specific weaknesses is known as the "zone of proximal development" and offers a framework for everything from education to videogames: [The "zone of proximal development" is] the idea that learning works best when the student tackles something that is just beyond his or her current reach, neither too hard nor too easy. "

AirPano offers dozens of spectacular 360 panoramas of famous landmarks and cities around the world. The AirPano panoramas can be set to auto-play with a music accompaniment or you can navigate the panoramas manually. To find a panorama on AirPano you can browse the listings, search by keyword, or view a Google Map of all of the places AirPano has captured. AirPano panoramas can be viewed in high or low resolution according to the speed of your Internet connection. The panoramas can be viewed on an iPad. You can also view the AirPano files in Google Earth.

Waterlife is an interactive story about the water cycle in the Great Lakes. Waterlife is a twenty part story through which students can learn about the role of water in our lives. Through the story students learn about things like fishing, pollution, invasive species, wetlands, and the politics of water conservation. When students select a part of the Waterlife story they will be able to hear narration, see visuals, and read the text of the story. Some parts of the story also contain links to external resources that student can explore.

Bundlenut is a simple service for organizing a set of links and sharing them with others. To use the service just visit Bundlenut and start entering the links that you want to include in your bundle. You can include comments about each of the links. When you have added all of links that you want to include in your bundle, Bundlenut will assign a unique url to your bundle. Anyone with access to that url will be able to see all of your links and comments about those links. You can use the service with or without registering. The advantage of registration is that you can go back and modify your bundle whenever you would like to.

"end of the year gifts for class: make word clouds with positive traits for each of my students. use a "Describe Me" sheet, have students write positive character traits of each of their classmates."

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.

Where and when the next mega disaster will strike -volcanic eruption, earthquake, tsunami or hurricane-is the focus of VIOLENT EARTH. Join tsunami scientist Jose Borrero of the University of Southern California on his trip to visit Banda Aceh with a National Geographic film team, barely one week after the December 26, 2004, tsunami-a tsunami so strong it actually moved the island of Sumatra a hundred feet.

"Quickly and easily digitize student work and build the resource for authentic assessment in your classroom. Unleash the power and the flexibility of digital tools, without sacrificing the important work your students do in non-digital formats. Rescue student work from the bottom of backpacks, trashcans, and filing cabinets and have it at your fingertips. Easy, flexible, authentic--a simply wonderful tool for teaching and learning. And best of all? It's free for teachers"

This site has checklists for each gradecurriculum corner level that breaks down every strand of the standards. These checklists will help you keep track of what you covered. There are also student checklists under the Classroom Management tab to document student progress. Although this site refers to them as "checklists," as teachers, we're not only concerned with adequate coverage of content, but also with the progress that students are making toward attaining the learning goals within the Standards. A simple rubric or notes as an addendum to the checklists could help to improve the data you gather as you assess the learning. In addition to the skill checklists, there are downloadable activities to help you reach your instructional goals. For example, a booklet to help students organize information while reading non-fiction texts. So, check the Common Core off your to-do-list today!

I am a big fan of StudyLadder. Many of our teachers in elementary and the middle school are utilizing this excellent resource. It is a multi-subject interactive site that allows you to differentiate for all levels of students through grade six. With the ability to import entire class lists, you can set up individualized, interactive work for your students. What I especially appreciate about this site is the color coded leveling. While teachers are shown which color represents which grade level, the students are not. In addition, StudyLadder is Common Core aligned.

"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."

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.

What it is: Want to see something really super cool? You can create your very own app for multiple mobile platforms in, I don't know, 7 minutes flat! Seriously. Conduit Mobile makes it incredibly easy to create your own app out of a blog, class website, wiki, etc. and publish it to share with others. It honestly could not be easier. Type in the URL you want turned into an app. Click go. Customize and tweak to your hearts desire and publish. That. Is. It. Holy cow it is easy! You all are going to look like super geniuses when you turn your classroom blogs/wikis/websites into mobile apps that parents and students can access easily from anywhere. Better yet- turn your school website into a mobile app and then you will be super genius of the school. That is an impressive title. Once your app is published, you have the ability to send push notifications to your app users (field trip reminders anyone?). You can also easily track the analytics of who is using your app.

"In a nifty set of experiments, three social scientists explored the differences between what they call "declarative" self-talk (I will fix it!) and "interrogative" self-talk (Can I fix it?). They began by presenting a group of participants with some anagrams to solve (for example, rearranging the letters in "sauce" to spell "cause".) But before the participants tackled the problem, the researchers asked one half of them to take a minute to ask themselves whether they would complete the task - and the other half to tell themselves that they would complete the task."

"Developing Independent Learners The ultimate goal of education is to produce students who can learn on their own. This is especially critical in the 21st century, a time of rapid technological change, when skills must be constantly learned and relearned. Self-directed learners are efficient at planning and following through without prompting. They know how to identify and use a wide variety of resources and tools. They take appropriate risks and learn from their mistakes. "

Spent is an online game designed to teach players about the challenges of living on minimum wage (or slightly higher) employment. Players begin by selecting a job which will provide the wages they have to survive on for a month. Then throughout the game players are confronted with challenges that they have to handle by making an "either or" choice. After each choice the player's account balance is adjusted. In addition to the change in the player's balance sheet, each choice is followed by an explanation of consequence of the choice made.

Videoscribe is an IOS app that lets you or your students create presentations that look as though they are being hand-drawn right in front of you. You've probably seen this style of animation recently, (like this from Sir Ken Robinson) they've become quite popular.

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.

Surface Languages provides free online language learning resources in thirty-eight languages. It is completely free. There are thousands of phrases and hours of audio spoken by native speakers along with flashcard, multiple choice and language learning games.

Quizdini is a free tool for creating online quizzes. The best feature of Quizdini is that you can create explanations of the correct answer for your students to view immediately after trying each question in your quiz. Your explanation can include text and or links to online resources like videos and images. Quizdini quizzes can be created in a traditional linear format or in a matching format that asks students to pair answers to terms.