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"There's been ample discussion in K-12 classrooms recently about the quality, or lack thereof, of students' online research skills. Such concerns came to a head late last year when a national survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project indicated that 60 percent of teachers believe digital technologies make it hard for students to distinguish between credible and noncredible sources online. But here's something you probably didn't know: One of the best and most robust resources for teaching digital literacy can be found on one of the Web's most persistent trouble spots: Google."

Feedly is another web-based Feed Reader. It's a good substitute for Google Reader, which will be killed off by Google in July of 2013.

"Search engines may make it easy to find information, but they don't necessarily do the same for learning it. That's why the founders of social test prep startup Grockit want to re-configure online content such as YouTube videos, Wikipedia entries and ebooks into ordered lesson plans. Their new product, Learnist, works a bit like a Pinterest for learning. Soon anyone (the capability is still invite-only at launch) will be able to compile content pieces onto a board or "learning." A nifty bookmarklet makes it easy to collect content from other sites. Unlike Pinterest, however, creators suggest a path in which to consume each content component. Users can check off each component as they go or "re-add" it to one of their own learnings. "

"Train up your Google-Fu with these 20 tricks that will focus your searches with laser precision. If you can't find something on the web using these ninja skills, it probably doesn't exist."

""If we are not teaching the kids to use the web as a vehicle for enhancing learning and teaching them to be the filter, that's a dereliction of duty," Luhtala said. One good way to put students through a meaningful, rigorous experience of analyzing source validity is with an annotated bibliography. Students have to not only summarize the source's importance, but also evaluate its validity. Here are some data points Luhtala teaches students to identify."

With the advent of the Internet and social media, news is distributed at an incredible rate by an unprecedented number of different media outlets. How do we choose which news to consume? Damon Brown gives the inside scoop on how the opinions and facts (and sometimes non-facts) make their way into the news and how the smart reader can tell them apart.