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Good for any class doing a character study The ever clever Russel Tarr has developed a new neat tool for creating fictional text message exchanges between fictional and or historical characters. The Classtools SMS Generator is free to use and does not require students to log-in. To use the SMS Generator just click the left speech bubble icon and enter a message. Then to create a reply just click the right speech bubble icon and enter a new message. You can make the exchange as long as you like.

A visually-rich way of developing characters for writing using Pinterest.

"William Shakespeare, the bard behind some of the greatest works in the English language, is coming to a Facebook page near you. Weekly Reader has teamed up with the Ophelia Project and White Plains High School to re-enact one of Shakespeare's plays on Facebook from April 26 to 28. Much Ado About Nothing will be presented on a special page through status updates, posts, pictures and videos. The students helped create separate pages for their characters complete with pictures, in-character bios and likes. The project is meant both as an educational resource and a tool to combat cyber bullying.

Neat little infographic showing your Twitter Character. Can also compare with someone else 

Girls and Games: What's the Attraction? Games are increasingly recognized by educators as a way to get kids excited about learning. While the stereotype of a "gamer" may evoke the image of a high school boy holed up in a dark room playing on a console, in reality 62 percent of gamers play with other people either in person or online, and 47 percent of all gamers are girls. Game developers and academics who have been studying the elements that go into making games more attractive to girls found that those very same qualities are also important components of learning. For instance, girls are more drawn to games that require problem solving in context, that are collaborative (played through social media) and that produce what's perceived to be a social good. They also like games that simulate the real word and are particularly drawn to "transmedia" content that draws on characters from books, movies, or toys.

"The authors of this paper use characters from the 1998 film The Big Lebowski to illustrate the intricate, self-defined nature of information seeking behavior and the ways in which personal characteristics contribute to the success or failure of an information search."

"If you have ever tried to get all of your students to the same set of websites at the same time, you know that just a couple of mistyped characters can create a frustrating experience. One solution is to post all of the links on your course blog. Another solution is to use a link bundling service that will group all of your links together into one package. Then instead of sending out a bunch of individual links you can just send one link that will open all of the bundled links for your students. Here are three services that you can use for just that purpose."

Clever design helping people learn Chinese characters.

program to create myths and legends, has background and characters but you can also upload your own.

60 second summary videos of major books kids would study at school (e.g. Romeo & Juliet, 1984, Pride & Prejudice). Great idea for tech integration: could do 60 second summaries of a chapter, a whole book, or of a character.  Would be good to show kids too, but had some rather inappropriate ads on some of the ones I saw, which is a shame.

web site with some good graphic organisers for primary

Make a fake Facebook wall for a book character (or anyone else!)

There needs to be wider examination of the extent to which evidence informs education. Do we heed it enough? Or is what children learn determined more by precedent and cultural or institutional norms?