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"Below are some of the top web apps for students looking for helpful tools to focus while online, as selected by Google's Chrome Web Apps Guru, Rahul Roy-Chowdhury. StayFocusd - StayFocusd is a productivity extension that helps you focus on work by restricting the amount of time you can spend on time-wasting websites.  You can restrict entire sites or just parts of them for as long or short of a time as necessary. Todo.ly- Todo.ly is an intuitive and easy to use online to-do list and task manager. It helps you get organized and get things done by organizing your tasks into projects and subprojects, adding customized icons and labels, and assigning due dates to your tasks. Read Later Fast - This app lets you save pages to read later - online or offline, and fast. All you have to do is right click and save the page for later to avoid having too many open tabs on your browser. Write Space - Write Space is a customizable, full-screen text editor that lives in your browser. It is designed to minimize the distractions that come between you and your writing.  This app also auto saves your work and works offline. StudyStack - StudyStack helps students memorize anything with millions of flashcards that have already been added to the site or the ability to create your own.  There are dozens of flashcard categories including foreign languages, math, LSAT and GRE. Graph.tk - An app for math majors, Graph.tk is an app that brings the graphing capabilities of your calculator to the browser. It's easy to use and good for plotting graphs based on equations. WordReference - For anyone taking a foreign language course or studying abroad, this extension gets you the translations you need in a fast and easy way.  Since it's an extension and placed right next to the address bar, you don't even have to leave the site you're on for a quick translation. BONUS APP: Panic Button - Ok, this app won't help you pass your class, but it might just come in handy during

Really interesting information on being a better online reader. The author suggests the following: "Maybe the decline of deep reading isn't due to reading skill atrophy but to the need to develop a very different sort of skill, that of teaching yourself to focus your attention. (Interestingly, Coiro found that gamers were often better online readers: they were more comfortable in the medium and better able to stay on task.)"

from Canada:  "Scientists and teachers work together to develop and deliver science units comprised of hands-on lessons on specific themes. There is a major focus on the experimental process of science. The lesson plans fit the BC Ministry of Education guidelines for Science K to 7. Opportunities are created to link lessons to other areas of the curriculum, such as math, fine arts, English and French language arts, and First Nations. Some lessons focus on issues facing society such as marine pollution, climate change, soil erosion, biodiversity, and the importance of protecting the environment and ecosystems. Thirty-three science units have been developed during the Scientist in Residence Program and are organized within four curriculum areas. More than 200 science lesson plans are available for download as PDF documents. These include lesson plans for field trips, thereby extending learning in natural environments. Please scroll down to view the titles of science units for each curriculum area, and click on science unit titles to view and download individual science lesson plans. If required by your browser, please enable Scripts to download documents from this web site. New science lesson plans will be posted on this website as they become available."

Meditation strengthens the areas of the brain that control our 'fear center.' It helps kids reduce anxiety and increase their ability to reason and concentrate.

Focus Education provides a global Professional Learning Service for educators, corporations, parents and students. The mission of the organisation is to provide the most current information about learning with the brain in mind as possible, at the most competitive rate achievable.

"Try not to get caught up in all the hype that can surround the online world and focus instead on what really matters"

"Daphne Bavelier: Your brain on video games" How do fast-paced video games affect the brain? Step into the lab with cognitive researcher Daphne Bavelier to hear surprising news about how video games, even action-packed shooter games, can help us learn, focus and, fascinatingly, multitask.

"Unfortunately, I've come across a number of resources which only focus on the negatives of digital footprints and promote a culture of fear. The message I like to promote is that we should protect our digital footprints and try to ensure that they are positive. Encouraging students to avoid posting or doing anything online just seems counter productive."

I'll go ahead and say it - I think the discussion on the iPad and Pedagogy needs to go further. Too many posts (and I am guilty of this too) focus on, "check out this cool app", or "did you know the iPad can do this"; you've all seen them. I really feel we are past the time where we should be looking at the functionality of the iPad as a device and be looking at it in a way which ensures we are looking more at how learning can be redefined and modified through the use of the iPad.

"In fact, the focus of the framework rests on a much larger concept of the ways in which humans have altered and continue to alter the "natural world" with the goal of fulfilling "needs and desires." Technology is much bigger and more complex than a single device or site."

"For teachers, in designing learning experiences for students that are embedded with technology, the wording and focus of the question are paramount.  The question needs to be deeper than simply "Should or shouldn't we use the iPad with this project." The question needs to be open ended, elastic and invite multiple interpretations. Learning outcomes based on the question need to be defined and articulated,  and experiences to achieve those outcomes need to be created with student engagement in mind. Engagement alone is not enough. But engagement matched with outcomes around a carefully worded question propels student learning."

Learning objective: A renewed focus on the choices we make and how they affect us, specifically about balance, responsibility and safety. Guiding Question: How are you a responsible digital citizen?

For as long as I have been involved in education, the focus for finding the key to fixing education has always been about providing professional development for the teachers and administrators. The philosophy is top-down with the intent that knowledge will eventually trickle down to benefit the students.

Lesson study* is a professional development process that Japanese teachers engage in to systematically examine their practice, with the goal of becoming more effective. This examination centers on teachers working collaboratively on a small number of "study lessons". Working on these study lessons involves planning, teaching, observing, and critiquing the lessons. To provide focus and direction to this work, the teachers select an overarching goal and related research question that they want to explore. This research question then serves to guide their work on all the study lessons.

<< Next Vista works to make learning more engaging, with a focus on helping students start strong with any topic they study. Its central project is a free, online library of teacher- and student-made short videos for learners everywhere.>> -- Rushton Hurley's site

"Telling a brief story around a single photograph seems like such a simple idea. Add to that a sharing element and you think: another clever web platform to distract and amuse us. But there's a lot more to Cowbird.The interface is beautiful, as one would expect from Jonathan Harris, Cowbird's creator. The Web artist and programmer behind the 2006 Web project "We Feel Fine," Harris thinks big. His goal with Cowbird: nothing less than to create "the world's first library of human experience," according to the site.While you can add audio, the focus is on the image, which floats front and center, full screen, with the accompanying story beneath in plain text. To get a feel, you'll need to spend some time with the stories posted thus far, as the site suggests."

The features in Google Docs can be used to facilitate a digital writer's workshop based on peer editing, and they are particularly useful when combined with cooperative grouping strategies to fine-tune students' editing skills. While students are writing their drafts, teachers can take advantage of opportunities to lead small instructional groups to help them focus on specific cooperative grouping job-related skills, then students can share their drafts with other group members who use comments to suggest revisions based on their job. The immediate feedback provided by peers will likely encourage writers to check comments and revise at home and stay on task during classroom work time. The revision history will keep student comments and revisions honest and focused on the task.

ebook but in iTunes (available in US and Canada iTunes, not sure about others)

Could be a nice ebook for our middle and high school students