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blogging platform for posts larger than Twitter and smaller than a traditional blog. Posts are usually rich with a combination of text and multimedia. A unique feature is the ability to "tumble" blog posts. This takes a post of a friend and posts it on your page. If you use Twitter, this is similar to retweeting. Tumblr is a nice tool for teachers and older students but everyone will need accounts. Create an account for your class and have your students create accounts as well. Then, follow your students' accounts and vice-versa. Now you are all connected and can interact in numerous ways. Your students now have an excellent vehicle for all manner of writing and multimedia projects.

This article explores ways to enhance online communication between students.

Rob Kelly discusses how to he used online discussion boards in a skills based course. This concept could be followed for any type of study group. Given students learn best when they not only teach the information but share and collaborate with others, this idea enhances the learning process.

I'm the only Accounting teacher and have been teaching for 2 years at the high school level. I feel this article does a great job not just on how discussion boards can help and guide deeper levels of thinking among Accounting students, but provides the opportunity to take baby steps including technology in the classroom and push critical thinking. I can appreciate this article greatly because I believe we all learn through experience and as Gee mentions, some of the students have worked in the field and may be able to offer their peers another insight.

"Due Diligence and Social Media, Gaming and 21st Century Learning. Will education Institutions be held accountable"

From the makers of Gronckit the collaborative, social, online learning and test preparation company comes their latest venture Learnist. Learnist is a continual learning and professional development platform kind of like Pinterest, but with more features. Learnist is a community geared for creating, sharing, communicating and improving collective resources.  I signed up for an account and started to follow @LearnistTweets on Twitter.

A good suggestion for students to purposefully track and develop their own progress. It holds potential to increase student pride in and accountability for their work. A good alternative to include a wider audience, evaluation and perspective of individual's work.

A first-rate account of how students can analyze, evaluate, and internalize the information on websites, rather than merely collecting sources and spitting back unprocessed information.

you are presented with a very simple text editor perfect for student journals. Each note can include images, links and attachments as well as tags to help with searching. For example, journal entries for a history unit might be tagged, "WWII". In addition, multiple notebooks can be created with one account. NotePub, like many online writing tools, works great for role playing assignments. Have your students assume the role of a person they are studying or character from literature. Then, your students write a daily journal entry. Completed entries can be shared in several ways including email.

Super easy way to publish and share content. It differs from blogs because it produces single pages not linked to each other. It is not a series of posts. Think of it as a single piece of paper that can include multimedia. Once out of beta, no accounts will be needed which will be great for the educational setting. Students can create projects with text, multimedia and widgets such as Google maps. Pages are then published and a URL is generated for the page which can be shared.

Discusses how to enhance the classroom by using a discussion board in a skills-based course by allowing students the chance to use information literacy skills.

This article offers insight into the process of appropriately constructing class discussions online. It cautions that discussions should be based on critical thinking than on sharing facts or answers. The author notes that problems can result if a student posts incorrect information and then other students respond thinking that it is correct.

November 11, 2010 Making Online Discussion Boards Work for Skills-Based Courses By: Rob Kelly In this article, an accounting teacher described how he used online discussion boards for study groups in his course. I appreciated this suggestion...online "study groups" could be a great way to motivate students to study and also for faculty to monitor their studying. Teachers could step in to clarify information a group appears to be confused about based on their discussion strand.

A blog post about Edistorm. It is a free, Post-It Note style brainstorming tool. An alternative to Wallwisher, but probably geared more towards a corporate setting. There is a limited Free account, as well as, an inexpensive Educator account. A neat collaboration and communication tool worth checking out.

Two teachers collaborating together with Biology, art and technology to create a video on DNA.

For any teacher that wants to experience what cross disciplinary, project based teaching and learning can be, I recommend the short video, " Team Teaching: Two Teachers, Three subjects, One Project http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ASO9FM6gDLs The video explores the opportunities that exist when a traditional physiology topic, blood, is integrated with multimedia. The results are motivating. The viewer experiences art and science coming together under the umbrella of one topic. The team teaching approach is aided by the fact that teachers begin their day an hour before students in order to meet and coordinate the team approach. Students engage in research as they work toward creating multimedia presentations that are placed on display at a local art gallery in order to promote blood donation. This project based approach allows students to share their works with a large audience while creating a community connection with the local blood bank as well as the local art gallery. The teachers guide students through the project and become a resource, rather than only a "holder of knowledge". Students are given real world deadlines and are held accountable by their teachers through online digital portfolios. The exciting part of this project, for teachers interested in attempting this approach to learning, is the opportunity it provides for the teacher to grow outside of their normal curriculum.

This is an article about a 15-year old student that gave a speech to 3,000 teachers, principals and other administrators about implementing Twitter and Facebook in schools. She gave the keynote address at the conference. At the conference the tables were turned ,the student became the teacher. The adults were taught how to sign up for Twitter accounts, tweet and use hashtags. This fits in with our weekly topic of creativity and innovation as teacher now became the student. The student was teaching what she knew best, this helps to foster communication. This was a creative way to engage adults.

The article uses a friendly approach to help teens stay safe and for parents (adults) to understand how to change privacy settings. There is a series of videos (11) to help learn more about social networking and how to check yourself it something doesn't seem right. The article also demonstrates the use of protection your personal property from hackers and spammers.  I personally think the article does a great job using the friendly approach with teens, and using videos, and teens will click on a video than read an entire article. Holly

These are great articles. I like the user friendly approach to all of these; In www.connectsafely.org there are great personal accounts of what can go wrong using social media. Those articles really resonate with my own fears. We must be wise when we use the web.

This online discussion forum offers adults insight into the legal, social, and safety issues tied into specific social networking sites.

Have you ever thought, "Gosh, I wish I had time to learn more about Flickr, wikis, or (enter your Web 2.0 tool here)?" Well, this is your chance to take the time to focus on your personal and professional development around Web 2.0 tools. It's fun to explore these tools and figure out ways to use them in the library, with your personal Web sites, or in other ways.

I will give Zoho a look. We use google docs at my school now. Each staff member and student was given an account with the same extension. With so many sites to choose from it takes time to see which ones you lke. Google docs seems to show up in many articles.

Zoho Writer looks interesting as you need to be invited to participate. Google Docs are used extensively within our school, though I only used them for our NGY Ning project last year. We also use Google Docs for attendance in our after school programs.

An interesting look at an "objective" method of assessing student work. Rather than looking at the Web 2.0 tool, this looks at the level of Bloom achieved and the amount of time spent.

Mindmeister kicks Mind42's butt! A free account entitles you to three beautiful mind maps, complete with text, links, icons and images (Googled from the web).

A mega-collection of Web 2.0 tools organized by purpose. More than one could ever ask for (or possibly master)

Wow! what an extensive use of organization at our fingertips! Thank you for finding and sharing

I have this site already bookmarked in my Diigo account but I have to say that it is one of the most extensive collection of AWESOME web 2.0 tools that I have ever seen. Thank you for sharing it here.

This article suggests how to use Web 2.0 tools to assess students in the digital age. The article has many useful links. I wish that the examples of the actual rubrics were larger. Overall, I found the article to quite helpful.

How do we assess students' learning in these in Web 2.0 environments? We want to go beyond assessing the mere mechanics of using these tools; unfortunately, most current rubrics for Web 2.0 learning devote only a minuscule amount (usually 16% or less) to actual student academic learning.

This article is about standards-based learning and 21st century skills. How to improve student learning through teacher's decisions and technology. He has a excellent list of rubrics Web 2.0 tools. Some examples "rubrics" are......Wiki/Blog, Images/Photo/Flickr, Video/YouTube,Podcast, Social Bookmarking, Twitter, Videoconferencing, General Assessment: Prensky's 21st century skills, General Assessment: enGauge's 21st century skills, General Assessment: Partnership for 21st century skills. I really liked the links and rubrics and found them very helpful. However the rubrics were small and a little hard to read.