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Not an amazing article. But, it is important to note that four...maybe all five of her "five lessons" are based on communication. "1. Keep the student at the center of every decision that needs to be made. 2. Foster relationships with students and parents, because parents can be a teacher's biggest help. 3. Talk with your students every day by phone. Dove said that the majority of her day is spent talking directly with students to build a one-on-one relationship with each of them. 4. Celebrate every effort and success, no matter how big or small. "Always be positive in your feedback, even if the assignment may not be stellar. The written word is so powerful online, and you always want your students to feel that you are cheering them on and appreciate their hard work," she explained. 5. Build relationships with fellow teachers. Share resources, best practices, and stories to feel less isolated or alone in the home office."

30 New Media Tools and Web Sites for Writing Teachers. This article is really for adult learners but it offers loads of information and ideas for how best to incorporate technology into your lessons...everything from online learning to screen video capturing programs to online collaboration to web conferencing to video to animation creating tools...and it goes on and on! Worth looking at all the options.

This is a link to a video of a high school that uses only Project-Based learning PBL, a teaching/learning style where students create projects to demonstrate their learning of the objectives set out by the teacher. It goes through the process of how to set up PBL projects as teachers. It's a decent introduction to the process: something to pique one's interest. At the end there are links to other videos with more information about PBL.

Project-based learning has come to the forefront of education as it is being used to assess what the students know and how they can use the knowledge in the "real world" to problem solve. The approach by the school to implement PBL into their curriculum goes directly back to state standards. I thought the video was well informed and I was impressed with the 60-65 times the students speak in front of others (public speaking).

Go inside Manor New Technology High School, part of the New Tech Network of schools, where an unwavering commitment to an effective schoolwide PBL model keeps both students and teachers motivated and achieving their best. More to this story.

Here's a list of some Math apps aligned to Common Core Standards that according to me are among the best available out there.

This article by Vicki Davis, author of the book Reinventing Writing and the blog post "Cool Cat Teacher Blog," is for educators who have decided to use Twitter in the classroom. Davis provides "the essential apps, hashtags, and tips to help." Davis discusses 100 ways to use Twitter in the classroom, safely and for maximum benefit. She discusses apps that allow teachers to manage classroom Twitters (Hootsuite) and create schedules (Buffer) as well as offering 14 tips for writing Twitters. Lastly, she offers three valuable hashtags for classroom use.

This article suggests that blended learning is better than either on-line learning or face-to-face learning. It further suggests that more research is needed to determine what type of learning is best for what type of student.

Education World has put together a resource of educator-specific social media platforms such as WeCollaborate, Teacher Engage, Technology Integration in Education, The EducationWorld Community, that give resources of ideas, blogs and lesson/unit ideas.

The article illustrated the function of web 2.0 in Education Area. The author promoted some free social media sites"http://www.wecollaborate.com" & "http://www.technologyintegrationineducation.com/". They were all designed for the teachers. Please enjoy the article, enjoy the education world community!

This article puts forth the premise that if student transgressions with technology are handled early on with an open school, parent, and student communication loop - then there will be a decreased likelihood of a major transgression later on in life.

After reading the article and as a parent myself. I tend to disagree with this article. Students learn by reading, seeing and applying. It's great to be book smart, but you need to know how to apply the smarts. I love my classes and the project based learning. I think that's all I do the majority of the day. It's great to be a teacher and facilitator at the same time. All students are different.

The article looks at how to shift from limited classroom instruction focused on lecture, homework, discussion, memorization to using the web as a tool to expand the learning experience. Imagine getting a tweet from a student who is outraged when Lennie kills Curly's wife in Of Mice and Men? Aaron Iffland explains how to make your classroom viral while requiring students to engage more in their own learning.

I like this article and I think students learn best by doing. I think I am addicted to my phone. I can paly games, read, wrtie, email and socialize all at the sametime. It's fun and educational!

EdTech: Focus on Higher Education has surveyed the web and found what we believe are the 50 best IT blogs in higher education. These blogs - including well-known names and some who are less familiar - cover every aspect of technology, both in the classroom and behind the scenes. Learn from tech experts and IT peers at colleges who are in the trenches. Dig into the very best the web has to offer.

Higher Education Blogs is the source to see what's on the Dean's List for classroom integration. Educators reap rewards.

A tutorial on who to use Adobe to assess digital work, best practices, commenting and markup tools, audio commenting

I enjoyed this scholarly article because it provided an explanation of the purpose of the threaded discussions, then provided some samples of discussions in a variety of classrooms, and then it provided a sample rubric. I was most impressed with the rubric because embedded in the rubric were samples of appropriate and inadequate responses. Finally, the article addressed some of the positive elements as well as drawbacks to this type of digital learning. The most important element or focus of this article, however, was demonstrating student learning using technology instead of using technology but not necessarily improving student learning.

I was looking for an article that had to do with blogs, but ran across this article and while it isn't on blogs - our topic for the week, it might help answer a question that has come up in discussion. The where-when-why to use blogs in the classroom question. This post talks about building expectations for a classroom as a group, teacher and student together. Why not do this with blogs? We have all said that they have value in the classroom - maybe the students can help us figure out where they would get the most value from them in their work/assignments. She contrasts that with a syllabus that "perform[s] as a living, negotiated document." (p. 41) It begins with these four questions: What topics or areas are of greatest interest to us as a class? How can we adapt the classroom space to be conducive to cultivating enhanced communication? How can we best connect our readings and discussions to our everyday lives?

This blog post describes the Web 2.0 tools that are being used in the author's school to help students reach each level of Bloom's Taxonomy.

Ben Miller, a teacher at the University of New South Wales, wanted his students to build learning materials for his course. He decided a wiki was the best platform to capture the group's work over the semester. Ben chose to create his wiki on UNSW's Wikispaces Private Label site as it gave his students a university-branded environment for their academic work. Students loved the wiki and after several weeks, were building most of the content for the site - summarizing theories on free speech, arguing their viewpoints, and highlighting censorship cases that they wanted to further explore. The final product was a rich body of knowledge that helped the students prepare for their end-of-year exam. We encourage you to check out this wiki and listen to Ben's discussion about his wiki project.

slideshow covers ways to optimize your blog

This article provides great tips for incorporating video into your lessons, including helpful technical tips, such as "clipping" the video off a dvd at the beginning and end of the video clip that you need so you don't waste time or lose momentum in class setting up the video.

Which energy drink will diffuse the best through a cell membrane? by Hoi Chi, Jacob and Michael

February 21, 2013 By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching and Learning Almost everyone agrees that student presentations benefit the presenter in significant ways. By doing presentations, students learn how to speak in front a group, a broadly applicable professional skill. They learn how to prepare material for public presentation, and practice (especially with feedback) improves their speaking skills. (Much of what we want for our students is to work, respect, support, find the good in one another, have fun and use web tools together! Highlighting the peer evaluative piece was one I am doing my best to work on. Great resource!) ~Tara

Tara, Good find. A nice way to get more students engaged. An interesting, approach to student presentations. The author does a nice job of describing advantages, as well as disadvantages, to requiring students to critique their classmate's presentations. The image of the "comatose" classmates in their seats as yet, another presenter tries to impress the teacher is comical, yet accurate. The students doing the critiques also had a vested interest as it represents a portion of their grade. A significant statistic was that," Seventy-three percent of the students agreed or strongly agreed that completing the evaluations made them pay more attention to the presentations. " A final point of interest is that students were clear in not wanting their classmates critiques to have an impact on their grade. Tom