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Found lots of interesting ideas I'll try out during the year. Some ideas are geared towards elementary but I can see many of them working in my secondary classes as well. Especially like the idea of a question chain reading blog in which the teacher posts a question and a student answers the question and posts another question. Each student would need to answer a question and post another and no question can be repeated.

PhotoStory ideas for educators

This article introduces a contest which promotes reading and media skills that began in 2008. It is sponsored by major publishers such as Simon and Schuster and Scholastic and 5 regional libraries, The contest is for students in grades 1-6. The students need to create a storytube on a book they have read. It is important to point out that teachers are not replacing a written report or are using this to enhance the report. I reviewed some of the winners and it is so great to see kids excited about what they read and using technology so easily. With students creating video media at such an early age and being so comfortable doing it only leads me to believe that when these students reach high school the work that they will create will be fantastic.

This article originally appeared in SLJ’s Extra Helping. Sign up now! By Jennifer Pinkowski -- School Library Journal, 07/09/2008 Funny accents, strange wigs, and spoiler-free plot summaries are the common elements in the winning videos made by contestants in StoryTubes, a new contest for kids that promotes reading-and new media skills-by capitalizing on the popularity of YouTube.

This link explains how libraries are using the power and popularity of YouTube to promote learning, literacy, creativity and technology. StoryTube is a great project idea that uses the power of the contest as a wonderful motivator.

An integral part of nearly all online classes is the threaded discussion-it is where students interact on a nearly daily basis, posting their thoughts and information on main discussion topics, your postings, and the postings of other students. While you have measured control over the content, length, and tone of student postings, you have full control over your own. To ensure that your responses to student postings in discussion are effective, incorporate the following ideas:

In this article, Errol Sull provides us many good reminders of what we should be doing to make sure our online learning environment is effective and positive for our students. I feel confident in his guidelines because he's been teaching in the online environment for fifteen years. His suggestions also make sense in both an online and f2f discussion.

This article by Errol Sull presents us with suggestions for online discussions. I personally have been nervous about having all class online discussions after a Moodle incident I had last year. Fortunately, my Moodle settings were set so that only two students were able to get a at each other. I will apply these ideas to my classes in August.

This teacher makes a really strong argument that you should not feel that you have nothing important to say. This is the way to make some strong networked relationships. I like her quote "This has led to many great conversations with other educators about teaching issues." Blogging has connected her to peers throughout the world. I find that being an online educator is lonely so this may be the way to go to share resources and to discuss with others that share our online world.

I really enjoyed reading this article because I'm feeling the same excitement as the author did when she first began blogging. While I'm just learning how to "officially" blog, I have been using Edmodo with my students as a way to connect with my students outside my classroom. It allows us to communicate and ask questions to one another outside of normal school hours, yet in a more structured classroom like forum, unlike Facebook. But because it works similar to Facebook, the students love it and don't mind logging on and doing their assignments. One day when I was out sick, I was able to log on an have real time discussions with my students. If they had questions about the assignment they were able to ask. They can also turn in their assignments via Edmodo instead of waiting for the next day/week. My feelings are if the students are into it, then it's something we need to be doing as well to keep up with them. Teachers who use Web 2.0 tools such as blogging have an advantage over those that don't because these are the social networks that students know and are familiar with. Also, the author of this article points out the fact that teachers have a new way of connecting to each other and share ideas. From what I remember when I was younger, the traditional teacher's only way of communicating and sharing ideas or concerns with other teachers were via phone or before/after school meetings. I don't know how often that actually happened, but now with blogging you can share your information any time with any body.

Heidi Beezley, instructional technologist at Georgia Perimeter College, explains tells how to improve teaching online courses with active learning, and providing students to have be able to meaningfully talk and listen, write, read, and reflect on the content, ideas, issues, and concerns of an academic subject"

Throughout the ages of educational ideas and philosophies teachers have been big fans of having their students keep a journal. Journals are kept in language arts, foreign language classes, and I have seen them in science classes. Students don't particularly like doing them unless they enjoy writing. If given a choice between keeping a journal in their spiral notebook and keeping it online, I would wager that a majority of students in this digital age will prefer to keep it online. So why not give them the choice and tool of Penzu.

Collect, curate and share your ideas, inspirations, and projects! Popplet is a place to engage in visual conversations on any topic of your choosing, quickly and easily, with your friends, family and colleagues on both the internet and mobile web.

Popplet is an app for the web and iPad, where you can collect, curate and share your ideas, inspirations, and projects.

Popplet is the universal tool available to educators. The app gets students thinking outside the traditional scope of a poster and can collect pieces along the way. Perfectly inspired!

fur.ly is a great place/idea for educators who are struggling with students finding the right websites or who are having their students copy long URLs off of the board. This tool will let you have one URL that will open multiple websites at one time.

Lots of good resources and teaching ideas, apps & games. This site should help stay current in regards to what's out there that is new and exciting

I like the hands on idea of this video. I think students of all ages could benefit from different levels of exploration with the toy snakes.

Great intro video clip to explain media literacy.  Covers lots of info and concerns.  The idea of "digital citizenship" and the believe that this must be taught at an early age.

Kae, Key points: --"reliable, valuable, and up-to-the-minute information."(web 1.0) --"content-creating process". (Web 2.0) --"the idea of K-12 education being tailored to students' own interests is becoming more commonplace."An old idea whose time may have come due to access to information through technology. --"Democratizing education." Huge implications for poorer school districts. The focus moves away from bricks and mortar to learning and access to information. The big question becomes,"As the culture of the school diminishes in the role of traditional learning, will the culture of the home be equipped to encourage the child? Will underperforming students start to perform better by providing equal access to all information? Tom

I found this article quite informative and wrote a blog entry about it. That can be located at http://alwaysjan.edublogs.org/2013/02/17/if-we-teach-today-as-we-taught-yesterday-we-rob-out-children-of-tomorrow-john-dewey/ . I hope you take the time to read my blog post.

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!

" I know now the secret to using any piece of technology in the classroom is to begin with clear learning goals and intentions that are based on "big understandings." Once students know what they need to learn, they will often find a way to express their ideas. Providing tools such as iPads for students enables them to use the items and skills they use outside of the classroom to communicate their knowledge. Furthermore, they are building the skills and learning how to use the tools that they may be required to use in the workplace."

I found a link from the Newstand that connected me to an article from mashable.com, which discusses a new educational program from the people at TED talks. The program allows teachers to turn any YouTube video, including TED talks into a lesson. The article aligned this new tool with the phenomenon of flipping classrooms. To flip a classroom means to prepare a lesson that students can complete at home. The pedagogical foundation of flipped classes is connected to project-based learning. The proponents of this approach believe if students can cover lessons at home, then classroom time could be used for collaborative student projects. The new TED-Ed program allows for teachers to create a unique URL, where student can access the video as well as a series of questions. The types of questions vary from multiple choices, to short answer, to more high order thinking questions. These HOT questions expand the ideas from the video into high order thinking akin to Bloom's Taxonomy. The TED-Ed team is also producing their own educational videos, which are a collaboration between educators and animators. At this point there aren't many of the TED-Ed videos produced, but the ones I explored are quite interesting. The mashable.com article has links to TED-Ed. I am not the biggest proponent of flipped teaching, but I am intrigued by TED's involvement.

This article deals specifically with how online writing through the use of either asynchronous or synchronous tools can enhance the traditional classroom. The use of a blog to discuss ideas and debate issues may not be as dynamic or interactive as some of the other Web 2.0 tools we have been discussing and using. However, this article makes the point that using blogs can make content more engaging, provide a way for students to be reflective, allow them the opportunity to practice presenting ideas and arguments and finding their voice. The author, Robert Baird from the University of Illinois, argues that these discussion tools are not used up to their potential. I resonated with this article because as a teacher of an online course that uses discussion threads extensively, I completely agree that students level of engagement and understanding of issues, as well as becoming better thinkers, finding their voice and being forced to use evidence in their answers is remarkable.

This article showcases a great new tool which will can be used as a creative way to teach, share, and create information. Jux allows students to briefly outline an idea or theme, connect those words with pictures, and display the words concurrently with a slideshow, photos, videos etc.It allows students the creative latitude to design their own presentation and also match up concepts with an audio and visual system.

Brenda offers some great suggestions and ideas for using Voicethread in classes. Brenda suggests using Voicethread as an assessment tool for teachers but I am thinking it might be a great tool for students to assess/comment on each other as well.

Laurel, I agree that students could also use Voicethread in class as a tool for commenting on peers' work. I could see groups viewing each other's work and offering feedback, as well. I like that you can add images to this. Have you used Voicethread before? I will have to spend some time checking this out.

I found this video on Twitter tonight thanks to David Walker (@drdjwalker) who re-tweeted the video from The Partnership of 21st Century Skills. The video is called "Above and Beyond: the story of the 4Cs". Enjoy "In an increasingly complex, demanding and competitive 21st century, students need to learn more than the 3R's they are tested on in school. Although the 3R's are the foundation of learning (most especially reading), students must be prepared to Think Creatively and have Intellectual Curiosity in order to excel in the 21st century.

Oh, what fun! This video is a great tool to share with students. It's simplicity is a delight. The notion is that we all have different talents and skills we can bring to collaborative projects. We need to encourage students to take the time to share their creative ideas together; plan, explore, negotiate, compromise and problem solve together. My fifth and sixth graders will enjoy this video.

This video is fun, interesting and great for students to see. It stresses the collaborative nature of projects and how much more we can do together rather than alone. It reminds me of Odyssey of the Mind type projects, and I will definitely show this to my Advisory. I think they will find it interesting and funny, but more than that it can jump start a discussion about the creative power of collaboration. It also makes me think that it will demonstrate to students that diversity of ideas is powerful.