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An brief article cautioning with interesting statistics about the number of teens who use blogging on a regular basis. Might have some implications for introducing and educating students about blogging into the classroom.

This is an interesting article about the small percentage of teens 13 to 17 that are blogging. According to the Millennials reports, although social networking sites have increased, they are more interested in text messaging than twittering or blogging. The author suggest that "Understanding why teens go online, and what tools they use, can give teachers clues into how they conduct research, and even complete homework". This is something to consider

For anyone who is interested in literary theory and philosophy, this is an interesting article about Facebook and how it related to Foucault's concept of heterotopia. My AP students have had discussions about how social media changes our view and perspectives on time.

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

An Interesting "brochure" categorizing Ipad apps using Blooms taxonomy of thinking skills; remembering, understanding, creating,  applying, evaluating & analyzing. A handy guide for how to use in the classroom.

I am glad for the realistic easy viewing of Bloom's taxonomy of skills. Using the iPad in the classroom it is a good quick reference to see what apps I am already using and promoting that my students use as well as which apps I would like to promote with enhancement of other skills.

I am not sure I agree with the categorization on many of these and I definitely do not think it is all inclusive. It is interesting though.

Schools of the future promote learning by embracing individual diversity, promoting passion-based learning and allowing for choice and flexibility in terms of content. 

15 Interesting Ways* to use a Visualiser in the Classroom

A lofty empirical research article intended for doctoral candidates and other researchers but if you can get past the SAT style language the information contained is rather interesting. While my high school students will not be writing formal literary analyses I am interested in them producing high quality papers based on valid research questions/topics and having them think of new ways to view the same literature. Some of the texts we read in class have so many articles and summaries already prepared that it is sometimes hard for students to think of new ways to approach the material and this article offers some interesting thought processes to consider when preparing a literary analysis.

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.

A new tool discovery! Looks like an interesting combination of some apps we just "mastered"

We use it with 5th and 6th grade! The only drawback that I see is that it connects to Flickr for images and not google which limits that feature. It does also connect to You Tube for educational videos, however. The kids use it quite easily. I like it.

An Interesting article that focuses mainly on good Communication practices for online courses. However, having good "communication tools" is simply good practice in any learning environment. Having the right tools and using them in the right learning environment promotes Higher Order Thinking, building these skills is essential to success.

Children in grades one through six submit short videos promoting their favorite books. The StoryTubes contest capitalizes on children's interest in technology to promote reading and media skills.

This article was very interesting. It indicated that grades meant different things to different people. If students received a C, some people would say that the teacher wasn't presenting the material correctly. Lessons should aim to motivate, and inspire students to learn. One professor began class by asking if all students would complete all assigned tasks. When they agreed, he told them they would all get As. He claimed that not one of his students fell back on their word and that work submitted was better than ever. They were more concentrated on learning and understanding rather than worrying about their grade. While this article does not directly relate to online communication, it does relate to how we communicate course expectatioins.

From the Free Technology for Teachers blog, I found an entry about web search lesson plans created by Google. From our previous readings, I've come to understand research strategies as a major component of media literacy. In the blog, there are links to the Google created lessons. The plans are developed according to skill level. I find this an interesting and helpful teacher resource; however, there are some search categories, which are quite elementary, if not useless. Student's research habits are often deplorable, so these tutorials point them in generally useful directions. It is necessary for our students to develop strategies for differentiating between poor resources and rich, academic sources. Is Google created strategies the best option?

It appears this link may be dead

Hi Kevin, I am sorry about the dead end link. If you are still interested try here: http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2012/05/web-search-lesson-plans-from-google.html

This is a brief article describing the Adobe Creative Suite update to 6.0. Aside from listing the latest updates, he most interesting part of this article is that Adobe is introducing the Creative Cloud. If you follow the link about the cloud it unveils a whole knew way of creative possibilities. The Creative Cloud is something I want to look into for our classroom. I am wondering if it is an alternative to purchasing hefty licenses every year.

I have a hard time imagining the powerful suite of Adobe apps working well in the cloud. For this cloud service to work, I would imagine one needing a seriously fast and reliable Internet connection. None the less, I am really excited to see if this lives up to the promises. Thanks for sharing.

I use Photoshop all the time at my school. I'm looking forward to what CS6 has to offer. Want to research more on The Creative Cloud. So far what I know, I like.

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.

Pioneering Flipped Educators Launch 'Flipped Learning Network' Non-profit network helps educators successfully implement Flipped Learning Washington, D.C. (May 24, 2012) - Flipped Learning pioneers Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams have launched the Flipped Learning Network™, a non-profit organization for teachers interested in the Flipped Learning ideology.

An interesting article since the Flipped Learning pioneers are trying to clarify all of the information that is out in the public about the flipped classroom. They will hopefully make a profit on the book they have written, which can be used for their non-profit "Flipped Learning Network" which will allow teachers to do Vodcasting and have a Ning site as well. It was very informative.

Information graphics, visual representations of data known as infographics, keep the web going these days. Web users, with their diminishing attention spans, are inexorably drawn to these shiny, brightly coloured messages with small, relevant, clearly-displayed nuggets of information. They're straight to the point, usually factually interesting and often give you a wake-up call as to what those statistics really mean.

When looking for various assessments in relation to technology, I stumbled upon this article that discusses assessments, not only in relation to all students, but students with special needs.  Technology has really made a breakthrough with communication barriers among children with autism.  Technology assessments have helped with data collection, communication, and allowing various learning techniques to create new methods of retaining information.  In relations specifically to children with autism, the internet is a social network for them and allows them to communicate without the need for speech.  It is very interesting and worth a read through.

Quite an interesting interview. Basically, DreamBox seeks to 'learn the learner as the learner learns'. In this manner, the adaptive software is able to formulate instruction so as to cater specifically to the individual student. Quite interesting indeed.

"The digital tools offer students new opportunities, no doubt, but they still need to be intentional in the way that they craft their pieces of digital writing."  This quote sums this article well.  Despite the new technology, teachers and students must be intentional in the ways they approach writing.  The article discusses Troy Hick's book Crafting Digital Writing.  The book looks very interesting.  Part of the article also discusses some of the arguments against digital writing with Tony's counter arguments.  There are also some great links within the article to various writing resources.