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A great summary of how and why web2.0 technology supports 21st century skills and  and the future of learning.

This truly is a great summary of 21st century direction. Teaching and learning will consist of digital delivery, it will be interest driven, and Web 2.0 skills will be the focus. I believe that this trend is very accurate and that this shift will, ultimately, improve the motivation for learning of our students. I think the drawback is the teachers who do not wish or are not willing to make the shift. I believe the future of education is exhilarating!

As we are creating new opportunities for students to develop their 21st century skills, it is important to stay current wit rigorous and relevant assessments for real world work.  This blog speaks to this issue

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.

The pedagogical value and the challenges of integrating student blogging into your teaching is a recurring topic on ProfHacker. Some of our earliest posts dealt with student blogging, and we have revisited the issue frequently. Most recently, Jeff and Julie wrote about that age-old question-How are you going to grade this?-when it comes to evaluating classroom blogs.

Exactly as the title suggests- A rubric for evaluating Student bolgs

This article discusses the success of setting up class blogs involving high school juniors. The author points out that 'students value an authentic audience for their writing'. A great starting read for any teacher that has had thoughts about working with blogs in their classroom.

To begin and use a blog (or wiki) to "poll" the students...good reminder to just ask what they would find to be helpful in learning.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/ed-tech-worth-the-hype-bob-lenz?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EdutopiaNewContent+%28Edutopia%29&utm_content=Netvibes Is Educational Technology Worth the Hype? Some of the key points emphasize the approach to technology that forward thinking educators should take. To prepare today's learners to meet the demands of tomorrow in a society that demands a proficient and prolific use of multiple technologies and the intellectual skills necessary to survive and thrive in our modern digital world in order for them to create, develop, and publish authentic works.

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.

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.

This is a great site for collaborative tools categorized under: "Collaborative Documents", "Collaborative Spaces", "Collaborative Videos", "Collaborative Notepads and Graphs", "Transferring Files", "Blogs, Wikis, and Social Networks", "Templates for Blogs", "Virtual Meetings and Chat Rooms", "Collaborative Tools", "Collaborative Annotations and Highlighters", "Collaborative Drawing Boards", and "Multimedia Posters and Pages".

I absolutely love this site! Great find Sister! I am going to write a blog entry about it. Check it out!

This is a Prezi presentation created by a science teacher all about how she uses her blogs (and wow it looks impressive!) in her classes and other forms of technology to improve the student learning.

I think I'll be sharing this with my science department. Nice find, Katy!

This article is designed to help the student retain what is read. Brown and Taylor refer to blogging in that the review of information absorbed will be put into memory by the act of blogging and other methods. The authors start with a few 'learner' tips, then a few 'teacher/trainer' practices and end on some technical techniques.

Simplicity and Organized--important in blogs and concept maps. Great way to spark and then keep interest.

In this book there introductions to more than six dozen web tools for K-12 teachers. Additionally, you will find sections devoted to using Skype with students, ESL/ELL, blogging in elementary schools, social media for educators, teaching online, and using technology in alternative education settings.

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.

National Expert on OER and Director at Creative Commons.

This article discusses the importance of differentiation and especially the need for students to "redo" their assignments until they get them correct. By allowing students to "redo" they are improving their higher level thinking skills. Good and short article with practical reminders.

I love this article! Great reminders for all of us as educators to simply differentiate learning for our students. -vary the length or quantity of the assignment. -extend or curtail the duration of the assignment. -change the language of the assignment. -scaffold the learning activity from hard to medium to easy. -compact the activity and teach only what they don't know. -give them learning activities that let them perform the same learning objective with multiple mediums like summarizing a story they have read through narrative, drama, song, poetry, art, or design They also discussed the ability to redo assessments and I agree with this but somewhere in my teaching experience this has been engrained in my head only once. But I realize the feeling of success this allows a student.

In this blog, Ben Johnson reiterates the misconceptions in education about all students getting concepts in education at the same time. He goes on to discuss the importance of true differentiation in the classroom and that it is not creating an imbalance among students but a way for all students to succeed. He emphasizes the things teachers already do in the classroom to help students succeed and ends with a suggestion to allow students to redo their work in all areas (not just English and history).

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.

Maryellen Weimer, in her article sets out clear reasons why collaborative work, enhances creativity '. Students can see how different perspectives, constructive deliberation, questioning, and critical analysis can result in better solutions and performance.' Working effectively in groups demands students to think outside the box, and use multiple creative skills.

It was many years ago that I attended a seminar at the former GE Plastics headquarters here (now Sabic) outlining what for years has been obvious. Two key points included: 1) the need to adjust the school calendar, both in number of days and hours per day from the agrarian-based schedule which so many districts and schools still follow; 2) the need to include more group work in syllabi and lesson plans. The presenter emphasized that companies do not want to hire a person who is intelligent if that person cannot work well in a collaborative group situation. Opportunities abound to prepare our students for higher education and careers through group work in face-to-face instruction, the flipped classroom concept and the design of VHS courses.