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Like blogging, Adapt Courseware is a social learning space that allows the student to create a profile to get to know his/her peers. Allows the students to participate in discussion groups and to seek help or support from study groups. It also allows the student to create a post that they are interested in or to comment on posts from others.

Great article about iPads and collaboration with professional development and Google docs. Google is a perfect tool to increase the level of communication and professional development in every school.

I agree Google is a perfect set of tools for collaboration and communication.

"Kurt Wootton, co-author of A Reason to Read. "In my view, the repetition must not come before allowing students to participate in the creative tasks, but rather repeated practice walks side-by-side with the creative process."" I find this statement to "hit the nail on the head" as the debate between rote memory and creative "aha" moments continue. The analogy of the musician practicing for hours playing scales as well as note for note renditions of other's work is appropriate to this discussion. The book, "Outliers",by Malcolm Gladwell, addresses the 10,000 hour rule. To paraphrase; To become world class at anything, it takes 10,000 hours of focused practice. The author's examples range from Bill Gates to The Beatles. When two sides are set up as an US vs THEM debate, it misses the oppoprtunity to combine perfect practice with creative inspiration. Putting together a perfect meal is based on proper choices of various food combinations. Putting together a perfect learning environment is very similar in that a combination of repetitive learning and creative opportunity helps the learning as well as creative process.

"Kurt Wootton, co-author of A Reason to Read. "In my view, the repetition must not come before allowing students to participate in the creative tasks, but rather repeated practice walks side-by-side with the creative process."" I find this statement to "hit the nail on the head" as the debate between rote memory and creative "aha" moments continue. The analogy of the musician practicing for hours playing scales as well as note for note renditions of other's work is appropriate to this discussion. The book, "Outliers",by Malcolm Gladwell, addresses the 10,000 hour rule. To paraphrase; To become world class at anything, it takes 10,000 hours of focused practice. The author's examples range from Bill Gates to The Beatles. When two sides are set up as an US vs THEM debate, it misses the oppoprtunity to combine perfect practice with creative inspiration. Putting together a perfect meal is based on proper choices of various food combinations. Putting together a perfect learning environment is very similar in that a combination of repetitive learning and creative opportunity helps the learning as well as creative process.

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 gives reasons why schools should encourage tweeting among their student body. It shows the benefits of connecting students to students, teachers, parents and the entire community. Reading this article could give the reader new ideas for communicating and connecting using a popular Web 2.0 tool.

This article has merit from the perspective of a district principal. The 12 reasons are aligned with the school mission statement and since Tweeter is free, it is accessible to all stakeholders in the school community. It suggests that parents receive training in the tool to build two-way communications. Tweeter will help build a Personal Learning Network (PLN) and allows for anytime, anywhere PD, and that it is easier to send a tweet than it is to correct a webpage. The last reason #12 actually seems to be the most important in that students can make a connection not with only one mentor but with "a million other mentors" to learn from using Tweeter.

This article brings up some very good points about turning to e-books for textbooks in the classroom. The research hasn't been done on the effects of doing so....what would the effects be on students and their reading skills, learning, or the repercussions on teaching in the classroom? Also, they bring up a valid concern of how much control this would all give to Apple?

This entry highlights the way, Adobe, the power-maker in the area of professional design and graphics, is making access affordable to the 'touch technology' generation. It is providing Android based (and soon to be OS) tablet type apps available for as little as $10. The article highlights a few of the apps that would be accessible and appropriate students as young as 6th grade to learn to use. This brings professional type graphics power and creativity within reach of School children...something very dear to my heart!

Here is an amazing Prezi focusing on the creative potential inherent in collaboration, social networking, and humanity's learning to collectively think "outside the box." The link to the Prezi is via Eric Tremblay's blog titled, "e-Learning Acupuncture." Enjoy.

After viewing the award winning Prezi, I can see just how creative we can get using a Prezi. I enjoyed the History for Music video presentation set to Lady Gaga's song. Now that was pretty impressive!

I loved the History for Music Lovers video presentation set to Lady Gaga's song! Spectacular! The award winning Prezi in the shape of a musical staff sign is also special. "Oh the places we will go!" (Dr. Seuss)

This article points out the significance and the approach to the digital writing in a dialogue style with Troy Hicks, an associate professor of English at Central Michigan University. He uses 'MAPS' heuristic -- mode (genre), media, audience, purpose, situation -- to help writers "intentionally" and "deliberately" think through composing digital texts. He also suggests teachers give themselves and students the opportunities and permission to play (and possibly fail) with the tools, as this can serve as a model of overcoming learning curves and digital writing process. This reminds me of the idea, 'dabble' with the tools, brought up by Jeff Utecht(2013).

According to this article, "Design thinking can transform your classroom into a space of creativity, excitement and possibility". Design thinking is an 8-step process where students 1) Define the problem; 2) Research the problem; 3) Analyze the situation; 4) Redefine the problem; 5) Ideate (brainstorm); 6) Prototype (find a solution); 7) Refine; and 8) Repeat. A classroom activity is detailed where students look at the ads that recently won Clios and go through the process as if they were the ads' designers. They are basically putting themselves in the designers shoes. They are trying to recreate what was done and why it was done. A followup activity is to have the students design their own ads for the products using the steps of Design Thinking. I must admit I wanted to do it!

'We do not need to teach creativity, but rather inspire its daily practice.' This opening sentence is intriguing yet inspiring to me. As said in the title, this article introduces 18 apps to support students developing creativity at different thinking stages. The writer also suggests some practical strategies which could be incorporated in our daily teaching practice. Nevertheless, what strikes me more is the reminder that we, as a class, school, or community, need to build a culture of trust in the first place to cultivate culture of creativity and innovation.

What a great article about creativity.  What I loved is that the article states that schools do not need to teach creativity.  Schools need to foster it by providing students a safe place to take risks and providing them tools that make that risk taking possible.  Creativity is about finding solutions to problems using one's own ideas and thinking skills.  Students can do this when given the power and opportunities to do so.

Like Chris, the opening to this post caught my eye. "We do not need to teach creativity, but rather inspire its daily practice." Ms. Darrow's article captures the importance of creating a school that values it's students, encourages them to take some risks, and lets them practice these skills with abandon. With support and coaching from teachers, students can work through the steps outlined in this article using technology to streamline the process, help them develop real life/career skills, and appeal to their interest in digital media. I like how Darrow labels this process; there are clear steps to increase understanding. Collaboration or group work can use this format as well, group members' jobs are easily created with the resulting structure. It also creates natural places to scaffold the process for individualizing learning in a classroom full of all kinds of learners. Each activity we do in a class may not need all these steps and some may need more, but I plan to keep this article in mind as I tweak my courses this summer.

How using social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus and Edmodo can enable formative assessment and improve student achievement. Students become more engaged in learning through the use of these tools in the classroom

This is great article about how new technology must also incorporate new teaching methods. The "old wine in new bottle" metaphor is used, that if we use the same type of materials and they are just dressed better (on iPads, Smartphones, Smartboards, etc.) then there may not be any genuine higher order thinking going on in the classroom.

Eleventh-grade English teacher, Lee Ann Spillane, describes how she uses Wordle to explore and analyze text patterns used by F. Scott Fitzgerald. How frequently does a word appear in the text? Students sit in table groups, with one computer per table. Using Google Books, students do a simple word search, creating a digital concordance.

This site overviews the importance of using media in instruction and provides some Web 2.0 tools to achieve animation for teaching.

This is a very cool article. I loved the comparison of a teachers introduction of education background is compared to a computer " It's like going to Dell's website to shop for a computer and getting nothing but photos of the factories and descriptions of how the computers were built." Use a video to introduce ourselves and explain all we can do in the classroom. We should be making them look forward to what they can do during the year with me. Very Cool.

This is a very cool article. I loved the comparison of a teachers introduction of education background is compared to a computer " It's like going to Dell's website to shop for a computer and getting nothing but photos of the factories and descriptions of how the computers were built." Use a video to introduce ourselves and explain all we can do in the classroom. We should be making them look forward to what they can do during the year with me. Very Cool.

Wonderful article on students solving real world issues while using their problem solving skills and creativity. Even though this was a contest and not a lesson plan, this is how our lessons and classrooms should be structured.

A great perspective on the similarities between the initial transformation from folk culture to commercial culture and the same transformation back from commercial culture to folk culture. Everyone can produce, but, at the same time, it requires that we be more critical of what we consume. It discusses the transformation from high schools of the past to the present.

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.

Using Web 2.0 students design and carry out their own service-learning projects, individually, in pairs or small groups. A blog site that shares ideas with utilizing technologies with service-learning. Pam