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"Based on the motivational theories of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, the game encourages students to assess themselves not on how smart or talented they are, but on how hard they work. And the reward for completing quests with characters is significant: Help the Cheshire cat from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and he'll help you turn invisible so you can sneak through the virtual world a la Harry Potter and his invisibility cloak. "The more characters from literature you get to know, the more powerful you become," says Schell. "

"This list of five things that you may not know about QR codes contains some simple ideas that definitely pack a punch. These tips include strategies for differentiating instruction, distributing materials, and keeping families up to date on classroom activities. If you've tried one of these QR tips or have another to add to the list, the comments section of this post is the perfect place to share!" The article also tells how to make dynamic QR codes requiring a login, for example, for a daily lesson assignment, using Kaywa.

Teaching Channel video: A nice demonstration of how to conduct discussions in small group and pairs. Demonstrates active listening by the teachers as students report back then go to the board to offer the results of their discussions. Structured discussions and student ownership of the reasoning process are good even for very young learners. Applicable for all levels.

This has great videos on how to teach a wide variety of subjects, as well as how to manage students' behavior in class, set up collaborations, assessment, and esp. for US teachers, the common core standards. Very useful for teacher training, though not specifically oriented toward ESL/EFL.

Describes LinoIt and how to use it--a nice brainstorming and student collaboration tool, but it's great to see examples and how it can be used with students. Free.

Nice, chatty, friendly explanation of what QR (quick response) codes are, how to get a reader, and how they can be used in the classroom. Note that the YouTube list of suggestions in the sidebar has many more suggestions for using QRs educationally. (thanks to Vance Stevens)

"Real-world learning experiences can significantly improve children's knowledge in a matter of just days, a new study suggests. "Researchers found that 4- to 9-year-old children knew more about how animals are classified after a four-day camp at a zoo. "It wasn't that children who attended just knew more facts about animals, the researchers noted. The camp actually improved how they organised what they knew - a key component of learning. "This suggests the organisation of knowledge doesn't require years to happen. It can occur with a short, naturalistic learning experience," said Layla Unger, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher in psychology at The Ohio State University." A very, very small study, but supports intuitive notions of the neccesity of real-world, real-life experiences.

Karenne's blog with great tips about how to learn English

This blog entry describes what a rubric is and how to create rubrics for your own purposes. "Authentic assessments typically are criterion-referenced measures. That is, a student's aptitude on a task is determined by matching the student's performance against a set of criteria to determine the degree to which the student's performance meets the criteria for the task. To measure student performance against a pre-determined set of criteria, a rubric, or scoring scale, is typically created which contains the essential criteria for the task and appropriate levels of performance for each criterion. "

R. Byrne: "Wikispaces recently added a Quizlet widget to the library of widgets that you can embed into your Wikispaces pages. Quizlet is a free flashcard service that anyone can use to create and share flashcards. Quizlet offers a massive library of flashcard sets created and shared by other users of the service. And now you can search for Quizlet flashcards, embed them into your wiki, and use four different study modes while those cards are embedded into your wiki. The screenshots below provide directions for adding Quizlet to your Wikispaces wiki." Quizlet can handle various types of media, so it makes for interesting flashcards. This step-by-step visual explanation makes the embedding task easy; creating the flashcards at Quizlet takes some work and thought.

"Upload an image from your computer and choose how many sheets wide you would like your poster to be once printed. "Once you're happy with your selection, you can download the PDF file containing your newly created images and print each one massively blown up, resulting in a huge pixel poster to stick on your wall ..." A very useful tool for display of your students' work, or to make a giant jigsaw puzzle. T/H to R. Byrne

"Direct instruction of vocabulary can help students learn enough words to become better readers, and becoming a better reader can in turn help students learn even more vocabulary. So how do we teach students to learn or acquire new vocabulary? Research suggests that vocabulary instruction should include the following components: definitional and contextual information about a word; multiple exposures to a word in different contexts; and encouragement of students' active participation in their own learning of the new words.1 Here are 15 vocabulary activities that you can integrate into your classroom starting tomorrow!" Includes a number of visual/drawing activities. Should make vocabulary building more fun. Could be adapted to younger children. Some activities have a downloadable worksheet.

"Providing your students with a public audience is not only a critical part of the project-based learning process, but it's also a great strategy for building authenticity into assignments to create work that matters. We often leverage our students' parents and guardians in this process because 1) they are easily accessible, and 2) they are our partners in their children's learning plans. Why not then continue and build this partnership in PBL? John Larmer wrote a great blog about how to build parent support for PBL, and one of the best ways he mentions is to keep them involved in the PBL project you launch in your classroom. Here are some strategies to consider as you leverage parents for your next PBL project."

"Use these strategies to help middle and high school students identify relevance, accuracy, bias, and reliability in the content they read." The article includes results of a study on how youngsters use the Internet. Links to guides and other teaching materials. T/h J Coiro

This important article by the ACTFL discusses how the U.S. Common Core standards can be aligned with the National Standards for Learning Languages. Presents several diagrams and other visuals to help teachers see the crossovers for each skill--reading listening, speaking, and writing--in presentational and interpersonal modes, and how culture is woven into the whole.

This page shows how a student website can be created and maintained. The topic is "digital health and wellness" or "digital citizenship" but can be revised and improvised on for other topics. The plan shows how teams are created, expectations for individuals within the team, grading, tasks, etc. Great lesson planning for a problem-based learning experience. T/H to J. Brueck on Diigo in Education.

The article suggests capturing your Prezi with a screen capture tool to create a video. A work-around, but could be useful. I find screen captures are usually pretty fuzzy, however.

True grit may be the most important thing students can learn from you, according to this TED talk. Darwin thought that hard work was not only the most important thing in intellecutual endeavor, but the only thing. To see how to inspire grit, check out Larry Ferlazzo's inks and other resources, including free excerpts from his books, at this blog post.

"Discover, purchase, and share educational apps, books, and videos easily with Google Play for Education - a new online destination just for schools." Browse content by grade, subject, or standard; purchase with school PO (no credit card required); distribute apps via cloud. This page also shows how to set up tables to allow use of content and to find approved apps.

Great links for using Google Earth for science classes, as well as for English/Language Arts (see "Lit Trips"), math, culture and history, etc. Pre-made lessons. Also links to "How to create Placemarks and Tours," "To Geography and Beyond," etc.