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"The U.S. Library of Congress offers a wealth of fantastic online resources for teachers and students. A quick jump into the teachers resource page will lead you to things like these primary source analysis guides that I have used with students in the past. The LOC also offers a couple of good iOS apps that are worth noting." Shows how various apps can be used with the teachers' resource pages at the U.S. Library of Congress. Great authentic materials for research papers and projects. H/T to R. Byrne

"As the American K-12 system continues to look for ways to increase student interest and aptitude in STEM learning, technology is playing an increasingly pivotal role. Children who come to classrooms today have an inherent aptitude for technology and educators should encourage that skill set with resources that integrate STEM learning. Where do teachers find resources to incorporate into their STEM instruction? The easiest place would be via the internet."

This site creates several kinds of activities and games: interactive map, riddles, fill-in, crossword puzzles, dialogue with audio prompts, dictation, jumbled word or sentence, matching, word search, and quizzzes. You can store your creations for repeated use. Thanks to D. Gonzalez for sharing this.

This is a series of low-cost ($1 U.S.) podcasts about various topics in multimedia uses for teaching. The topics include narrated slideshows, telling a digital story, using smartphones, quick edit videos on the iPad, and creating multimedia ebooks. W. Fryer is the author of Playing with Media, also relatively low-cost for ebooks.

"The Frayer Model is a strategy that uses a graphic organizer for vocabulary building. This technique requires students to (1) define the target vocabulary words or concepts, and (2) apply this information by generating examples and non-examples. This information is placed on a chart that is divided into four sections to provide a visual representation for students."

A search engine for apps, organized first by the type of interface you are using: mobile, desktop, browser, or web (or all). May create some good short-cuts in the elusive quest for the perfect app.

"The invention of the LMS (Learning Management System) was a mistake. And here I'm not going to make the same frustrated argument made numerous times before now that LMSs are limiting structures, that their interface and functionalities control how teachers teach online (although those things are true). The LMS was a mistake because it was premature. In a world that was just waking up to the Internet and the possibility of widely-networked culture, the LMS played to the lowest common denominator, creating a "classroom" that allowed learning -- or something like learning -- to happen behind tabs, in threaded discussions, and through automated quizzes. The LMS was not a creative decision, it was not pushing the capabilities of the Internet, it was settling for the least innovative classroom practice and repositioning that digitally. As a result classes taught within its structure generally land with a dull thud. No matter how creative and inspired the teacher or pedagogue behind the wheel, the LMS is no match for the wideness of the Internet. It was born a relic -- at its launch utterly irrelevant to its environment and its user." Very thought-provoking article on how digital pedagogy really differs from just "teaching online."

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 is a nice update on where to find resources for student projects. Mike Alfred's students use creative projects to show what they have learned, making all types of video from animations to full movies.

This is a collection of texts and accompanying images created by users that you can use for ESL/EFL activities. Have students create and add their own digital stories connected to a theme or short story they have searched for and read. You can also search by a key word, such as a grammatical term they are studying (e.g., "used to"). Thanks to C. Arena.

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.

"Do you Diigo? To be honest, I signed up but never used the online social-bookmarking tool. Fortunately, TESOL's Computer-assisted Language Learning (CALL) Interest Section has been busy bookmarking some great online resources. Dr. Elizabeth Hanson-Smith shared the Diigo CALL IS Virtual Software List on the TESOL CALL Community: http://www.diigo.com/user/call_is_vsl. This list contains tons of resources on various teaching topics! However, this post focuses only on the teacher-training videos." A nice review and selection by Sandra Rogers for the TESOL Blog.

Great tips for the budding student artist. I would recommend this to any student who shows artistic promise with photography. Let the creative juices flow. You can send your direct learners directly to this page for a visual feast, plus good advice from professional photographers.

Here is just one example of some suggestions for using Twitter in your class/presentation: ""Tweet Your Questions! If you are training to a new process or procedure, allow participants the opportunity to tweet any questions they may have, either on the job or during training. What makes this strategy more unique is that instead compiling answers and sending them back via one large email, ensure that there is someone monitoring the twitter account so as to provide near real-time response (even if the response is, "I will look into it")."

Tom Preskett's blog is well worth following. Of special interest are articles on Using Social Media for Personal Learning (11 June 2012), and Tablets: Finally a Technology for the Classroom (18 May 2012). He suggests that "Dynamic content can be created, delivered and actively engaged with by each student."

"We all know Google Presentations is a great tool for making multimedia slideshows. But did you know it can also be used to make interactive quizzes and "Choose Your Own Adventure" style stories? With Google Presentations ability to link to specific slides you can build a non-linear slideshow that allows the user to make choices and go to different slides depending on their choice. Learn tips and tricks to make this work best, and see how this can be used for you or your students to make interactive quizzes and stories." This looks like fun. Users warn that some of the links to help files don't work, but give it a try.

Insert a URL on this page and it will render a readability score using Flesch, SMOG, etc., plus statistics such as number of words, sentences, etc. This could be helpful to determine readable authentic materials for ESL/EFL learners. However, I suspect most webpages all run pretty close to the same level. This would be interesting to experiment with, and especially useful for electronic books and content materials.

Describes the mind-mapping tool that saves to Google Drive, and pedagogical applications for it. Also links to 4 other mind-mapping applications.

This might be an improvement over Google Docs for collaborative writing, as revisions are clearly labelled by color for each participant. The teacher could keep track of who was doing what.

This is a great creative app for iPhone or Android to create up 1-hr-long videos for YouTube. Your students can make shorter videos on their mobiles, then upload and splice them together.