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"Programming is magic. It's the ability to create things from pure imagination. We started CodeCombat to give learners the feeling of wizardly power at their fingertips by using typed code. "As it turns out, that enables them to learn faster too. WAY faster. It's like having a conversation instead of reading a manual. We want to bring that conversation to every school and to every student, because everyone should have the chance to learn the magic of programming. "CodeCombat is a community project,with hundreds of players volunteering to create levels, contribute to our code to add features, fix bugs, playtest, and even translate the game into 50 languages so far. Employees, contributors and the site gain by sharing ideas and pooling effort, as does the open source community in general. The site is built on numerous open source projects, and we are open sourced to give back to the community and provide code-curious players a familiar project to explore and experiment with. Anyone can join the CodeCombat community! "

"What you see here are candid submissions from people who have engaged in a little exercise. Here's how it works. Think about the word Race. How would you distill your thoughts, experiences or observations about race into one sentence that only has six words?" This National Public Radio blog makes the perfect starting point for a multicultural lesson for ESL/EFL students. The entries are sheer poetry and give a great deal of content to think about the issue of race and one's place in society, for better or worse. Each 6-word "poem" makes us, as one contributor said, "Look past race to underlying humanity."

"ScheduleHangout is great for scheduling group hangouts on Google+ Invite your guests, give them a few date options and ScheduleHangout does the rest. We'll help you organize the Hangout session around your friends/colleagues optimized availability." This may be a way to organize Google+ a little.

Shelly Terrell offers FREE webinars every Friday at around 21:00 GMC/UTC at americantesol.adobeconnect.com/terrell/. This page gives a list of topics for upcoming webinars. Get somefree prof development with inspiring examples of how to use Web tools with your students.

"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.

A terrifically useful article by R. Byrne on making and using QR codes. He describes the tools that can be used and gives good examples of what to do with them, including QR Voice, which allow you to create a short audio message that will come up when the QR is scanned. Links to other useful articles on using QR.

This is a useful way to use Google to create your own search engine. The screencast embedded in the blog entry here gives informative details on the how-to for this built-in Google feature.

While the article by R. Byrne talks about various tools, it often gives great tips for lessons using the QR code makers in ingenious ways.

From R. Byrne: "Creating and delivering quizzes and tests online offers a number of advantages over paper-based quizzes and tests. Many online quiz services allow you to create quizzes that give your students instant feedback. Some of the services provide the option to include picture and video prompts in your quizzes. And all of these services save you the hassle of printing your quizzes. "

Stannard's training video on how to use Windows Movie Maker (Windows 7) is very detailed and complete. Subsequent parts give directions for XP and Vista. He first suggests downloading the free classic version, which has more features than WMM for Win 7.

Stannard gives a quick overview of http://www.rhymes.net, which helps you find words that rhyme with other words. But he doesn't mention that the site speaks the word too! There are also many other tools, such as a dictionary, words with multi-syllables, quotations using the word, phrases, abbreviations, etc. Great for vocabulary work, pronunciation, and writing poetry.

A monthly blog from EFL Classroom that gives you ideas, resources, and a place to set up your own online classroom. Links to video talks, new online resources, ongoing discussions and blogs, student-created content, ideas for current seasonal holidays, and their own Diigo Group, et al. EFL Classroom has developed well over the past year or so, and is well worth following.

These lessons include Scholastic's Interactive Weather Maker, showing how humidity and temperature levels relate to rain and snow storms; Bytesize Science on the chemistry of snowflake making; and why the full moon gives more light in winter. Video explanations are embedded in R. Byrne's site.

If you are looking for the books that are perfect to fill the Christmas time with the pleasure of reading, this infographics should give you enough recommendations.

"These videos give you an up to date outline of using the program Blogger. They start off with how to create your first blog all the way through to adding more pages and authors to your blogs" R.Stannard takes you through the updated Blogger program. I have used Blogger for years, but now tend to just use Diggo and Scoop.It, the latter for the more reflective, pedagogically oriented discussions. Blogs are very helpful as a place for student portfolios, and are easy to tag and search.

This link gives you 3 sources including the title: Visual Writing Prompts, The Literacy Shed, and Video Writing Prompts. Some can be browsed by genre, grade, or subject area. And some have the prompts written directly on each image. The title site includes a prompt explanation, an explanation of any relevant vocabulary and language, and a convenient one-click download button. I always used a set of images, culled over years of browsing magazines and newpapers, as writing prompts for various types of writing. Sites with prompts built-in can be an advantage for the busy teacher, or a disadvantage if you don't want to search for something that precisely fits your assignment goals. You can also have students create their own portfolio of images and prompts to share with other writers. T/H to Nick LaFave.

"This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) A Plain Story Simply Told Author: J. Arthur Thomson"

This chat room tool might be useful for your classes, or as a backchannel if several teachers are working on a presentation together. The interface can be mounted on your own website, ensuring that students don't wander off. You can easily save a transcript of the chat, and it lets students join from home or other classrooms. T/H to H. Dilatush who let us in EVO know about it.