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The paper concludes that while there are some preliminary positives about online PLC's, educators' thinking about online PLC's has not moved beyond the scope of traditional PLC's. In other words, more time will be required to truly evaluate their impact, but in the meantime, blended traditional and online PLC's seem to offer the most promise.

Read a summary of the report or the full report at:

http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/projects/project.asp?projectID=368 This link is not working as I post this, so I need to check back later

MERLOT is a free and open resource designed primarily for faculty and students of higher education. The MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT) is a peer-reviewed, open access, online publication addressing the scholarly use of multimedia resources in online education

"With the advance of web 2.0 technologies, there emerged a wide range of educational tools that we can use with our students in and outside the classroom.Collaborative web tools is one example. Using such websites, teachers will be able to help in holding online and real-time discussions with their students, help them in their projects and assignments, guide their learning, do backchanneling, and synchronously moderate discussion threads and many more." The focus here is on tools for collaboration. Many are new and interesting, such as virtual whiteboards, search team to do online searches together, browse websites together, create online projects collaboratively, create your own chatroom, etc. Some of these will be gone quickly, but they all appear quite useful. About 30 in the list.

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. "

Ten Excellent Online Apps For the Innovative Teacher

8 Websites to Create Animated GIF Online

"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."

We all have had many years of experience in learning in face-to-face settings in both classrooms and seminar rooms. Although the face-to-face learning environments are often complex and unpredictable, we are very familiar with them and have developed high levels of skill in working in these environments. We cannot assume, however, that the skills, strategies, and techniques that we so effectively use in face-to-face learning environments will also work well in online learning.

"Google added two fantastic new features to Google Slides. First, Google Slides now has a Q&A feature that lets your audience submit questions to you. Second, Google Slides now has a built-in laser pointer that you can use to call attention to parts of your slides. I've already received some questions about how to use these new features so I made the following short video." t/h R. Byrne This makes Google slides very versatile for online presentations. Check out the how-to video.

"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.

"The success of a website or another type of online project is determined by the content you publish. It doesn't matter how much you invest in ads and marketing; your efforts won't yield results if you neglect the power of great online content."

The Best of Online Learning: Free Video Lectures

20 Great Online Image Editors

Top 5 Free Online Video Editing Tools

Top 10 Excellent & Free Online Poll Makers

10 Best And Free Online Video Editing Software

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.

"In this video, made while I was Tech Liaison for the Alaska State Writing Consortium, I share some ideas about teaching with Twitter and reflect on using Twitter with both local and distance students at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. "This video was created as part of an online presentation I did with, David Wicks, Seattle Pacific University, and Jason Rhode, Northern Illinois University. It was presented online for the Northwest eLearning Community January 27, 2011. We have posted more materials and links to additional videos at their Google site: Twitter in Edu." From Jacquie Cyrus, Guam.