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"Today's tech-savvy students spend hours upon hours sharing information with friends through social networks like Facebook. We wanted to bring this form of interaction to education. Tapiohka is a free, hosted solution that provides easy access to class information with tools that facilitate sharing and collaboration. We look to differentiate ourselves by bringing the focus on students learning from each other and not just from their teachers and textbooks. We completed our first phase of development last month and Tapiohka is now available and completely free to users. Currently, a teacher can create a class and provide their students with secure access to class information, schedule and resources. Students can collaborate with their fellow classmates within a platform that enables the easy sharing of resources and the ability to create discussions and form study groups."

Benefits for creating a classroom environment for student blogging begin with establishing a foundation for their success. Why is this important? Integrating blogs transforms a classroom into a learning community where students become self-directed learners and thinkers. This in turn, causes students to use higher order thinking skills as they create and post entries in their blogs, along with commenting on other student's blogs.

The following tips, tools, and resources can assist any teacher with the basics about social media and ways to share that information with students.

TeachersFirst is a rich collection of lessons, units, and web resources designed to save teachers time by delivering just what they need in a practical, user-friendly, and ad-free format. Busy teachers, parents, and students can find resources using our robust search tools

Students can construct deep knowledge about a topic as they engage in building a multimedia project. If used effectively, a well designed student-driven learning experience can take the place of traditional methods of teaching content. Use of digital tools can provide students with flexible learning paths to meet their unique learning styles.

A list of great free online tools that can help teachers and students compile resources.  Also provides explanations for their best uses.  

So, if restricting access to these devices isn't the answer, how do we address their presence in the classroom and use these devices to engage rather than disengage students' attention? Here are a few suggestions…

Article discusses how Google's telephone/text message system can be especially helpful for students in organizing their educational communications in one spot, etc.

The top five search tools for finding Flickr images are designed to help teachers and students locate just the right image for use in any subject area and project. Without these tools finding the right image on this image hosting site is often an impossible, or at least a tedious, task. The value of this site is its ability to provide digital pictures which are often impossible for a teacher to obtain any other way. Like everything else on the internet, trying to find something is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. This where the top five search tools become valuable resources for teachers and students trying to find images comes into play. These search engines are specifically designed to search the more than three billion pictures on the Flickr hosting site.

"Welcome to the premiere online destination where middle and high school students can dare to change the world. Together, we can spark our youth's natural curiosity to help protect, restore and preserve our water planet. With a growing library of vibrant, awe-inspiring videos, educator lesson plans, and service learning materials, we can encourage students to become engaged and involved in affecting global change. We encourage you to share your ideas and resources for helping to make this site interactive and ultimately stocked with the richest and widest array of educational materials best suited to reach youth and help them become aware and involved in affecting change around the world."

  RSS |Blogs|Forums|Register|Sign-In K-12 Blueprint   Digital Learning Environments Top 10 sites for Creating Digital Magazines and Newspapers by David Kapuler September 13, 2010 print ShareThis rss While creating digital magazines or newspapers can be done in a word processor, there are dedicated sites that elevate this art to a whole new level. Top 10 sites for Creating Digital Magazines/Newspapers 1. Issuu  - One of the most popular and successful online digital magazine creators/publishers around, with a very nice user interface. 2. Yudu  - Upload a document or PDF to create an online magazine that can be emailed our or embedded into a site. 3. Openzine  - Very user friendly site with an abundance of templates and layouts to create a professional-looking magazine and share online. 4. NewsCred  - Create a terrific looking online newspaper in 5 minutes, similar to Openzine. 5. Scribd  - A very popular Web 2.0 site for creating online content and publishing. 6 Fodey  - A fun site to create a newspaper and then download to print out or put on a blog or site. 7. Zinepal  - A great way to bring the news to students by "clipping" online articles. This is a wonderful site for those making the move to ebook readers. 8. Paper.li   - A fantastic site to turn Twitter into an online readable magazine. 9. Guzzle.it  - Is a news aggregator that puts online news in one customizable place. 10. Crayon - Create a professional-looking newspaper with this nice online creator. There are several options to choose from, so it has a bit of a higher learning curve.  David Kapuler is an educational consultant with more than 10 years of experience working in the K-12 environment. For more information about his work, contact him at dkapuler@gmail.com and read his blog at cyber-kap.blogspot.com. SPONSORED LINKS       print ShareThis rss .      Leave a Comment:   Text Onl

Ask them: Assessing what students already know

Information provides information on how to assess what students already know

In contrast to the digital footprint you use for your personal learning network, this focus is on the online digital footprint students' use in your science or math classroom. The power of a well designed digital footprint brings the capacity to transform a classroom into an online learning community. Within this community your students use digital tools to create and develop a personal learning network.

This presentation explores a range of ideas that teachers could use to make a real-world task richer and more meaningful for their students. Using a large public art event as the focus, it looks at a number of ideas for enriching student learning with technology… ideas that could be modified and applied to nearly any learning context.

Scriffon is a simple service for writing and publishing online. Scriffon isn't a blogging platform, it's a writing platform. That means that you cannot edit the layout or navigation on the page on which your writing is published. Each writing that you publish is given it's own url. You can go back and edit your writing even after it has been published. If like, you can use multiple pen names under your Scriffon account name too.  Applications for Education Scriffon could be a good way for students to anonymously post their writings online and get feedback from others. For teachers or students who are reluctant to put their names on the web, using a pen name is a good way to publish without putting your real name online.

MyVocabulary.com offers free vocabulary lessons, word lists, and word puzzles designed for middle school and high school students. The vocabulary lists are based on books commonly used in middle school and high school classrooms. MyVocabulary.com also offers word lists and activities based on SAT vocabulary. Visitors to MyVocabulary.com will find stand-alone vocabulary lessons as well as activities to complement the reading of specific stories. Applications for EducationIf you're planning a series of lessons on one of "standard books" for middle school or high school, MyVocabulary.com could provide you with some good vocabulary lists and lesson ideas to get started. Students prepping for the SAT should take some time to explore the SAT word puzzles offered by MyVocabulary.com

Technology is an effective and engaging tool that can be used to improve vocabulary acquisition for all learners and engage them in the learning process. Technology resources can provide students with a variety of multimedia content to help them construct knowledge about vocabulary in a way that meets their unique learning needs. Technology allows teachers to design learning experiences that provide students with flexible learning paths. This post will explore some digital tools for helping students construct knowledge about vocabulary.

As educators we are faced with the challenge of teaching students to efficiently use the Internet to find and use information. Searching for information and making sense of it is a process that involves critical thinking and it is an important skill. Fortunately, there are many free digital tools available to help students efficiently sift through an overwhelming abundance of web content to find the relevant and reliable information they need. This post will explore some digital resources to provide educators with tools to help all students become savvy searchers and independent learners.