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In this series of lessons, students learn the purpose of an electronic portfolio; use Google Blogger to create such a portfolio of their best work, including multimedia extensions as desired; and respond to each other's work online using the Comments feature of the blogs. Teachers create a basic class website from which to link to each blog. This fosters an online community in which students can easily move from blog to blog to view and respond to each other's content.

In a learning community, ice breaker activities loosens the group dynamic with an engaging activity that pertains to the topic being studied or a topic that is completely irrelevant to the learning material. It causes people's shoulders to relax, mouths to grin, and warms up the room and provides a segue to the task or topic for discussion. Whether you are in a traditional classroom setting, or an online learning community, ice-breakers play a vital role in developing a sense of community in a learning environment

Virtual schools might seem like a foreign land from your three-dimensional classroom. But you can visit that world and offer your students some of its benefits -- like fluency with online collaboration and communication -- from right where you are. All you need is a computer and an Internet connection. Here are some destinations where you and your students can start to dabble in online learning.

Built for tweens, Everloop is the next step beyond social networking, to what we call social looping. Tweens really shouldn't be on open, social networks. Everloop's "social looping" platform - the first of its kind -- creates a privacy loop around kids' connections. It's totally free. And kids are free from anonymous intruders. They can participate in collaborative learning and school projects, share information about their sports teams and clubs, play games, customize their profile pages, and communicate in real time with friends they know who are part of their loop. There is so much negativity around kids and their online behavior. But we all know that good things come from collaborating with each other, sharing information, and connecting with people who have the same interests we have. So at Everloop, we're recognizing that kids want to be online, and our goal is to get kids' online time focused on connecting with a purpose. Through the partnerships we're signing, Everloop will be the platform kids groups use to actively promote, entertain, and inform. Loaded with educational resources, entertainment opportunities, and apps, we'll foster content sharing, innovation, and entrepreneurial development. All within a private loop. As kids interests grow, their loops can intersect with other loops - but never without the knowledge of their parents, who have their own console login and can monitor behavior at whatever level they decide is appropriate for their children. They are always informed before a child tries to expand his or her loop, and they are always in control.

"Using Moodle - Teaching with the Popular Open Source Course Management System by Jason Cole and Helen Foster is published by O'Reilly as part of the Community Press series. The first edition of the book, written by Jason Cole and released in July 2005, is based on Moodle 1.4. The second edition, released in November 2007, has been updated to cover all the features in Moodle 1.8, such as the new roles and permissions system, blogs, messaging and the database module. Thanks to members of the worldwide Moodle user community for their discussion and documentation contributions, many of which have been included in the book. Book download The second edition of Using Moodle is freely available online to enjoy, share and modify under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 License.

The Partnership created a Mile Guide Online Assessment to help educators and administrators gauge their school's effectiveness in integrating 21st century skills into the learning process. The 23 question assessment will help you measure the progress of your school or district in defining, teaching and assessing 21st century skills. As a result of the Online Assessment, you can initiate discussions with staff, administrators, technology directors, school board members and community leaders about improving your school's plans for 21st century skills.

Curriki is more than your average website; we're a community of educators, learners and committed education experts who are working together to create quality materials that will benefit teachers and students around the world. Curriki is an online environment created to support the development and free distribution of world-class educational materials to anyone who needs them. Our name is a play on the combination of 'curriculum' and 'wiki' which is the technology we're using to make education universally accessible.

Curriki is more than your average website; we're a community of educators, learners and committed education experts who are working together to create quality materials that will benefit teachers and students around the world. Curriki is an online environment created to support the development and free distribution of world-class educational materials to anyone who needs them. Our name is a play on the combination of 'curriculum' and 'wiki' which is the technology we're using to make education universally accessible.

Rafi.ki is an online learning community using simple technology to build successful school partnerships, transforming pupils into global citizens.

"This is an online community for elementary teachers to exchange ideas, activities and resources. "

An online library of free videos for learners everywhere - find resources to help you learn just about anything, meet people who make a difference in their communities, and even discover new parts of the world. And Next Vista for Learning wants to post your educational videos online, too. Everyone has an insight to share and yours may be just what some student or teacher somewhere needs!

"Digital citizenship isn't just about recognising and dealing with online hazards. It's about building safe spaces and communities, understanding how to manage personal information, and about being internet savvy - using your online presence to grow and shape your world in a safe, creative way, and inspiring others to do the same. "

SchooNoodle is an online social bookmarking community made exclusively for K-12 educators. All your favorite online resources kept in one place…from elementary vocabulary activities to high school science projects. All your best web resources organized and linked to US state standards See the most popular sites from teachers around the country. The best sites rise to the top of the class!

At the core of FreshBrain is an open and free web site freshbrain.org that provides teens with the opportunity to explore, engage, and create through activities and projects. FreshBrain takes advantage of the latest technologies, such as web conferencing and social networking, to provide a very progressive environment where teens can complete activities and work together on projects. This experience is enhanced with Advisors, available to support and mentor teens who are working on projects, with the intention of increasing the likelihood of success. In addition, FreshBrain provides teens with tools and training in the latest technologies to complete these projects. Providing the latest tools in technology, and a social interactive networking environment, has enabled teens to explore, create, and share with others. A result of pulling these two key online arenas together into one solution has enabled FreshBrain to attract teens comfortable with technology and communicating online. Creations from FreshBrain users range from music videos to logo designs.

Both the Internet and the way young people use technology are constantly changing, but Internet safety messages change very slowly if at all. A few years ago, some of us in the Net safety community started talking about how to adjust our messaging for the much more interactive "Web 2.0." And we did so, based on the latest research as it emerged. But even those messages are starting to get a bit stale…. Now it's time for Online Safety 3.0.

We're creating the world's first safe children's global online community, for kids 7-12 years old. A place where kids discover the world, share what they learn, and are inspired to become involved.

Eyejot is the first, comprehensive, client-free online video messaging platform ideal for both personal and business communications. It offers everyone the ability to create and receive video messages in a self-contained, spam-free environment. With no client to install, you can start using Eyejot immediately with any browser, on any platform. It even features built-in support for iTunes™ (and iPods™), mobile devices and social networks like MySpace™.

The online workplace of an international community of education professionals. K-12 teachers, librarians, administrators, and professional development staff, as well as university faculty, students, and researchers gather here to learn, collaborate, share, and support one another.

GROU.PS is a social applications platform that gives you all the tools you need to keep your online community connected. More formally, we call our product a social groupware - some also call it DIY social network, or white label social network. But technically speaking, we prefer the term social operating system to describe what we do here. GROU.PS gives you a bunch of modules that you choose from and mash up very easily! You can enrich your site with blocks too; blocks allow you to copy/paste 3rd party widgets into your site.

We are creating a global learning community with the best teachers in the world. Easily record interactive lessons on your iPad and share them online - reach more students, more easily.

Huddle combines online collaboration, online project management and document sharing using social networking principles.