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This collection of editors' choices from TeachersFirst will spark summer excitement for parents and kids alike. Whether your want to create something, ignite new learning, or hold on to what you already know, you will savor these safe, reviewer-recommended resources. Be sure to share with your friends, neighbors, and family. Teachers will want to share this page with students departing for summer break. Summer will never be "boring" again!

"Summer has officially started for many of you! I know that you will probably be relaxing for the first few days, but eventually you may feel the need to be inspired and motivated for the upcoming school year! Social media provides us with incredible opportunities to choose the way we want to develop professionally. You can choose the topic, the medium, and who you want to learn from. You can choose the way you like to learn, because social media provides us with several multimedia experiences, such as webinars, LMS, live video, and more. The experience is usually dynamic and motivating because you are learning with others around the world! Additionally, you will be developing your Personal/ Passionate Learning Network (PLN)."

A child's ability to become a strong reader is the single greatest key to his/her future educational success. For 9 months of the year, teachers and parents work tirelessly to acquire and improve their students'/child's reading skills only to take a 3-month summer break before moving to the next grade level. During this time, many students are preoccupied with summertime play and often lack the discipline to continue to build or even maintain their acquired reading level through daily reading, often resulting in summer reading loss/setback. Readers Are Winners, Inc. is a non-profit literacy organization with the mission of creating reading events, motivating elementary children to become strong readers, and rallying organizations on behalf of reading.

Scrapbooks, pictures, and home videos may be the traditional way to preserve and share summer memories, but if you've got a smartphone or iPad, you can use it -- along with some cool websites -- to document adventures or lazy days. With a little creativity, you can turn your summer memories into a comic book, a movie, a digital scrapbook, and more.

The school year is either over or almost over for the majority of readers of Free Technology for Teachers. The summer is a good time to explore and experiment with new things that you might use in the fall. In the PDF below I've compiled 77 resources that you might want try out over the next couple of months. Even if there's nothing new to you in it, please consider passing it along to a colleague that could discover a few new things from it.

"Learn more about this film and download the free companion poster here: http://fablevisionlearning.com/blog/2... Peter H. Reynolds, creativity advocate and best-selling author and illustrator, and co-founder of FableVision Learning, has created a new animated short called The Testing Camera - a whimsical poke at high-stakes, standardized testing and a reminder that real assessment is as easy, and - at the same time - as challenging as getting to really know the gifts and talents of every child. "We've gone through a very test-centric decade which, in my opinion, has consumed a lot of time, energy, and resources," Reynolds shares. "Many teachers have had to adhere to new mandates and measures that require a 'teach to the test' approach. Public schools redirected funding for art, music, theater, libraries, field trips, and more. It's a discouraging picture for those trying to reach all children in creative, engaging ways." Reynolds, who is known for his books encouraging creativity, The Dot, Ish, Sky Color and The North Star among many others, penned this whimsical and poignant story about a young girl named Daisy who, dismayed at her art class being canceled, nervously faces her turn with the "Testing Camera." This huge apparatus snaps at her with a few blinding flashes of light. Weeks later, her father's reaction to the test results surprises Daisy in a most wonderful way. "This is my gift to educators to remind them to follow their instincts and remember why they got into teaching in the first place: to see the potential in every child, to nurture those emerging gifts and talents, and to change lives," Reynolds shared. The film was produced by FableVision, the transmedia studio in Boston founded by Peter and his twin brother, Paul Reynolds, author of Going Places and the Sydney & Simon series. The Testing Camera was directed by John Lechner with music by Tony Lechner, and animated by a team of young animators interning at Fable

"Summer is a time when many of us are thinking about and planning professional development workshops for our schools and for other schools. I've always found that a short 3-5 minute video can be a good introduction to a PD sessions and or make for a nice thought-provoking break during a PD session. Here are seven videos that I think serve those purposes well."

StoryPlace, an interactive web site, came about to provide children with the virtual experience of going to the library and participating in the same types of activities the library offers. In the summer of 1999, a team of Children's Librarians and Specialists got together with in-house web developers to begin development on this exciting site. In the Spring of 2000, StoryPlace premiered with its first section, the Pre-School Library, completed. StoryPlace currently consists of two libraries, the Preschool Library and Elementary Library.

There are a variety of different kindergarten activities to do mixed throughout these worksheets. Learning and fun are the key ingredients to a successful worksheet. The free activities are all original and unique to this website. Choose from over forty categories of kindergarten printables. Kids and students will enjoy the worksheets for days. The math section includes addition, subtraction, counting, fraction, place value, graphs, measurement, pattern words, and numbers activities. The English section includes reading, alphabet, writing, phonics, vocabulary, sight words, opposites, rhyming words, and spelling activities. The general learning section includes science, Spanish, social studies, dinosaur, health, zoo, language, butterfly, and coloring activities. The last section is our holiday group. This includes Easter, Christmas, summer, winter, spring, fall, Thanksgiving, and Halloween activities.

"Many view classroom management as how a teacher runs the day-to-day operations of the class. In the 21st century, classroom management goes beyond the classroom walls. To keep students working and focused on the tasks at hand, a Web site can be utilized to make class time more efficient. "

Wikispace used for the WSD Institute full of resources for workshops.