WSD eToolBox

"This post could be almost infinite: there is most certainly an extraordinary array of options for videos which expand educators' understandings and inspire advances in 21st century learning.  But curation is about choice and selection, and while I know I will leave out many, I thought I'd offer up a set of 15 of my favorites for your consideration for video screening at at back-to-school or beginning-of-the-year faculty meetings (and/or parent and board meetings)."

The spreadsheet program Excel can be used to make large posters made up of standard sized paper.  This may work with other spreadsheet programs (e.g. OpenOffice) but since I've had good results with Excel, I haven't tested that yet.  Let me know if you have other ways to do this, with spreadsheets or other programs.

Udacity is a totally new kind of learning experience. You learn by solving challenging problems and pursuing udacious projects with world-renowned university instructors (not by watching long, boring lectures). At Udacity, we put you, the student, at the center of the universe. Udacity classes will make you sweat. Passing a Udacity class is as demanding as passing a university-level class. But you will have a lot of fun along the way as you learn new skills and interact with amazing instructors and peers.

".If you are a busy teacher who does not have time to sift through Twitter to look for guys whose tweets  can trust and therefore follow then you can check the ones mentioned below. These educators  are among the most prominent in the field of educational technology and their tweets will definitely save you time and energy especially when looking for updated and fresh news, resources and tips on technology integration in education. "

Great stuff for Digital Citizenship

"Digital citizenship is a key component of the technology and media literacy. We do not teach our students how to be  good citizens in the real physical world  but how they can be good netizens of the online world  as well.Today's learning requires alot of use of technology and most imprtant of all, our students are using technology on a daily basis- text messaging, blogging, Facebooking, Twittering, watching videos, gaming and networking. They live in two different but interconnected worlds. What they do online can have a severe repercussions on their real life if not properly instructed on digital safety issues and this is where digital citizenship fits in."

"an interactive learning experience designed to provide students and teachers with opportunities to focus on digital citizenship while engaging in constructive play. "

"Free to educators, the CyberSmart! Student Curriculum empowers students to use the Internet safely, responsibly, and effectively."

Nice Digital Citizenship presentation for school admins but can also be used with teachers.

" For the past three years, Digital Wish has been studying the process of implementing one-computer-per-child programs in 28 schools. Digital Wish is an educational non-profit on a mission to bring technology to American classrooms in order to prepare students to thrive in the global economy. The team just completed a $1.125M Federal ARRA stimulus grant, delivering computers, weekly educator trainings, a complete IT curriculum, and support to the 28 schools.  Their trainers modeled the entire process of technology adoption and progressively reduced the initiative planning time from 18 months to just 6 weeks, saving schools tremendous amounts of time and money. Both teachers and students are reporting a wide range of gains including increased engagement in learning, technological proficiency, and dramatic improvements in the understanding of internet safety issues.  The 2011-2012 data report is attached. "

Today's classrooms are more diverse than ever before. As a result, teachers find themselves searching for ways to meet the needs of each student. Add to it the pressures of academic achievement goals mandated by NCLB and many may feel ill-equipped to meet the challenges of diversity in the classroom. Planning perfect lessons with exciting activities looks great on paper, but will it help your students reach their potential? Probably not. If there is anything I learned during my time as a public school teacher is this: The height of student achievement is directly correlated with the strength of the classroom community. By building  community in the classroom, you build an environment where students feel safe to learn, grow and be themselves.

AirPano is a noncommercial project focused on high resolution 3D aerial panoramas. AirPano team is the group of russian photographers and panorama enthusiasts. During the next 2-3 years we plan to shoot the aerial panoramas and create the virtual 3D tours of the most interesting places of our planet.

Online tutorials for Blackboard

Online notice boards are a neat way of getting a shared space to collect ideas from your class for a brainstorm. Or for a teacher to post resources for a topic. Students could ask questions about a topic which you (or each other) can then answer. If you want some ideas on how to use them, then here are 19 ways to use wallwisher (and similar) in the classroom via Tom Barrett.

There is no blinking the fact  that the type of students we teach today are completely different from last century's. We , definitely, need to look at some of the skills we, as teachers, need to equip ourselves with to better live up to the challenge. Among all the challenges we would have in education, there is not as daunting a challenge as catching students focus and getting them engaged in the learning process. For this particular reason, and in addition to the skills I initially mentioned in 21st Century Teaching Skills article, I would like to provide you  with another list of  some equally important digital skills that you, as a teacher, need to seriously consider if you want to pave the way for the 21st century teaching. I have added a list of web tools under each skill for teachers to better exploit it.

I am an enthusiastic supporter and practitioner of the "Flipped Classroom."  I see it as a very tangible reality for improving the learning outcomes of college students, the mainstream understands how and why it works.  This infographic, which I picked up via David Wicks' blog, visually communicates several of the key concepts of the Flipped Classroom.

A great chart for question creation for any topic at any grade level.  Even good to use with adults, at faculty meetings, etc.

You can introduce or augment technology skills with these lesson plans for teachers. They're ready to use as they are, or you can customize them to fit your specific teaching and learning goals.

CK-12 Foundation is a non-profit organization with a mission to reduce the cost of textbook materials for the K-12 market both in the U.S. and worldwide. As a leading member of the OER movement, CK-12 is using an open-content, web-based collaborative model termed the "FlexBook." With these free, common core aligned and NSES aligned digital textbooks, CK-12 intends to pioneer the generation and distribution of high quality educational STEM content that will serve both as core text as well as provide an adaptive environment for learning through the FlexBook Platform™.

The Buck Institute for Education (BIE) received a generous grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to help promote and provide deeper learning opportunities for teachers and students.  Recognizing that 11,000 teachers will participate in BIE's 3-day PBL 101 workshop in 2012, the Hewlett Foundation helped BIE expand its professional development resources and expertise online.  Now BIE can work with every school and every teacher through PBL University (PBLU).