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The SPARK Community is an online destination where NWEA partners can connect and collaborate. This is a community where kid-centric education is an aspiration shared by all.

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

The "Top 25" Web sites foster the qualities of innovation, creativity, active participation, and collaboration. They are free, Web-based sites that are user friendly and encourage a community of learners to explore and discover. * Organizing and Managing * Content Collaboration * Curriculum Sharing * Media Sharing * Virtual Environments * Social Networking and Communication

"About Our Motivation: Challenges and opportunities, created by our global society, invite teachers, administrators, and students to rethink the way they teach, lead, and learn. The rise of social networking, the ease with which information is shared, and the growth of our global economy are just a few factors that have made it obvious that the 21st century is a much different world than the 20th century. And yet, when we take a good, hard look at the culture within our schools, do we see that much has changed from yesterday to today? We may see more technology used in the classroom and maybe more discussions on the "content vs. skills" debate in the faculty rooms. But underneath it all, have things really changed? Have we successfully forged a culture where life-long learning, personal growth, and collaboration are valued and practiced among all members of the school community? In Richard DuFour's article "Why Look Elsewhere?: Improving Schools from Within," he states that "it is context-the beliefs, expectations, behaviors and norms that constitute the culture of a given school-that plays the largest role in deciding whether a professional development program will make a difference in that school." If a school's goal is to improve student achievement, and a school considers learning to be the crux of its community, then effective professional development-where teachers and administrators themselves become learners-is the bridge to achieving that goal."

MyGreatWorld.com is a free and fast photo community and a visual database of locations, starring the cities and landscapes of our planet Earth.

"Online professional development (PD) fits today's fast changing K-12 educational environment where demands on teachers and re-certification require teachers to continually learn new and challenging content and pedagogy. Online professional development has the benefit of supporting teachers in their daily practice and connecting them with a network of like-minded professionals so that they can learn and share with each other."

"Students need much more support and feedback in the online environment than in a traditional course. This is because the potential threat that students feel alienated is quite high in the Virtual Classroom. Using effective feedback strategies will enable the instructor to identify and meet individual student needs as well as encourage students to participate and continue to participate at a high quality level."

"When instructors adapt their course materials to the online environment, they should be sensitive to the advantages and disadvantages of the Virtual Classroom. Web-based learning is well-suited for communications, collaboration, and information acquisition, but not for reading long text files. It is difficult to read screen after screen of text on a computer. In the Virtual Classroom, text-based lectures should be short and few. With this being the case, where are students going to get the information they need in obtaining the learning objectives?"

Open Educational Resources are all about sharing. In a brave new world of learning, OER content is made free to use or share, and in some cases, to change and share again, made possible through licensing, so that both teachers and learners can share what they know. Browse and search OER Commons to find curriculum, and tag, rate, and review it for others. Use the Tutorials as a guide. Join and contribute to the global Open Education community.

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!

This space is intended for the Faculty, Staff, Administrators and Community members of Wissahickon School District.

"Digital Media Scoring Guides First choose one of the following communication types and then customize your scoring guide by checking ONLY the traits and elements you want to use at this time. Click on each keyword for descriptors. For more detailed information on these scoring guides and further resources, see Overview of Digital Media Scoring Guides. "

"Welcome to the Siemens STEM Academy site: A premier online community designed exclusively to foster achievement in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) through the collaboration of STEM educators, and sharing of "best practices"."

"Secretary Arne Duncan announced the draft National Educational Technology Plan on March 5 This plan describes how information and communication technologies can help transform American education. It lays out a set of concrete goals to inform state and local educational technology plans, as well as recommendations to inspire research, development, and innovation."

"More and more educators and students are using Prezi in the classroom. We want to capture the ideas and experiences of our educational community by sharing, adding, and cataloging great prezis used for educating around the world. "

"Are you an educator looking for new ways to grab your students' attention and liven up your daily lessons? Visit the new Wolfram|Alpha for Educators site, where you'll find examples, lesson plans, and even videos on how you can incorporate the technology of Wolfram|Alpha into your classroom. Peruse the video gallery to get a quick introduction to Wolfram|Alpha, and hear from educators and students who are using it in lectures, activities, and research projects. From there take a peek at one of the many lesson plans, in subject areas such as science, mathematics, and social studies. Once you get the hang of it, you can even submit your own lesson plans to share with other educators. This site also points to many other Wolfram educational resources, including the Wolfram Demonstrations Project and MathWorld. We have even set up an Education group on the Wolfram|Alpha Community site so that you can connect with other educators. So the next time you want to do something new and different in your classroom, check out Wolfram|Alpha for Educators to spark your imagination."

"Challenge Based Learning is an engaging multidisciplinary approach to teaching and learning that encourages students to leverage the technology they use in their daily lives to solve real-world problems. Challenge Based Learning is collaborative and hands-on, asking students to work with other students, their teachers, and experts in their communities and around the world to develop deeper knowledge of the subjects students are studying, accept and solve challenges, take action, share their experience, and enter into a global discussion about important issues."

Through the great folks in the Google Certified Teachers community I've learned that you can now sort your search results by readability. The readability index is a bit coarse, but it is helpful none-the-less. The index use a simple ranking of "basic," "intermediate," and "advanced." In order to sort by readability you have to open the advanced search tools then select "reading level" from the drop-down menus.

"The report found that the use of Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, podcasts, wikis, and comics-creating software can heighten students' engagement and enhance their writing and thinking skills in all grade levels and across all subjects."