You are invited to participate in an exciting new project to transform the teaching and assessing of key skills in students of all ages. EdSteps is collecting samples of work that demonstrate Global Competency as part of a ground breaking effort to assess student performance using real examples of work done by students and professionals from across the nation and throughout the world.

Nice Directory organized A - z by Judy O'Connell

"While there is much hand-wringing and sighing about the end of book culture, there are other educators who are realizing that there has never been a time when our students have been reading and writing as much as they are during each day."

In this HASTAC forum, three Scholars invite you to consider evaluation and assessment in the face of new forms of digital media, new kinds of skills and technologies, and the ever-changing landscape of education and academia. Grading 2.0: Evaluation in the Digital Age   As the educational and cultural climate changes in response to new technologies for creating and sharing information, educators have begun to ask if the current framework for assessing student work, standardized testing, and grading is incompatible with the way these students should be learning and the skills they need to acquire to compete in the information age. Many would agree that its time to expand the current notion of assessment and create new metrics, rubrics, and methods of measurement in order to ensure that all elements of the learning process are keeping pace with the ever-evolving world in which we live. This new framework for assessment might build off of currently accepted strategies and pedagogy, but also take into account new ideas about what learners should know to be successful and confident in all of their endeavors. 

For those unfamiliar with the term, a learning style is a way in which an individual approaches learning. Many people understand material much better when it is presented in one format, for example a lab experiment, than when it is presented in another, like an audio presentation. Determining how you best learn and using materials that cater to this style can be a great way to make school and the entire process of acquiring new information easier and much more intuitive. Here are some great tools that you can use to cater to your individual learning style, no matter what that is.

A collection of tools by category

Collaboration and communication is one of the most important aspects of teaching and education. If you are looking for tools and sites that can be used to communicate and collaborate with other teachers, parents, and students, you can find many quality resources online. Here are 10 free sites and tools to try throughout the school year.

"Anthropology professor Michael Wesch has the awesome job of studying YouTube and thinking about what it all means. We asked him to curate a playlist of his favorite videos, and he came back with an impressive list of clips that exemplify how the "wonderfully playful participatory culture" you've created manifests itself on YouTube. Four of those videos are on our homepage today, but he also wrote this thoughtful blog post to accompany his picks. Reading it, you'll get a sense of how a single video or person can create a ripple that swells into something so much bigger than ourselves."

"The Tenth Best Web 2.0 Tool for Early Learning!"