Half an Hour: Standards for Pedagogically Relevant Learning Environments – Where Are we? Stephen Downes: standards for pedagogically relevant learning environments.Where are we? 

Google For Educators – Web Search These Search Education lessons were developed by Google Certified Teachers to help you do just that. The lessons are short, modular and not specific to any discipline so you can mix and match to what best fits the needs of your classroom. Additionally, all lessons come with a companion set of slides (and some with additional resources) to help you guide your in-class discussions. 

Wanna Work Together? – Creative Commons Good video overview of Creative Commons and how it can apply to the classroom. Pays tribute to the people around the world using CC licenses to build a better, more vibrant creative culture. 

Keeping Kids First A teaching blog with the underlying belief that the aim of education should be teaching us how to think, rather than what to think.

onlinefacilitation – Twitter Collaboration Stories Still to be convinced by Twitter in education? Take a look at the Twitter collaboration stories wiki for some ideas and good examples of how it can be used.

Education – Change.org: Technology: The Wrong Questions and the Right Questions Ira Socol’s thoughtful post on an historical view of technology, information and education 

When is Good A way to oganise when you all can get together

Screen Australia – DIY Doco A teaching resource for analysing and creating the documentary genre. Examines documentary styles and genres, elements of documentary storytelling and the process from story to screen 

Visual Literacy and 21st Century Skills / FrontPage David S. Jakes – Visual Literacy and 21st Century Skills

Social Networking in Plain English – Common Craft – Our Product is Explanation Simple video on what it is and its use.

10 Technology Enhanced Alternatives to Book Reports – TheApple.com 10 Technology Enhanced Alternatives to Book Reports

High-quality photo sharing High-quality photo sharing with PhotoSnack. It’s easy to upload photos, create great photo slideshows, and share them and it’s free! It is easy is to manage your photos online and share your photo albums on MySpace etc, or create professional photo portfolios online. All starting from lots of stylish templates and themes. 

Slatebox :: Visualize Everything – Welcome! A visualization platform that makes it easy to markup ideas on embeddable "slates" and convey the information visually. Anyone can create an account for free and use SlateBox to build a diagram, flowchart, or more. If you own a blog or website, you can also embed these slates directly on your site. 

cyber[smart] – Libraries  A digital citizenship development website that’s been developed by the Australian Media and Communications Authority with the assistance of Education.au. It’s well categorised and accessible, providing ‘activities, resources and practical advice to help young kids, kids, teens and parents safely enjoy the online world’. There are specific resources are also available for libraries and schools as well as materials that parents can discuss with their children.

VoiceThread Introduction Video 

Famous Blogs: Jugaad – Blog Of The Day Awards – Top Blog Awards – 2008 Weblog Awards – Best Blog – Top Blogs – Best Blog Awards – blogofthedayawards.blogspot.com – 2007 blog awards weblog awards.blogofthedayawards 

Welcome – digizen.org What makes you such a good digizen?

StarChild: The Solar System An informative site about the solar system. It is a starting point for students and is supported by NASA . A multimedia, non-linear reading site, it has a reading feature on the level 1; and interactive games to quiz your knowledge about the solar system.

We Choose the Moon: Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Lunar Landing Relive the Apollo 11 mission in real time interactivity. Fantastic web media storytelling 

Welcome – CHILDREN’S EBOOKS "Children’s eBooks are not just for Primary schools. They can be used for students with reading difficulties, especially students who are Special Needs and ESL students. In 2010 Children’s eBooks will also be launching a competition to write and illustrate an eBook." 

Task Force Recommendations for Best Practices for Child Online Safety Ι Point Smart. Click Safe. "The most important and timely recommendation from the report (which previous online safety task forces all agree upon) is the need for digital media literacy and safety education that empowers kids, parents, and educators. It’s important that kids of all ages learn what it mean to be a digital citizen and how to navigate the online world safely, and it’s equally important that parents and educators have the resources and online tools to help kids make the right choices online." [quote from: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/07/best-practices-for-online-child-safety.html] 

Global Education Teacher resources supporting the integration of a global perspective across the curriculum: Country profiles, international issues, development and poverty. Initiated and funded by AusAID (Australian Agency for International Development) which manages the Australian Government’s official overseas aid program 

Ideas to Inspire ’Ideas to Inspire’ is a collection of collaborative presentations, which offer a large number of ideas for engaging lesson activities. They are the result of the collaboration of teachers from all around the world. 

Facebook’s Own Estimates Show Declining Student Numbers; Now More Grandparents Than High School Users Facebook users aged 55 and over have skyrocketed from under 1 million to nearly six million in the same time period. College and high school users have declined in absolute number by 20% and 15% respectively in a mere six months, according to estimates Facebook provides to advertisers that were archived for tracking by an outside firm. 

100 Best Blogs for School Librarians | Online College Tips – Online Colleges With a US bias these 100 bloggers serve as good reference resource for learning about everything from library technology to young adult fiction

Top News – Six technologies soon to affect education From E-School News. Collaborative environments, cloud computing, and "smart" objects are among the technologies that a group of experts believes will have a profound impact on K-12 education within the next five years or sooner. 

Top News – Six technologies soon to affect education From E-School News. Collaborative environments, cloud computing, and "smart" objects are among the technologies that a group of experts believes will have a profound impact on K-12 education within the next five years or sooner. 

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teachers A post, by Milton Ramirez, paraphrasing the popular The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, a business self-help book. Secrets effective teachers put into practice: 1. They build confidence 2. They’re not afraid to make difficult decisions 3. They develop others 4. They’re good communicators 5. They’re non-conformists 6. They thrive in the company of others 7. They see the bigger picture But what makes teachers highly effective? We should start with two basic premises: Teachers are facilitators and not entertainers even though occasionally have to play that role. The second point to have in mind is that learners are not anymore the passive subject who only listens, new technologies put students in charge of the information they access, they are able to save, reformat and share it. 

Talk to Me: 5 Great Translation Tools 5 translation tools to aid you in your quest to translate and communicate

Create text-to-speech (TTS) podcast from RSS feed for iPod, iPhone, MP3 player and mobile phone Odiogo’s media-shifting technology expands the reach of your content: It transforms news sites and blog posts into high fidelity, near human quality audio files ready to download and play anywhere, anytime, on any device. It reads your text into a "listen now" button that can create an MP3 download 

State Library of Victoria SLV Research Guides – Bushfires in Victoria – 2009 Fires (Black Saturday) A great collection from the SLV on information about Victorian bushfires

YouTube – Copyright for Educators – Overview Episode 2 part 1 "Hall Davidson’s Updated version of Copyright for Fair Use, which is aligned with the teachings from the Code of Fair Use for Media Literacy Education (Temple University). There were a six videos on copyright law produced with Hall Davidson for KOCE Public Television" (abubnic)

2. User Rights, Section 107 Music Video | Media Education Lab A good video for introducing students and teachers to the basics of copyright and fair use. The Temple Media Lab provides an excellent collection of case studies, FAQs, and lesson plans for teaching about fair use of copyrighted materials in education. 

Tech Savvy Teacher: SUP228 –Best Practices in Fair Use for 21st-Century Educators Review of: SUP228 Best Practices in Fair Use for 21st-Century Educators\nRenee Hobbs, Temple University, Media Education Lab with Katie Donnelly, Kristin Hokanson, Michael RobbGrieco and Joyce Valenza (abubnic)

New Book for Tweens and Teens Explains How to Tell Real Friends from the Other Kind New book for teens and tweens. Part graphic novel, part practical life skills, REAL FRIENDS VS. THE OTHER KIND by Annie Fox is here to help. The second book in the Middle School Confidential™ series, it follows a tight-knit group of fictional seventh graders–Jen, Jack, Michelle, Chris, Mateo, and Abby–as they work to strengthen friendships while navigating tough social situations. New book for teens and tweens. Part graphic novel, part practical life skills, REAL FRIENDS VS. THE OTHER KIND by Annie Fox is here to help. The second book in the Middle School Confidential™ series, it follows a tight-knit group of fictional seventh graders–Jen, Jack, Michelle, Chris, Mateo, and Abby–as they work to strengthen friendships while navigating tough social situations. New book for teens and tweens. Part graphic novel, part practical life skills, REAL FRIENDS VS. THE OTHER KIND by Annie Fox is here to help. The second book in the Middle School Confidential™ series, it follows a tight-knit group of fictional seventh graders–Jen, Jack, Michelle, Chris, Mateo, and Abby–as they work to strengthen friendships while navigating tough social situations. (abubnic)

http://edtechavenue.com/2009/06/29/cyberbullying-using-virtual-scenarios-to-educate-and-raise-awarenessli "Cyberbullying: Using Virtual Scenarios to Educate and Raise Awarenessli June 29th, 2009 by Jill Research Study We need to have a better awareness on how to educate on cyberbullying. Graduate students in counseling and education came together in this project. Cyberbullying “refers to bullying via electronic communications tools.”

k12cellphoneprojects – home K-12 projects that have integrated student cell phones

Digi Teen – Digital Citizenship for Teenagers Global project (Ning) for high school students to explore what it means to be a responsible digital citizen. 

Digi Parent – Digital Citizenship for Understanding Ning network for parents around the world to learn about digital citizenship. Learn about today’s social landscape, discover the pressing need for digital citizenship, and act to become better digital citizens.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/LeaderTalk/upload/2009/06/focus.gif Leadership, Collaboration, Data & Engagement

The Art Institute of Chicago: Education: Storytime, Match Up, Play with Art. Content on this page requires a newer version of Adobe Flash Player.

History Channel Classroom: Comic Book Superheroes Unmasked 

Cartoon Analysis Worksheet The National Archives Digital Classroom: Primary Sources, Activities and Training for Educators and Students. 

ReadWriteThink: Lesson Plan: Comic Makeovers: Examining Race, Class, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Media In this lesson, students explore representations of race, class, ethnicity, and gender by analyzing comics over a two-week period and then re-envisioning them with a "comic character makeover." (CMIS eval) Takes 2 weeks, 10 50 minutes lessons

ReadWriteThink: Lesson Plan: The Comic Book Show and Tell comic book scripting requires the writer to give the artist detailed, descriptive instructions while also crafting exciting dialogue and otherwise rich language. In this lesson, students encounter an authentic writing experience designed to get them thinking about their choices as writers and how they can best get their mental images out of their head and on the page.

art junction: a collaborative art space for teachers and students This site provides many different resources for both teachers and students. Some of the resources for teachers are very basic and specific, eg. advice on teaching students to draw or information on the stages of art development. Other resources are very broad (but extremely useful) like a collection of reviews of art based books and links to other arts website. The most ineresting and individual resource the site provides in "Art Education 2.0" a social network for teachers of art. 

Lovely Charts | Free online diagramming software Free online diagramming software. Flowcharts, Sitemaps, Organisation charts, Wireframes, Family trees, Network diagrams.

Online image markup tool – Aviary.com’s Falcon "Use Falcon and Talon to quickly capture images and web pages from your browser and crop, resize or mark them up. " 

Video Tutorials for Camtasia Studio 5 Video tutorials by category for Camtasia Studio 5 screen capture software. Learn how to use Camtasia Studio to record anything on your screen visually.

xkcd – A Webcomic – Snopes This comic references Snopes.com and urban legends.

Ideas to Inspire ’Ideas to Inspire’ is a collection of collaborative presentations, which offer a large number of ideas for engaging lesson activities. They are the result of the collaboration of teachers from all around the world.

Facebook’s Own Estimates Show Declining Student Numbers; Now More Grandparents Than High School Users Facebook users aged 55 and over have skyrocketed from under 1 million to nearly six million in the same time period. College and high school users have declined in absolute number by 20% and 15% respectively in a mere six months, according to estimates Facebook provides to advertisers that were archived for tracking by an outside firm. 

Global Education Teacher resources supporting the integration of a global perspective across the curriculum: Country profiles, international issues, development and poverty. Initiated and funded by AusAID (Australian Agency for International Development) which manages the Australian Government’s official overseas aid program 

100 Best Blogs for School Librarians | Online College Tips – Online Colleges With a US bias these 100 bloggers serve as good reference resource for learning about everything from library technology to young adult fiction

Task Force Recommendations for Best Practices for Child Online Safety Ι Point Smart. Click Safe. "The most important and timely recommendation from the report (which previous online safety task forces all agree upon) is the need for digital media literacy and safety education that empowers kids, parents, and educators. It’s important that kids of all ages learn what it mean to be a digital citizen and how to navigate the online world safely, and it’s equally important that parents and educators have the resources and online tools to help kids make the right choices online." [quote from: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/07/best-practices-for-online-child-safety.html] 

Related Top News – Task force tells how to keep kids safe online 

Effects – PhotoFunia The website offers some fun image effects enables users to create and save some pretty nifty images to print out and use at school (or home.) Images can be saved to your computer, saved as an avatar or published on the web by embedding into blogs, etc.

Digiteen – Group | Diigo Digiteen Diigo group that we use with our students on the digital citizenship project. The 9 aspects of digital citizenship correspond with the 9 aspects from Mike Ribble and Gerald Bailey’s Digital Citizenship in schools.

dragonsinger » Blog Archive » Why we have changed our classroom – the students reflect.

Wisdomap | Welcome Wisdomap is mind mapping that allows you to attach notes, videos, pictures, links and files. The colourful, bright maps engage the right side of the brain, while keeping notes and media outside the mind map ensures clarity.

Sage: Open Source Mathematics Software Sage can be used to study general and advanced, pure and applied mathematics, including algebra, calculus, number theory, cryptography, numerical computation, commutative algebra, group theory, combinatorics, graph theory, exact linear algebra and more.

twtpoll :: a simple survey twitter app. Twtpoll is a free feedback tool that helps you to create and distribute polls on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites.

50 Awesome Ways to Use Skype in the Classroom | Teaching Degree.org Promoting Education; Promoting Community; Skype Ideas for Teachers and Parents; Resources for Getting Started and Using Skype; Finding Others Using Skype

Vision Mapper by Futurelab Vision Mapper is a free web resource to support long-term planning and decision making in education. With its wide range of group activities and inspirational materials designed to inspire broader thinking, challenge your views and create realistic, achievable action plans, Vision Mapper can help you create a long-term vision and strategy for your organisation

Create-A-Scape – Home Create-A-Scape is a website that provides resources for creating digitally-enhanced learning experiences, using mobile technology to experience location-sensitive sounds and images that have been ‘attached to’ the local landscape. Can be used right across the curriculum with all age groups. 

Enquiring Minds Enquiring Minds is an approach to teaching and learning that takes students’ ideas, interests and experiences as its starting point, and provides them with more responsibility for the direction and content of their learning. Free guide and supporting resources available online. 

Exploratree – Exploratree by FutureLab A free web resource which can be used for downloading, using and making interactive thinking guides. Thinking guides can be useful for supporting independent and group research projects with frameworks for thinking, planning and enquiry.

Million Futures Million Futures aims to identify what people think are the biggest challenges facing education in the future. The site invites visitors to launch their thoughts about future life and learning via virtual paper planes, and explore what others have written. A lesson plan is available.

Power League | Home Power League is a free web resource for exploring any topic, through sampling group opinions and provoking group discussions. Create your own online leagues or use our existing ones. Can be used right across the curriculum with all age groups; includes lesson plans

NECC 2009 – List | Diigo 

Best Audiobooks for Kids: Travel Savvy Mom 

http://us.penguingroup.com/static/pdf/teachersguides/macbeth.pdf Summary and commentary, prereading, analysis and followup, extended learning options, bibliography. This document requires Adobe Reader or compatible application for access. 

Macbeth by William Shakespeare This interactive unit will help students visualize Scotland. Google Earth must be on your computer for this to work; the free version will do.

Macbeth @Web English Teacher 

http://help4teachers.com/LydiaMacbeth.htm A variety of post-reading activities. Some projects address multiple intelligences.

Macbeth Plot summary, themes, discussion of witchcraft, essay topics, more.

ClassZone.com-Novel guides. Macbeth Theme: Lust for Power Can Lead to Loss of Humanity. Summary, theme openers, cross curricular activities, research assignments from McDougal Littel.

Shakespeare Searched. 

Shakespeare Online Great for all things Shakespeare. Analysis of plays and poems and a biography of his life is included.

BBC – Drama – 60 Second Shakespeare – Homepage NOTE: The page is no longer updated but is still useful. Create your own interpretation of Shakespeare in one minute – make a film or audio, take a scene or whole play – keep it classic or make it modern, it’s up to you. It also has links to other resources on Shakespeare, including newspaper articles telling shakespeare’s stories…

Folger Shakespeare Library Lesson plans, podcasts, and research for Shakespeare (with the emphasis on the 9 plays most frequently taught in schools). Folger is the home to one of the the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare materials and to major collections of other rare Renaissance books, manuscripts, and works of art, the Folger serves a wide audience of researchers, visitors, teachers, students, families, and theater- and concert-goers.

William Shakespeare in quarto: view 21 of Shakespeare’s plays online 

Shakespeare Resource Center – Shakespeare’s Biography 

Shakespeare @Web English Teacher 

Shakespeare Authorship The Shakespeare Authorship Pag. Dedicated to the proposition that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. An intriguing site with an easily accessible collection of essays on Shakespeare, his life, and why it was definitely Shakespeare that wrote Shakespeare. Reading these articles may be a great way to begin a class discussion on who Shakespeare was, and perhaps could be the stimulus for a short debate over whether or not Shakespeare did write Shakespeare.

Information on the life of Shakespeare, where he grew up and some of the basic details on his education, family and marriage. Provides links to the theatre and to some background information on Stratford.

In Search of Shakespeare . Teaching Shakespeare with Technology | PBS 

Internet Shakespeare Editions 

Audio and Video Resources-Folger Shakespeare Library 

Media Infusion . Mashups, Remixes, and Web 2.0: Playing Fast and Loose with Shakespeare | PBS 

Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, Bankside, Southwark, London 

Absolute Shakespeare – plays, quotes, summaries, essays… 

Studies Explore Whether the Internet Makes Students Better Writers – Chronicle.com "The rise of online media has helped raise a new generation of college students who write far more, and in more-diverse forms, than their predecessors did. But the implications of the shift are hotly debated, both for the future of students’ writing and for the college curriculum.\n\nSome scholars say that this new writing is more engaged and more connected to an audience, and that colleges should encourage students to bring lessons from that writing into the classroom. Others argue that tweets and blog posts enforce bad writing habits and have little relevance to the kind of sustained, focused argument that academic work demands*

Doug Johnson Website – dougwri – Raising Good Citizens for a Virtual World – Lesson One A series of Doug Johnson’s lessons on digital citizenship. A great move in the Ethics direction abnd how we might help our children be safe and ethical internet users.

Education Week: 10 Ways to Move Beyond Bully Prevention (And Why We Should) 

Survey: Teens ‘sext’ and post personal info | Larry Magid at Large – CNET News 

Literature-Map – The tourist map of literature Literature Map provides a web of authors you might like based on authors that you already enjoy reading. To use Literature Map just type an author’s name into the search box and webbed list of authors will be displayed. The authors’ names closest to the author whose name you entered are the authors whose work you’re most likely to enjoy.

Young Readers – US Book Shop and Online Bookstore – Penguin Group (USA) 

EduPic Graphical Resource for Educators EduPic Graphical Resource is a teacher designed free image resource for use by teachers and students. All images contained within are free for use by educational professionals and the students they serve without permission. All other use is by permission only. All other rights are reserved.   

BBC – raw – Home RaW is the BBC’s biggest ever campaign that aims to help adults across the UK read and write better. Offers skills for everyday life

MAKE BELIEFS COMIX! Online Educational Comic Generator for Kids of All Ages This is a very SIMPLE comic creating website. It might be quite useful for younger children and those who are struggling with written language. It may to be too bland for the more able students, compared to the many other sources available for use in the classroom. However, because it is written with children as the focus audience, the likelihood of stumbling onto inappropriate material appears nonexistent. There are a collection of characters (black and white drawings) where emotions, speaking and thought bubbles, and text can be added. One drawback is that the cartoons must be emailed or printed as there is no saving option. 

ReadWriteThink: Student Materials: Comic Creator Very simple tool. Create a one, two, three, or six panel comic. You type in your captions. You can select your backgrounds and clip art. 

GoAnimate – Create your own cartoons and animations easily. Our tools are free and you don’t need to learn Flash. Create your own cartoons and animations easily. The tools are free and you don’t need to learn Flash. 

toonlet: web-comic blogging in minutes Create and share webcomics from your computer . No drawing required. 

Free Drum Loops Wav MP3 Aif and Midi Sound Loops Free-Loops.com Free-Loops offers up thousands of sound effects, vocal loops, drum loops and a whole lot more and all for, just as the name implies, free. creativecommons

Protect Your WordPress Blog From Password Hackers With Login Lockdown 

http://www.wisdomcommons.org A collection of over 3,000 poems, fables, essays and more that you are free to use.

Free Travel Stock Photos – Tourism images from around the World A photo archive resource filled with travel and location photos from all around the world that are free for your use.

Geograph British Isles – photograph every grid square! This is an attempt by some enterprising souls to photograph the entirety of the British Isles, and they are being kind enough to release all of the photos as Creative Commons.

Abstract Textures, Background Photos – free stock images An archive of over a thousand abstract backgrounds you can use for free or just for inspiration.

Index By Car Make — Car Pictures This site contains thousands of Creative Commons licensed photos of cars, easily divided up by manufacturer so you can find exactly what you are looking for.

Pictures of Animals — Animal Photos! Thousands of free to use animals photos divided up in to easy to browse categories. 

Internet Archive Most people only think of Archive.org for the Wayback Machine, but it also offers up a huge selection of audio, video and text documents under the Creative Commons license.

Tribe of Noise music community connecting artists, fans and professionals A social networking site built around independent artists uploading their music under a Creative Commons 3.0 by-share alike license.

Free and legal music downloads – Jamendo Jamendo is a site filled with nothing but Creative Commons licensed albums that take advantage of all the various versions of the license. Before using any of them, make sure you understand which version the album is using.

freesound :: home page There is no music at Freesound.org, just tens of thousands of various sound samples for use in sampling, all of them licensed under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License. 

ArtistServer.com – Free music, mp3 downloads, blogs, and more – join the community Over 7,000 free audio files as of this writing, all well categorized and easy to navigate. It also mixes in some social networking allowing to you have firneds lists, run a blog and more.

Collagr.com – Create your own collage that you can use in your myspace.com profile or desktop wallpaper 

Shape Collage – Free Automatic Photo Collage Maker 

SparkleBox – 1000s FREE printable Early Years and KS1 resources – phonics, posters, labels, signs, activities and more!  The site offers a great many printables, posters, banners for classroom use Force unit it science. 

The Digital Generation Project | Edutopia Keep track of the way digital learning is influencing the future of education.Today’s students are born into a media-rich, networked world of infinite possibilities. Their digital lifestyle is about more than just cool gadgets; it’s about engagement, self-directed learning, creativity, and empowerment. The Digital Generation Project tells their stories so that educators and parents can understand how kids learn, communicate, and socialize in very different ways than any previous generation.  

Digital Youth Network: Empowering Youth Through Media "Digital Youth Network gives students tools to be engaged, articulate, critical and collaborative. Facilitate the ability to become creators – designers, builders & innovators"

June 4 Webinar: "Engaging the Digital Generation: Insights from Kids, Teachers, and Parents" | Edutopia  This page offers the useful links talked about in the webinar.

The Book Seer A very easy to use book suggestions website – enter the title and author of a book you enjoyed, and it will suggest similar books 

educational-origami – Starter Sheets Variety of handouts on tools, these starter sheets are resources for the classroom teacher. The intention of each sheet is to introduce a tool, technology or activity that could be easily adapted for use in the classroom. Each sheet is created to a template design and should have the following features: * must be two pages * must have pictures that illustrate process and outcomes * process must be straight forward * must be simple to read and understand * must have clear benefits for the teacher in the classroom, the exemplar should be easy to adapt to a variety of classroom settings * must have an alternative – web based or application * must be linked to Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy and Sensory learning styles using VARK 

iRubric: Home of free rubric tools: RCampus.com This online rubric maker has lots of premade rubrics by a variety of content areas and grade levels. While I wouldn’t use them as is, they can be a good place to start as you develop rubrics for a specific project.

Clay Shirky: How Twitter can make history | Video on TED.com Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly) re:The news from Iran. The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics. A good overall presentation on how web 2.0 technology is revolutionizing the media landscape

TheBrain – Mind Mapping Software, Brainstorming, GTD and Visual KM Software Mind Mapping Software. Simply type in your ideas. Drag and drop files and web pages. Any idea can be linked to anything else. Using your digital Brain is like cruising through a Web of your thinking. See new relationships. Discover connections. Go from the big picture of everything to a specific detail in seconds.  

Diigo in Writing Class « What Else? 1DR Class collaboration 

Welcome | Wordnik An ongoing project devoted to discovering all the words and everything about them. Wordnik wants to be a place for all the words, and everything known about them

Wired for Books: poems, stories, plays, essays, lectures, and interviews for children and adults 

Free Audio Books: Download Great Books for Free | Open Culture Download free MP3′s of great works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Authors include Twain, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Asimov, HG Wells, Jules Verne, etc. Also see link to free audio and video downloads of university/college lectures on many different topics

Modern Art 4 Kids tInteresting blog on all things art for students

TAGmirror: An Educator’s Overview of Diigo [Geeky, Diigo] 

The Philosophical Significance of Twitter: Consciousness Outfolding | techPresident In the larger picture, the most intriguing thing about Twitter is not how it is different from other online communication mechanisms, but how it is the same: one more technological innovation enabling the outfolding of consciousness – the collective turning-outward of human thought. 

Wired Campus: Religion 101, in 140 Characters – Chronicle.com Stephen Prothero is helping world religions make their way onto Twitter this summer, one 140-character tweet at a time. The Boston University professor of religion is treating his account, sprothero, like a microcourse, posting several tweets on each of what he identifies as the eight major world religions: Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Daoism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the Yoruba tradition, which Mr. Prothero calls the “neglected world religion” from West Africa

Simon & Schuster Launches Teen Networking Site – 6/17/2009 12:40:00 PM – Publishers Weekly Offers those who join up a subcription to some of their ebooks

The Book Seer A very easy to use book suggestions website – enter the title and author of a book you enjoyed, and it will suggest similar books 

June 4 Webinar: "Engaging the Digital Generation: Insights from Kids, Teachers, and Parents" | Edutopia This page offers the useful links talked about in the webinar  

Digital Youth Network: Empowering Youth Through Media "Digital Youth Network gives students tools to be engaged, articulate, critical and collaborative. Facilitate the ability to become creators – designers, builders & innovators"

The Digital Generation Project | Edutopia Keep track of the way digital learning is influencing the future of education.Today’s students are born into a media-rich, networked world of infinite possibilities. Their digital lifestyle is about more than just cool gadgets; it’s about engagement, self-directed learning, creativity, and empowerment. The Digital Generation Project tells their stories so that educators and parents can understand how kids learn, communicate, and socialize in very different ways than any previous generation. 

SparkleBox – 1000s FREE printable Early Years and KS1 resources – phonics, posters, labels, signs, activities and more! The site offers a great many printables, posters, banners for classroom use Force unit it science 

Tools for the TEKS: Integrating Technology in the Classroom Offers a good outline of terms and usage of many and varied tech tools. 

PBworks: Free Collaboration, Intranet, Extranet, Education, Business Wiki Formally known as PBwiki, the new site is a collaborative tool that offers more than just wiki functionality. Students and teachers can use to create classroom wikis

Birmingham Grid for Learning – Multiple Intelligences (Secondary) Multiple Intelligence online quiz 

Social Media Classroom Developed by Howard Rheingold ward and funded by the McArthur foundation, it is an open-source education wiki-social software. It uses Drupal and provides teachers and learners with an integrated set of social media that each course can use for its own purposes. 

plagium (beta)::: plagiarism tracker & checker ::: home Track plagiarism by pasting your original text into this sites search box 

Socratic questioning Socratic questioning seeks to get the other person to answer their own questions by making them think and drawing out the answer from them. 

Educational Videos for Kids about Science, Math, Social Studies and English This is a listing and repository of educational videos suitable for students from K-12. The videos in the listing are reviewed and screened by teachers and are drawn from YouTube, MetaCafe as well as some other video sites. They are arranged under listings and can also be searched from within the neoK12 site.

ReadWriteThink: Lesson Plan: Book Report Alternative: Comic Strips and Cartoon Squares Website for teachers to use in lieu of writing a book report, students create comic strips to illustrate facts. Includes template

Musée Hergé The Hergé Museum has officially opened in Louvain-la-Neuve, a small town near Brussels, Belgium. The museum is dedicated to the work of Hergé (Georges Remi), who created the Tintin comic-books

Stripgenerator v1.0.3 Make your own cartoon strip. Stripgenerator is free of charge project created to embrace the internet blogging and strip creation culture, helping the people with no drawing abilities to express their opinions via strips. 

New Creative Commons Information Pack The National Copyright Unit and Creative Commons Australia have jointly developed an information pack for teachers and students on Creative Commons (CC). The pack explains what CC is, how to find CC material and the best way to attribute CC material.

Appetizer – The Open Source Dock Appetizer is a neat application launcher, or dock, for Windows. Appetizer lets you organize your shortcuts and folders into a convenient dock, enabling you to tidy up the desktop. You can even run it from a portable device such as a USB drive. With Appetizer, you can easily add/remove shortcut icons, re-order icons and even create groups for related icons.

SIMILE Widgets | Exhibit Exhibit lets you easily “create web pages with advanced text search and filtering functionalities, with interactive maps, timelines, and other visualizations“. With Exhibit you can create dynamic visualizations of your data collections without having to resort to complex database and server-side technologies.

Add Multimedia to Your Website with One Click – Apture.com Apture provides “the first rich communication platform allowing publishers and bloggers to easily turn flat pages of text into multimedia experiences“. With Apture, it is really easy to add images, videos, audio files and wikipedia articles to your page. 

Explore | North Shore Site that offers many short videos on all types of global issues and countries/regions

Public Domain Photos and Wallpapers A site for free public domain photos and desktop wallpapers. Large collection of High Resolution photos and wallpapers, Thousands of high quality public domain pictures, easy to search, All photos on Photos8.com are public domain. You may use these images for any purpose, including commercial. 

OER Commons OER Commons is all about sharing open educational resources. Subject areas include: Arts, Business, Humanities, Mathematics & Statistics, Science & Technology and Social Sciences. Over 16 different types of course materials are provided. You can search OER Commons by subject area, grade level, material type, media format and conditions of use or by selecting a relevant tag.   

140 FAQ A unique film project that will bring together 140 filmmakers from all around the world to capture 140 seconds of footage at the same time.

Software & Industry Information Association Outlines SIIA’s vision that by the end of the decade, every K-20 institution can—and should—have an instructional and institutional framework that embraces technology and e-learning in order to: • Increase student engagement and achievement • Provide equity and access to new learning opportunities • Document and track student performance • Empower collaborative learning communities • Maximize teaching and administrative effectiveness • Build student proficiencies in 21st Century skills 

copyrightconfusion – Reasoning A wiki offering guidelines for reasoning your way through to fair use

40 Examples of Incredible Photo Manipulation | Webdesigner Depot Photo manipulation is an ever evolving collaboration between photography and graphic design. Combining certain elements to create a unique image, that can convince even the most experienced set of eyes, requires a very creative set of skills. Because the manipulation of a photo gives a realistic view of an unreal picture, you should have an open mind when gathering ideas on how to get creative with your images. Photo manipulations are a great source for inspiration, generally because designers are able to express their creativity through various aspects of design. So here are 40 of some vey incredible examples of photo manipulation. 

CC0 New cc licence. Using CC0, you can waive all copyrights and related or neighboring rights that you have over your work, such as your moral rights (to the extent waivable), your publicity or privacy rights, rights you have protecting against unfair competition, and database rights and rights protecting the extraction, dissemination and reuse of data.

Primary Teacher UK: 29 Useful Writing Sites 

Read Graphic Novels Online. Where and How? 

Top Ten Top Ten – The Top Ten Videos Inspiring Us To Rethink The Way we Learn zaid.alsagoff’s current top 10 list of videos that inspire us to rethink the way we learn and educate. Also, this initiative encourages others to list and share their top 10 favorite videos that inspire us to rethink the way we learn and educate in the 21st century.

wiki.dbpedia.org : About Knowledge bases are playing an increasingly important role in enhancing the intelligence of Web and enterprise search and in supporting information integration. Today, most knowledge bases cover only specific domains, are created by relatively small groups of knowledge engineers, and are very cost intensive to keep up-to-date as domains change. 

http://www.wikiupload.com Upload documents, videos, images, mp3s, ebooks, shareware 5GB and create a link 

Nine Elements 9 themes for digital citizenship from Mike Ribble’s new website.

wwi_poetry – ShareTabs – The easy way to share your links as tabs A selection of WWI poetry sites put together using the Sharetabs tool

Brooklyn Arden: Theory: A Definition of YA Literature 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/books/review/Rabb-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all 

Redefining the Young Adult Novel  

Teenagers? Young Adult? Fiction? | Justine Larbalestier 

“Think Future” Panel Debates What Makes a YA a YA – 4/30/2008 9:56:00 AM – Publishers Weekly 

MostlyFiction Book Reviews 

Francisco Stork Young Adult Novelist 

Global Teacher – Blog Directory and Web 3.0 Community » Guidelines 

xtimeline – Explore and Create Free Timelines XTimeline is a collaborative time line creation tool that gives users the option to include photos, videos, text, and web links within each entry of the timeline. After creating a timeline the creators can invite people to comment on and discuss the timeline. Think of it as Youtube for timelines. Timelines created with XTimeline can be easily embedded into another website like a blog or a wiki for example

Continuous Improvement This Protopage site is devoted to free Web 2.0 applications which support not only collaborative learning for our 21st century students, but also collaborative professional development for our 21st century educators.

Myebook – get it out there! Create a virtual online book. This site allows you to easily publish and share your own content online as well as read ebooks published by other people. You can publish your novel, comic, magazine, photo album or brochure for free.

Pixenate – Edit photos online, fast and easily – No plugins required. Pixenate allows you to edit photos online, fast and easily. No plugins required

GOOD Transparencies Archive – a set on Flickr GOOD Magazine has made an archive of its wonderfully designed ‘Transparencies’ series of infographics available on Flickr. The images span myriad graphic styles and cover compelling, disparate topics, from global sugar consumption to public transit.

Online Drawing Tools & Free Online Painting & Sketching Tools : Graphic Design Blog & Graphics News Blog Free Online Drawing Tools, Online Painting Tools, and Online Sketching Tools and Programs. Use for illustrating stories! You can create your own pictures.

OurTimeLines.com – Home Page You may use the timelines you generate here on your own web pages. View your life, or the life of an ancestor or descendant, against the tapestries of history with our completely free personalized timelines. The only condition is that you ensure that there is a link from each page where the timeline is used back to www.OurTimeLines.com so that your web page visitors may also have an opportunity to generate their own timelines. 

SBDS Prototype 0.1 Information on the prototype SDBS discovery service from National Library of Australia. SBDS will be a new discovery service focussed on Australia, Australians, and items found in Australian collecting institutions. It will provide a single point of access to resources currently discoverable via the Library’s multiple discovery services, and to digitised material freely available online anywhere in the world.

Home | PBS Video Video content on this beta site is free and streamed. The site is searchable by series/program, topic, or keyword. There are many PBS programs that have large collection of full episodes to watch including: News Hour, Nova, The American Experience, Nature, Carrier, Great Performances, Time Team America, Antiques Roadshow, Frontline, Masterpiece Mystery, Julia Child etc. Browse by topics/collections to find even more videos (including Presidents, Native Americans, The Flu Outbreak, Be Green, The Cold War, Ancient Worlds, Going Places, America at War, In The Wild, etc.) 

Taking Your Class Blog Further 

AERA SIG Communication of Research :: Ejournals in Education The AERA SIG Communication of Research is developing a wiki-based tool for an annotated list of these electronic journals

Booktalk Stations Lesson Plan Cathy Belben 

The Hero Factory Use to create avatars and what could be better than turning yourself into a ‘Superhero’ The Hero Factory has a range of looks and accessories to create your Superhero. These can then be downloaded and used as avatars. You will need to crop them before they can use them for that purpose. 

Graphing Calculator An online graphing calculator

Fluid Learning | the human network In our drive to flexibility how can we reduce the class into to essential, indivisible elements? How can we capture those elements? Once captured, how can we get these elements to the students? And how can the students share elements which they’ve found in their own studies? 

Google Wave: A Complete Guide Information about Google Wave (Google Wave reviews), Google (Google reviews)’s new real-time communication platform that will launch to the public later this year.

Hulu – Cosmos The Carl Sagan’s entire Cosmos television series is now available for free on Hulu 

Fourteen Interesting Ways* to use Voicethread in the Classroom – Google Docs Educators have shared these ideas for the use of Voicethread in classrooms to engage and inspire students

Mythopoeic Awards | mythsoc.org Mythopoeic Awards are awarded to an adult and children’s fantasy novel. Website provides current and past winners and nominees.

Welcome | First World War Digital Poetry Archive The First World War Poetry Digital Archive is an online repository of over 4000 items of text, images, audio, and video for teaching, learning, and research. Browse collections for specific poets such as Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Robert Graves, Vera Brittain, and Edward Thomas.

Poetry Explication "A poetry explication is a relatively short analysis which describes the possible meanings and relationships of the words, images, and other small units that make up a poem. Writing an explication is an effective way for a reader to connect a poem’s plot and conflicts with its structural features. This handout reviews some of the important techniques of approaching and writing a poetry explication, and includes parts of two sample explications" 

What is Web 3.0? Semantic Web & other Web 3.0 Concepts Explained in Plain English A series of presentations that sum up main differences between Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0.

Free photos (Australian) Specifically Australian photographs – free for personal or commercial use

Visual Literacy A collection of links to presentations about visual lit The collection is from Shambles Guru 

ShareTabs – Share your links as tabs Add a list of links to the form below and submit it to get a single link to them all, conveniently displayed in tabs. A great way to share multiple sites with collegues or students  ,

Welcome | Teaching Copyright EFF’s Teaching Copyright curriculum was created to help teachers present the laws surrounding digital rights in a balanced way. Teaching Copyright provides lessons and ideas for opening your classroom up to discussion, letting your students express their ideas and concerns, and then guiding your students toward an understanding of the boundaries of copyright law. 

Course: Books and Reading 

Galaxy of Images | Smithsonian Institution Libraries 

6 Steps To Use Web2.0 For Teaching 

GET GRAPHIC: The World In Words and Pictures 

The Hoax Photo Archive The Museum of hoaxes website has a list of photo hoaxes throughout the history. The website also has april fool jokes, college pranks hoax websites and tall-tale creatures hoaxes. tags

RYT Hospital-Dwayne Medical Center. All the miracles of modern medicine.™ Acclaimed as providing ‘all the miracles of modern medicine’. Also offers Male Pregnancy and Clyven the Transgenic Talking Mouse 

McWhortle Enterprises, Inc. This hoax site was set up by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to teach people how to watch out for scams. The site looks and ‘feels’ real to the people searching the Internet for investment opportunities and is great to use with older secondary students.

The Ova Prima Foundation Investigates which came first – the chicken or the egg.

Haggis Hunt 2008/09 – The Great Scottish Haggis Hunt – webcams in Scotland This funny site adamantly proclaims that a Haggis is a wild animal.

Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division – dihydrogen monoxide info Tom Way’s scientific terminology demonises a substance we can’t live without. The whole site is worth investigation. This site originated from a 14-year-old secondary school student’s science project.

http://www.genochoice.com Create your own genetically healthy child online.

Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie Shield your brain from mind control.

California’s Velcro Crop Under Challenge Ken Umbach’s obvious but amusing satirical piece of writing for students in Early to Late Adolescence. 

The Pacific Northwest tree octopus http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/ This site was created as an internet hoax by Lyle Zapato. It is a good site to have students access in order to demonstrate that they cannot believe everything they find on the internet

All about explorers  http://allaboutexplorers.com/index.html This website is a great tool to use while teaching students about ensuring the authority of their resources by double checking them with multiple sources of information. The website is purposely designed to appear authentic, however, it is peppered with false information. A series of lessons based around the use of this website are provided in the section titled "For Teachers

Infosearcher: teching students to evaluate websites Provides three strategies to teach evaluation of Internet material. Stresses the importance of students being actively involved in designing questions or criteria for evaluation.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, or, Why It’s a Good Idea to Evaluate Web Sources Contains an excellent selection of websites dealing with controversial topics for mature students. 

Kathy Schrock’s Guide for Educators – Critical Evaluation Surveys and Resources – Kathy Schrock’s Guide for Educators Forms designed for students at three levels: Elementary, Middle and Secondary. There are also links to many excellent sites for critical evaluation.

Internet Detective | Home An interactive online tutorial that can be downloaded for use offline.

Evaluating Internet Sources 
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

indispensibletools / FrontPage A list of ICT tools was crowd sourced from individual educationalists and not companies when the question ‘What Indispensible ICT tools do you use in education’ was asked and is not meant to be exhaustive in any way. 

The Top 50 Australian blogs on writing – CopyWrite Fifty blogs by and for writers on the act of writing; copywriting, screenwriting, novels, poetry, anything that involves putting words in the right order to build a coherent and creative message. 

35 Beautiful Examples Of Rain Photography | Inspiration | Smashing Magazine This photography blog is great. It takes the theme of rain and captures the small details in a photograph. There are many really interesting photos that could be used as a stimulus for other work

Public Domain Images Karen Whimsey Public Domain Images is a phenomenal public domain gem of clipart, diagrams, sketches, and more for the classroom. Supporting units: ancient civilizations, world religions, musical instruments, art, silhouettes, vintage fashion, fairy tales, folk tales, Native Americans, explorers, Civil War, geography, food, alphabet, Spanish, art, architecture, Shakespeare, plants, holidays. 

tiltshiftmaker.com – Transform your photos into tilt-shift style miniatures Use TiltShiftMaker to easily transform your standard photos into fun tilt-shift style miniature pictures.

open thinking » 80+ Videos for Tech. & Media Literacy Interesting Internet videos that would be appropriate for lessons and presentations, or personal research, related to technological and media literacy. Here are 80+ videos organized into various sub-categories. These videos are of varying quality, cross several genres, and are of varied suitability for classroom use. From Alec Couros

Copyright and Fair Use ‎(Celebrate Oklahoma Voices)‎ Copyright and Fair Use Follow these guidelines when using media (photos and audio/music) in your projects: 1. Homegrown – Create your own 2. Creative Commons – Use media for which permission to re-use has been already granted 3. Fair Use – Use media in accordance with fair use provisions of copyright law for the US tags:

http://www.googletutor.com/2009/05/18/6-google-docs-features-to-make-collaboration-more-productive Google docs is by far one of the easiest and most full featured collaboration tools available online. To get the most out of your collaboration, you need to make your documents do more for you, and go beyond just sharing them. Here are the 6 features that help you collaborate better, and more effectively using Google Docs. 

Chrome Experiments – Detail – Google Gravity Looking at "Gravity," one could easily get a sense of how designers might enable users to create a drag-and-drop, cut-and-paste custom interface for any web page they want to upload. Users could also easily add content/widgets/paid apps. There are a lot of options that come to mind. 

Everyone’s bookmarks for "Chrome Experiments – Detail – Google Gravity" on Delicious 

Social Networking Slideshow for a recent presentation on social networking in K12. Some great resources and rationales for using web 2.0 environments in K-20 learning environments.

FunnelBrain – Answers, Questions, Flashcards | AP Calculus, AP History, AP Psychology, AP Biology, AP Chemistry Elearning community. Students can create online accounts and can create and share study materials, flashcards (that can contain videos photos, audio, text and math equations, etc.). 

10 internet technologies that educators should be informed about (via TweetALink.com) There are many different tools and technologies available on the internet today, with many associated terms and concepts.This post examines what are the most important internet technologies for educators to be aware of, and informed about.There would be many different lists. This one is based on observations and experiences, and feedback from faculty at the author’s institution. 

Home – Boys Forward Boys Education Support, Resources, Studies and Aids for Teachers, Parents, Educators and Families tags: boys, reading, homework, inquiry_learning

John Green: Author of An Abundance of Katherines and Looking for Alaska John Green’s (author of An Abundance of Katherines, Looking for Alaska, and Paper Towns) official blog. Read his blog, learn famous last words or anagrams or view his You Tube videos.

21 Free And Useful Web Tools For Web Designers @ SmashingApps A good list that offers information on where you can find the simplest online web designer’s tools that are developed for designers and may be very helpful for you as well when you want to get your work done or just for fun.

Facts About Dihydrogen Monoxide A site to show bogus information on the internet. DMHO=water. It teaches danger of believing everything you read on the web.

Google Technology A humorous website for a hoax. It was the site from the opening session that Google created as a spoof about how it works. Good way to see how well students pay attention.

Lesson Plans and Student Activity Sheets CyberSmart! original, nonsequential standards-based lesson plans and student activity sheets actively engage students in making good search decisions and in evaluating the resources they encounter online. 

open thinking » 80+ Videos for Tech. & Media Literacy Interesting Internet videos that would be appropriate for lessons and presentations, or personal research, related to technological and media literacy. Here are 80 videos organized into various sub-categories. These videos are of varying quality, cross several genres, and are of varied suitability for classroom use. From Alec Couros 

Digital Voice Awards – Top Winners 2009 

Tom’s Place – Carmen Sylva Regina Elisabeta, Queen Marie Regina Maria, Princess Ileana, Romania, English Concertina, Classics Illustrated, Chicago Interesting and varied ephemera. Particularly good for kids and classic book illustrations.Also included – Romanian historical material 

Alternate reality game for education – ARGuing – Home ARGuing will build an educational methodology and teacher training guides and courses that can be used by teachers and teacher trainers to learn and understand how they can use the Internet, in a similar way to how their students are already using technology

GET GRAPHIC: The World In Words and Pictures A site is dedicated to using graphic novels as an educational and recreational tool. There are links to information for teachers, parents, and librarians on the importance and application of graphic novels in the classroom.

Classics Illustrated Comic Books An online source for comic versions of literature. This is an archive of some of classic stories told in a comic format. The artwork might seem a little dated, but that’s all part of the appeal! Titles include: War of the Worlds, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, A Christmas Carol, Frankenstein, All Quiet on the Western Front.

Pipl – People Search Pipl’s query-engine helps you find deep web pages that cannot be found on regular search engines. Unlike a typical search-engine, Pipl is designed to retrieve information from the deep web, our robots are set to interact with searchable databases and extract facts, contact details and other relevant information from personal profiles, member directories, scientific publications, court records and numerous other deep-web sources.

Fake internet resources – 180 Technology Tips #124 Post that offers technology tips as a reminder that not everything you see on the internet is real.

The Empty Page Blog – The Empty Page Blog encourages networking, connection, and creativity through the art and business of writing. 

Smashing Magazine 

http://www.photovisi.com

textorizer Textorizer is a program that allows you to make pictures formed with text t

Introduction to Google Forms | Matt Silverman A brief tutorial on creating a Google form.. As recommended by Will Richardson, this is an excellent resource for anyone desiring to organize, collect, and analyze data — turning the data into information.

Chartle.net – interactive charts online! This program lets users make simple, interactive charts and graphs that can be easily embedded in websites. 

Can we use Twitter for educational activities? Twitter is the most popular microblogging application.Posts are limited to 140 text characters in length. With experience in using Web2.0 technologies in education, the authors are trying to provide arguments for using Twitter as microblogging platform / social network in education, underlining its advantages, but also possible bad points.

http://www.noflyingnotights.com Bimonthly graphic novel reviews for teens and so much more! 

artbomb.net Offers reviews, previews, and web graphic novels. 

Comic Art Links Directory: Artists Links to hundreds of comics artist’s websites.

Lambiek.Net comics+art A web database with biographical information on a great many comic artists.

MoCCA – Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art 

VocabGrabber : Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus VocabGrabber lets you automatically create lists of vocabulary from any text

Webquests | Teaching English | British Council | BBC A 2004 article but still a good introduction

50 Tips, Tweaks and Hacks to Make the Most of Google Calendar | Virtual Hosting Blog  A good list of productivity tips and tricks using Google Calendar.

50 Tips, Tweaks and Hacks to Make the Most of Google Calendar | Virtual Hosting Blog A good list of productivity tips and tricks using Google Calendar.

Alltop – Top Children’s Literature News Compilation of great children’s literature news. Offers links as well.

9 Amazing Software Mashups – Killer Free Apps that Work Better Together | Maximum PC Some useful windows tools

Gnooks – Welcome to the World of Literature Gnooks is a self-adapting community system based on the gnod engine. Discover new writers you will like, travel the map. of literature and discuss your favorite books and authors. In the literature map – What else do readers of … read? The closer two writers are, the more likely someone will like both of them. Click on a name to travel along. 

Stunning images from space | The Courier-Mail 

Dropbox – Home – Secure backup, sync and sharing made easy. intuitive approach to online storage. The program creates a user folder that acts just like a folder on your hard drive. You can drag, drop, copy, and even save up to 2GB worth of files to the cloud ($100/year for 50GB), while the service works its magic and syncs up your documents in the background. The online interface lets you track your file transfer history and download any file remotely, as well as restore any files that may have been accidentally deleted. You can even create shared or public folders to pass files along to your friends and family. And you don’t even have ot bear any online ads. Of course we’re smitten.

Writers Talk 2009 Great information about authors – Includes video interviews, links and booklists. 

How Our Kids Are Using the Internet in 2009 

Public Domain Photos and Wallpapers A site for free public domain photos and desktop wallpapers. Large collection of High Resolution photos and wallpapers, Thousands of high quality public domain pictures, easy to search, All photos on Photos8.com are public domain. You may use these images for any purpose, including commercial. 

SurveyMonkey.com – Powerful tool for creating web surveys. Online survey software made easy!  SurveyMonkey.com is a tool to help you create and publish online surveys quickly and then view results graphically and in real time. There is both a free version and a professional version 

Death by PowerPoint An excellent presentation about making effective/good presentations. "How to make a presentation and not to bore your audience to death."

teachingwithted / FrontPage This is a wiki developed by Jackie Gerstein to help teachers use TED talks in the classroom.

WolframAlpha: A Knowledge Engine » SEO Blog 

digitalresearchtools / FrontPage This wiki collects information about tools and resources that can help scholars (particularly in the humanities and social sciences) conduct research more efficiently or creatively. Whether you need software to help you manage citations, author a multimedia work, or analyze texts, Digital Research Tools will help you find what you’re looking for. They provide a directory of tools organized by research activity, as well as reviews of select tools in which they not only describe the tool’s features, but also explore how it might be employed most effectively by researchers. 

Flickrbits 157 applications tools and extensions) in the database, all of which utilise the Flickr API in some way.

Technology’s Impact on Learning Outcomes: Can It Be Measured? : May 2009 : THE Journal A piece discussing the ongoing debate on the effectiveness of technology use for student learning outcomes. There still does not seem to be any clear answers. Recently, some institutions have decided to end their laptop programs for students because of the economic challenges facing those institutions

Myebook – get it out there! Create a virtual online book. This site allows you to easily publish and share your own content online as well as read ebooks published by other people. You can publish your novel, comic, magazine, photo album or brochure for free

Flashlight Worthy – the Best Books Recommended A blog that offers book recommendations, organized into interesting book lists

English Exercises An amazing collection of exercises, related to grammar, to practice English language online. It lets you pick the age level and content and gives you an interactive exercise. 

7 things you should know about… PLE | Educational Origami 

VocabGrabber : Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus VocabGrabber lets you automatically create lists of vocabulary from any text

CITE Journal Article Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education

Flipped!: Want to get teens excited about summer reading? Just add video. – 5/1/2009 – School Library Journal 

Webquests | Teaching English | British Council | BBC A 2004 article  but still a good introduction